Marvel has made it pretty clear that the relaunch of the Marvel Cosmic line is based in no small part on the role that its characters will play in the upcoming "Avengers" sequel and its various side films. Here, Thanos gets the star treatment, with a look at his origins. Aaron does some interesting stuff here, so much so that I wonder where we're going with it, despite already knowing how it all eventually ends.
First, I'm not sure if I knew that Thanos was a mutant. His mutation so far seems limited to his physical appearance, but I'm not really sure if I had thought all that much on why he was purple but his brother, Eros, wasn't. (They are from Saturn, after all. I just thought that's the way they rolled over there.) I originally thought that Aaron was going to have his different appearance lead to his eventual ostracization from Titan's society, establishing why he turned into a super-villain. But, Aaron doesn't take the easy way here, showing Thanos as an intellectual, serious child who's eventual brought into "frivolous childhood games" by a sympathetic classmate.
It's another classmate, a girl, who pushes Thanos down a darker path, encouraging him to explore a forbidden cave with some friends. I'm guessing that this girl is going to have something to do with Death, give how significantly she manipulates events here. Although I don't think that she caused the collapse of the cave that killed Thanos' friends, it seems possible that she did. Either way, the collapse is the moment where Thanos eventually begins to separate himself (or finds himself separated) from Titan's society. The scene where Thanos kills the lizards who ate his friends is heart-breaking, given that he had previously been repulsed by his father dissecting an already dead lizard and had vowed not to eat the lizards when he was trapped in the cave.
All in all, it's a really interesting start to this origin story. I thought Aaron cleverly avoided too obvious of a story by having Thanos' mutation not be the reason for his eventual hatred of Titan society, pinning his start on the path to darkness on a simple accident. But, the role of this mysterious girl is going to be the key element in this story (particularly given that she set the stage for said accident). Has Death been manipulating Thanos all along? Or, does Thanos come by his villainy naturally? His mother allegedly saw death in his eyes the day he was born. Is he merely a pawn of destiny or was he choosing his own path? I'm intrigued to see how Aaron answers such weighty philosophical issues.
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