Thanos Annual #1: The Bare Minimum

The Mad Titan returns. Unsurprisingly, the Infinity Stones do as well. Thanos Annual #1 kicks off Marvel’s new event, Infinity Watch. The issue tries to balance catching readers up on recent Infinity Stone events with an exciting story in its own right. Unfortunately it never quite achieves that balance.

Following the events of his latest mini-series, Thanos is trying to understand the new Infinity Stone he created–the Death Stone. He concludes that to fully understand it, he needs to unite it with the other Infinity Stones, and that’s exactly what he spends Thanos Annual #1 trying to do. Thanos travels to Earth where he finds the hosts of the Reality, Time, and Space Stones–Star, Quantum, and Overtime respectively. Thanos takes on all three hosts, briefly catching the Reality Stone’s host. He tortures her, attempting to acquire the Reality Stone and hoping it will help him use the Death Stone on his enemies.

Thanos Annual #1 is a largely perfunctory lead-in to the upcoming Infinity Watch event. Enough backstory is provided to make the event accessible. But this issue is little more than that. The Infinity Stone hosts are one dimensional. At no point during their fight against Thanos does it feel like actual stakes involved.

Landy does try to better define Thanos, especially his relationship with Death, the creation of the Death Stone, and Thanos’ attempts to understand it. There is very little emotion behind any of this, though. It’s more history than anything else. That history does work on a factual level. A reader unfamiliar with Thanos in general or his recent actions in particular will learn what they need to. But to understand Thanos and his current relationship with Death on any kind of emotional level, the recent Thanos mini-series is required reading.

The first part of The Death Stone Saga, a backup story running through the Infinity Watch issues, is entirely procedural, establishing what the Death Stone is capable of and bringing back an old character.

Larroca doesn’t just rely on Thanos’ size to make the character intimidating. Certainly he keeps Thanos on model with his size. But the real power in the character comes from Thanos’ face. Larroca never gives him outsized expressions such as wild eyes or a giant smile. At most Thanos sneers once or twice. For the balance of the issue, though, he looks deadly serious, focused on whatever the task at hand is. A Thanos who isn’t bombastic proves to be even more threatening.

The one truly successful moment in Thanos Annual #1–the story beat that leaves an emotional impact–is Thanos’ dissection of Star. Larroca tracks the meticulous steps Thanos takes and Star’s response. She screams. He cuts. He stretches. He digs deep into Star’s body. She cries. He removes the stone. She dies. Peppered in this twelve panel grid is Thanos, emotionless, concentrating on his work. Guru-eFX uses one solid shade of red for each of Star’s panels. Between the almost pale red coloring and Larroca’s detailed art, the page borders on body horror. Landy’s narration proves most effective on this page thanks to the extreme visuals that accompany it.

Petit’s placement of caption boxes and dialogue bubbles is effectively organized. There are times when the captions don’t flow in the most aesthetically pleasing way, not waterfalling down the page for instance. But Petit does avoid interfering with any of Larroca’s art which is more important.