Thanos

It’s a reference to a cult-favorite comic book.

(Venom was involved too.)

Motion-capture is a pretty big business these days, what with all these science fiction franchises featuring tons of computer animated creatures and characters. Mo-cap has been around for a while, but these days, with movies like Avatar and Warcraft and even the new Planet of the Apes series featuring whole worlds built around CGI characters, it seems everyone’s got a hand in the mo-cap pie. We knew that Avengers: Infinity War would feature at least one completely CGI character — Thanos — but with a new cast addition it looks like there will be at least one more.

For all we’ve seen and heard about Thanos as, like, the biggest villain, like, ever, we really don’t know much about him in regards to the MCU. We know he was behind Loki’s initial invasion of Earth, but the Avengers don’t. We know he wants the Infinity Gauntlet to rule the Universe, but they don’t. We know the little shiny MacGuffins our heroes have been picking up here and there on their adventures are Infinity Stones, but they don’t. Which creates an interesting situation when it comes to how all of this is going to be revealed.

We know that Josh Brolin is playing the extremely big bad Thanos for Avengers: Infinity War, and we’ve seen Thanos in some short scenes before, but it looks like he’ll be getting a lot more to do in the next superhero team-up movie than sitting in a very large chair. We even saw him walking around during some preliminary motion-capture tests! We also know that the heroes traditionally get some subtle costume upgrades movie to movie, so it’ll also be exciting to see if Thanos is getting a new-ish look too.

The inevitable happens in Venom #5, by Mike Costa and Gerardo Sandoval, when the symbiote and its host get into a knock-down drag-out fight with the guy the symbiote has never forgiven for rejecting it, the Spider-Man known as Peter Parker. And Marvel is observing the event throughout the month of March with Venomized Variant covers that depict the heroes of the Marvel Universe overtaken by the Venom symbiote.

A hero is defined by their villains, and the world of superhero comic books is filled with some of the scariest and silliest bad guys around. Rogues’ Gallery aims to settle the score and determine who is the true arch-nemesis for some of your favorite superheroes, and we need your help to do it! You voted to see who the ultimate villain in Marvel's cosmic universe was, and we’ve tabulated the results and assembled a video counting down the definitive top 10. Did your favorite make this list? There’s only one way to find out!

The Infinity Stones are the most important artifacts in Marvel’s Studios’ shared cinematic universe, and with the franchise building towards Avengers: Infinity War and a confrontation with Thanos, the hunt for the stones is more important than ever. While the movies have remained coy the full extent of the stones' powers, both together and separately, we can learn a lot about their abilities --- and Thanos’ intentions --- from the last forty years of comics.

Thanos, Mad God of Titan and the guy who loves Death more than anybody, is getting back to what he does best in Thanos #1, by Jeff Lemire and Mike Deodato, and what he does best is kill people in huge numbers. Check out a preview.

When you think of Cosmic Marvel, you think of something specific, even though that's never been the title of a comic. Some of what you're thinking of comics from Jack Kirby: Galactus, Silver Surfer, Celestials. But chances are even more of that cosmic stuff came from another writer-artist: Jim Starlin. Thanos, Drax, Gamora, the Infinity Gauntlet, Kronos and Mentor and everything happening on Titan. That's all Starlin, doing what he does best: re-imagining superhero comics as psychedelic space opera.