Though the book is called Thanos, and though the primary heroes are a contemporary Illuminati (ah, the ever-successful Illuminati, those old so-and-sos. When will they ever learn?), Thanos: Return of the Mad Titan is the story of Roberta, a goth drugstore employee suffering through the mundane, boring miseries of life.
Life-affirming.
Marvel Comics
That the book is also about Mistress Death, avatar of a primary force of the universe and long-time Thanos crush-object, might telegraph to the reader what this book is really about. The medium of comic books has long established the relationship between goth girls and abstract personifications of Death.
The central conceit of Return of the Mad Titan isn’t all that far removed from the plot of Death: The High Cost of Living (or, if you’re a fan of middling ’90s flicks, Meet Joe Black): confronted by the cold and indifferent nature of mortality, Death becomes convinced to spend some time being mortal (you know, to connect with the people).
Flawless plan.
Marvel Comics
What Mad Titan adds to this template is rampant, super-powered property damage. Thanos, desperate to lurk on a girl who wants nothing to do with him, abducts the entire city of Fresno, lifting it (Sokovia-style) into the upper atmosphere. Most stalkers don’t resort to the wholesale slaughter of a city in order to impress their obsession, but then Thanos has never been anything but toxic in his relationship with Death.
Marvel Comics
The Illuminati provides an unsurprisingly ineffective defense for Roberta/Death, spending most of their time laying out plenty of exposition. They announce the stakes, identify obstacles they have no trouble overcoming, and otherwise get in the way of any necessary character development for our titular Titan or his supposedly vulnerable victim.
There are a handful of cool character beats, particularly for Hulk (who gets a cool slow-burn arrival sequence). The most compelling member of this version of the Illuminati is Emma Frost, who provides the most credible obstruction for Thanos – if only just.
Regretfully, Thanos and Death are denied these sorts of moments. Where the Death of the Endless stories – and, more recently, the incredible The Many Deaths of Laila Starr – succeed in their goal to humanize their avatars of mortality, Return of the Mad Titan barely touches upon any lessons Death set out to learn. Roberta’s dissatisfaction with living, clear from the opening panels of the book, either confirms the meaningless rat race of living to the reader or illustrates the book’s disinterest in developing those themes. We’re given a nice scene at the Infinity Well (a recurring setting from the Infinity Gauntlet series), and Death gets a chance to tell Thanos that she not all that into him.
Marvel Comics
For Thanos’ part, he gets to wail on some Avengers and proves that he is just as evil in love as he is in everything else: he makes his crush literal property by transferring her into a gem and absconding with her.
Thanos: Return of the Mad Titan is an entertaining story filled with beat-em up action and a resolution to position its characters for later stories. Sadly, it attains all that without providing much weight to its characters or circumstances – the entire population of Fresno included.
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