In the comics, Thanos has shown he is obsessed with Death – which in the Marvel Universe is not just a concept but an actual cosmic entity who appears as a woman with a skull-like face. The Mad Titan has gone to great lengths to impress Death, even killing off half the universe in the original The Infinity Gauntlet comic book saga, yet Death remains cold and distant from him.
In one comic book miniseries, Thanos Rising, by Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi, it’s revealed that Death had been appearing to Thanos since he was a child, stroking his murderous tendencies and grooming him to be her weapon… or did she? The miniseries actually leaves much of their relationship ambiguous, opening the question of whether or not Thanos was in love with someone other than Death in his early years.
The miniseries reveals that, as a youth, Thanos was actually a very gentle and kind boy who spent his time drawing alone. His mild-mannered personality was so extreme that, when he had to dissect an animal in class, he became physically ill and ran outside. One of his few friends, a dark-haired girl, followed him and mentioned that the first dissection was always the hardest. The girl would continue appearing before Thanos over the years, chatting with him and encouraging him to follow his darker impulses, including murder.
Soon, Thanos was killing his fellow citizens and dissecting them – partly to try and discover why he was so different from other people but mostly because he just enjoyed killing. Even so, his behavior disturbed Thanos and he vowed to his friend that he would never kill again. For years, he kept true to this vow, leaving Titan and traveling the galaxy as a pirate ship’s navigator. Although his crewmates were brutal, Thanos refused to join them in their killing activities – until one day the captain and him fought and Thanos blacked out, only to discover he had killed the captain.
Now in charge of the pirates, Thanos cut a bloody swath through the universe, re-embracing his love for killing. He reunited with the girl and admitted he loved her, but she insisted that he could only belong to her and no others. In response, Thanos killed all of his other lovers and children. Eventually, the girl he loved revealed herself to be Death (manifesting as a talking skeleton) and told Thanos she had been grooming him to be her weapon in the land of the living. Horrified, Thanos told her that she had made him a monster, but the girl just laughed and said Thanos was born a monster – she just helped him on his way.
But was this girl truly Death? Near the end of the series, Thanos reunites with his father, Mentor, and tells him about his bride-to-be. Mentor, however, cannot see the girl (who is invisible to everyone but Thanos) and informs him that all of his instruments indicate there is nobody else in the room but them. Informing his son that the girl is a product of Thanos’ damaged mind, Mentor rejects this Death as a real person. Of course, fans know that a cosmic being such as Death could mask herself from sophisticated sensors – but there are a few more things to consider.
At the very end of the miniseries, Thanos returns home and sees his original vision of Death who calls out to him. Rather than run to his beloved, however, Thanos turns in disgust and rejects her, causing her to call out to him. This is an odd reversal of the usual Thanos-Death relationship, as Lady Death is usually the one to behave coldly to Thanos while in this scenario, it’s Thanos who refuses to acknowledge this “Death.” The girl who claimed to be Death is also significantly chattier than Lady Death, who generally remains mute around Thanos.
Based on this, it’s possible that the Death that Thanos kept seeing in his early years really was a hallucination that represented the darker parts of his mind. Eventually, Thanos did meet and fall in love with the real Lady Death of the Marvel Universe, but had a much harder time gaining her affections. It’s even possible that this original “Death” is a separate cosmic being, as Cosmic Ghost Rider once ran into her in his comic book. As Cosmic Ghost Rider’s mind is admittedly more screwed up than Deadpool’s, however, the reality of Thanos’ “imaginary friend” and first love remains in doubt.
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