Does anyone here have a fascination with the Marvel character Thanos?
We spend a lot of time on ILP and in life pushing the envelope, carefully crafting our pick-axe questions as if we’ll ever get to the top of the mountain. We’re obsessed with the Next, the horizon, the elevation to the level beyond, and beyond, and beyond.
Jim Starlin & Marvel comics must have been feeling this same way when they created the cosmic entities. The ultimates. After all, we all want to know who the strongest is and why. We wonder if anyone can beat up Hulk, or if spiderman can out-do daredevil or capt america or batman. Our primal desire to pit man against beast, man against man, beast against beast, such longings have ensured our survival. Who wins, a tornado or a hurricane? who is more horrible, Gacy or Manson, who’d win in one on one, Bird or Magic, and inevitably, who’d win, the immovable wall or the unstoppable force?
And so we have Superman. Juggernaut. Flash. The impossible. The paradox. The conundrum. It’s likely there are characters named those last three, and it’d be no accident. I know there’s a Mr. Impossible – a bizarre shapeshifter who had a run-in with silver surfer – no contest, it’s impossible to defeat mr. impossible, a rubbery adaptive species that can turn into anything from a planet to a donut hole, you never really know who he is, he’s always ironic, joking, hiding.
Beyond Hulk and his earthbound ilk, we have surfer, marvel, thor, and beyond them, Odin, Zeus and other Gods, and beyond them the cosmic entities such as Galactus, Death, Eternity, Infinity, Chaos, Order, Love, Hate, The Stranger, The Celestials. These entities are at the topper most of the popper most lads, and finally, Living Tribunal sits in judgement with his three faces, deciding what’s allowed, but mostly staying out of it.
Then there’s Thanos. A semi-eternal Godling from the moon Titan, the brooding, hulking, wildly brilliant brother of Eros. He started out with a good heart but had a rough childhood. He sought power, and courted Death literally, meaning he was in love with Lady Death and tried to win her over by giving her all manner of dead things. In the end, a paradox, Death doesn’t want more death, and death can’t exist without life. Thanos is unrequited.
He’s not the most powerful (about as strong as Hulk and as smart as Stark and Banner squared, he picked up more powers along the way and invented things that increased his power a hundred fold, teleportation, energy bursts, invincibility.
Thanos is a complex dude. He’s not power drunk. He’s a seeker. He wants love, meaning. He’s like all of us, only more so. He’s what we would become. He figures out how to commandeer the controls of the universe, in Infinity Gauntlet, he literally controls the whole universe with a thought, and even defeats Living Tribunal. In The End, after amassing even greater power – oneness with the Universe, he finds himself alone in a black abyss,first angry, but eventually regretful. He has an epiphany: the only thing worth doing is helping others.
In our lives we seek power, mastery, self-knowledge, independence, wholeness. We seek it like an animal, like a Thanos. Every day, every form we fill out, every application, every job interview, every workout, every vitamin, every time we comb our hair or do sit-ups or philosophize. We seek mastery over the universe, we seek solid ground, and we seek the Love of lady death, Herself.
Like Thanos, if we’re shrewd enough to conquer our foes and collect the infinity gems, we found ourselves supreme and somehow empty. Most of us will not have the courage to admit it, we will fold inward and become smaller, more animal, more self-righteous, narrow, fixed in our values and beliefs and silk bathrobes and nice watches and court side seats and estranged families, pontificating, smugly senile and eventually find ourselves ending, our flesh moving on to greener pastures where it could start the journey again with some other soul, be it water, animal, mineral, human – anything but YOU.
Most of us will not have the courage to notice that our hard earned rewards are empty. Thanos had the courage, and the intelligence. With his epiphany, he went on to rectify wrongs he perpetrated on the Rigellians, which lead to a run-in with Galactus. Thanos saw what Galactus could not – that the cosmic energy he rigged from the soul gems was a trap by a being called The Hunger, a creature who eats REALITIES. Remember, Galactus merely eats planets, so The Hunger is far more badass. After much planning and struggle, The Hunger finds his way into our reality, which he refers to as a “spherical” reality. He’s a big black splotch, like a cancer, and he beats the fuck out of galactus and proceeds to eat our universe. Only Thanos can beat him. And I’ll spare you the details. Pick up Thanos Redemption if you care to.
Point is, we all have our Galactus, our Hunger, our cosmic entities, our Hulks, iron mans and so on. They dog us when we sleep, or when we have insomnia, or when we stare at screens, or down sedatives or cupcakes, they have their grip on us when we read spinoza or lacan or thales.
Thales. Thanos. Hm. Coincidence?
Let us be like both. To be the first real thinker, and the last word on cosmic safety, the epiphany that makes us worth rendering, worth the paper we’re drawn upon.