Comic Review: Thanos Rising #2
Posted By Dave Howlett on May 2, 2013
In thrillers like Black Sunday, Red Dragon, and The Silence Of The Lambs, novelist Thomas Harris excels like no other at creating memorable, believable psychopaths. In his best works, he combines his own dark imagination with thoroughly-researched explorations into real-world pathology, and the result has been some of the scariest, most fleshed-out homicidal lunatics in fiction and film (even when, as with Hannibal Lecter in Lambs, they only play a supporting role). Jason Aaron (Scalped, Thor: God Of Thunder) has taken a page from Harris’ approach in his five-part miniseries, Thanos Rising, which seeks to explore the origins of Marvel’s most memorable mass murderer like never before. Aided by the singular visual style of Simone Bianchi (Wolverine, Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight), Aaron has crafted a creepy tale that doesn’t feel much like a Marvel comic at all–instead, it’s a look at the forces that shaped the most cosmic serial killer of all. But one can’t help but wonder if the need to stretch it out into a miniseries (and the hardcover and softcover collections that will surely follow) doesn’t dilute its impact somewhat.
The second issue of the miniseries picks up with teenaged Thanos, having slaughtered a family of cave lizards that killed his friends at the conclusion of issue one, finding that he has a sweet tooth for murder now. The mysterious girl who accompanies and encourages him along his journey to the dark side (a character who will almost certainly be revealed as the latter-day Thanos’ paramour, the living embodiment of Death itself) watches as he calmly, clinically performs vivisections on a series of ever-larger animals native to the moon of Titan, seeking to find some great truth within the subjects of his study (after all, a common trait among most serial killers is an early indifference to the suffering of animals). But it isn’t long before Thanos decides to work his way up the food chain of Titan’s technologically-advanced, supposedly enlightened society to become not only its very first murderer, but its very first serial murderer as well. The future Mad Titan evades detection for now–even as a search begins for the perpetrator behind the strange rash of disappearances–but by issue’s end his choice of victims becomes decidedly personal.
The timing of this series is no accident, seeing as how millions of moviegoers met Thanos for the first time last summer in the end credits of The Avengers and had no idea who he was (my girlfriend turned to me when he appeared and said “Is that Hellboy?“). With the Marvel Phase Two movies ramping up and Thanos destined to appear in at least a few of them, the time is right to delve into his backstory. Aaron’s approach is a sound one, grounding the galaxy-spanning ambition seen in later Thanos epics like The Infinity Gauntlet in a more recognizable reality–albeit, one set on a moon of Saturn. The result resembles a cross between The Bad Seed and Anakin Skywalker’s descent into villainy in the Star Wars prequels. There definitely is a tragedy to the way young Thanos is portrayed–born different from the rest of the Eternals, he is not an outcast but is happily welcomed by his schoolmates and beloved at home. But that doesn’t stop him from abducting and killing those schoolmates when the urge overtakes him. Bianchi’s art is as lyrical and strange as ever, lending an odd beauty to the grotesque subject matter. But this is a story that, while well told, moves along at a leisurely pace since it has to fill out five issues. It’s the kind of tale that would have been delivered in a giant-sized annual back in the day, but the realities of the publishing business in 2013 demand a book-sized story that can be repackaged to suit the much larger audience who will flock to see Avengers 2. Too bad–as authors like Harris have shown, a truly memorable psycho doesn’t have to command too much of a page count to leave a lasting impression.
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