Thanos

He is perhaps the most evil, bloodthirsty, and powerful villain in the universe—so powerful that religious sects have worshipped him as a god. His enemies include nearly every Super Hero in existence. He is obsessed with Goddess Death and has waged genocidal campaigns in an attempt to placate her. Most famously, he has attempted to conquer the universe by wielding the Infinity Gauntlet. He is the Mad Titan.

He is Thanos.

Divine Right

As both god and ruler of the Endless Resurgence empire, Thanos controlled his people through a combination of force and fear, viewing freedom as disorder, as a hole in the universe that allows for in randomness and chaos. He saw death as an end to uncertainty, and so, he loved it. Thanos viewed his reign as the natural order of thing. To him, fate and chance are always at war, and his rule demonstrates the preeminence of fate. To help him with his domination, he once possessed a powerful cube that erased the will of his people. Unfortunately for him, he lost it under mysterious circumstances millennia ago, and has since been attempting to get it back.

Unsurprisingly, many civilizations did not enjoy or want Thanos' brutal leadership. Thanos dealt with such uprising brutally, have his soldiers, the Ravens and the Bombardiers, and his sons, such as Gallowglass and Ronan the Accuser, quell any dissidence. For example, after the planet Pyx rose up against his rule, Thanos ordered Ronan to kill all males there over the age of 10.

From his birth on Saturn's moon of Titan, Thanos was always an outsider. He carries a Deviants gene, which causes his gruesome and misshapen appearance, with purple, rugged skin. He was born among the last sons of Titan's original colonists: Mentor and Sui-San. His mother, shocked to see such an ugly baby, and sensing his potential for evil, tried to kill Thanos at birth, although she was stopped by his father, A'Lars, AKA Mentor. Thanos later killed her for this attempt. Thanos also has a brother, Starfox (AKA Eros), who he was always jealous of, as Starfox was handsome and popular.

Still, Thanos is an Eternal, a type of super human who, according to the Celestials, was meant to be a protector of Earth. And, with a twisted mind, he took his cosmic duty to heart.

Omnipotent(ial)

Thanos is immensely strong and resistant to injury, invulnerable to nearly all types of poison, disease, and telepathic attack. He also has incredible psychic abilities; he can sense things several star systems away. He can also possess the bodies of others—but he simply uses others as shells, channeling his power through a victim until his mind exhausts the host and kills them. Foregoing food and drink, he subsists entirely on cosmic energy.

Perhaps Thanos' greatest ability is his capacity to rise from the dead. He can accomplish this by sacrificing others so he can live again or by biding his time in death, recharging his inner strength, so as to return more powerful and terrible than he was before. Thanks to his affinity for the Goddess Death, Thanos also claims he can transfer his followers' souls from one body to another and control what form their next life will take after they die. The Goddess also once granted him a techno-mystic chair, which allowed him instant transport across the universe.

Foes, or Victims

One could argue that, as the Mad Titan maintains a dispassionate approach in his quest for order, all beings have been counted among his enemies. However, as the Super Heroes of Earth and their allies have presented the greatest and most difficult obstacles to Thanos' goals, they are foremost in his list of foes.

Chosen Few

The divine embodiment of Death is Thanos' greatest love and greatest inspiration. A Goddess of immeasurable might, who holds sway over life itself, Death and her quiet judgement of the universe have motivated, intoxicated, and confounded the Mad Titan for as long as he has traversed the universe.

The Black Order is a team of aliens that Thanos refers to as his "children." The group, including Ebony Maw, Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive, Black Dwarf, and Supergiant, help him seek and destroy entire planets.

Millions of years in the future of all that is, it is revealed that Thanos takes on a herald called the Cosmic Ghost Rider. Once an Earthly Spirit of Vengeance, this herald went through a long and difficult journey that ultimately led to his servitude alongside the god.

Journey to Infinity

Thanos' most storied attempt at subjugating the entire universe came with his pursuit of the Infinity Gems. In his search, he was turned to stone by the Avengers, Spider-Man, and Adam Warlock, but was revived by Death. Then, gathering all six Infinity Gems (Soul, Power, Time, Reality, Space, and Mind) from In-Betweener and various Elders of the Universe, he wiped out half the universe as a gesture to Death. Ironically, she rejected this offer, claiming that he was now her superior. Simply put, Thanos had gained Death's submission, but not her love.

The Avengers attempted to fight him, but he swatted them, as well as Galactus and Eternity, away. He was finally defeated after his granddaughter, Nebula, stole the Infinity Gauntlet from him, robbing him of his power—but now the power was in her hands, and she was no better than her grandfather. Adam Warlock recruited Thanos to help defeat her, which he did after realizing that he was unworthy to wield such power. They tricked her into restoring the universe as it was and wrested the Gauntlet from her control.

Afterwards, Thanos spent some time as a lowly farmer, reflecting on his past misdeeds. Adam disassembled the Gauntlet and entrusted this new and self-aware Thanos to safeguard the Reality Gem, making him a member of the Infinity Watch. While a part of this new group, Thanos redeemed himself by protecting the gems against Magus, an evil version of Adam Warlock who made subservient doppelgangers of super powered beings like the Mad Titan. Death came to him and offered her allegiance if he were to kill Warlock, but he surprisingly declined and fought against Magus, who was eventually absorbed into the Soul Gem by Adam.

Warlock later formed Goddess, a female cosmic hero who wanted to return all of existence to the original "Cosmic Egg," a collection of several Cosmic Cubes, but Thanos united with Warlock once more to defeat her. Even Mephisto helped them in exchange for one of the Cubes after Goddess was defeated. When this eventually came to pass, he gave Mephisto a powerless cube and dismantled the rest, promising that if he ever again sought universal power, it would not be flawed. He would even later lecture Galactus on the dangers of too much pride. Not long after, he attempted to cure Thor after the Thunder God had lost his sanity, but the attempt was in vain. He transported Thor back to Asgard where Odin took this as an act of war and fought an extremely destructive battle with Thanos. Even upon learning the truth, Odin did not thank Thanos for his reluctant altruism, but told him to leave and never return.

Knowing that the universe would never trust him again, Thanos returned to his base and studied potential threats. He plotted strategies against himself by making the Thanosi—blends of android, clone, and mystical doppelganger that possessed powers, intelligence, and personalities echoing both Thanos and the other beings on which they were based. They were made of DNA or other essential forces from friends and foes alike.

Later, Death revived Thanos once again after he was killed by Drax the Destroyer, who had been created with the sole purpose of defeating Thanos. Drax had been created when the human Arthur Douglas's spirit was placed into a powerful new body by Kronos and Thanos's father, Mentor. After his resurrection, Thanos created a team called Zodiac by giving suits of power to twelve humans. Working on his behalf, they discovered a Cosmic Cube with which he tried to destroy the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and the Elders. Instead of killing them, though, the Cube sent them all to the Cancerverse, a place where death no longer existed.

A year later, Thanos was attacking Earth with the Black Order, a group of nefarious aliens assembled by the Titan. His goal was to murder his own son, Thane, who had been born to and raised as an Inhuman. Black Bolt, King of the Inhumans, preferred to have their home city of Attilan destroyed, however, rather than hand over Thane. The Avengers attacked Thanos, but it was Thane who defeated his father. Breaking free, he trapped Thanos in an amber cube, which subjected him to a state of perpetual living death.

Thanos seemed to finally gain Death's approval when he allied himself with Annihilus, handing over his armies, teleportation technology, and Galactus. Upon learning that Annihilus wanted to destroy all life in both the positive and negative matter universes, Thanos tried to release Galactus. Most unfortunately, Drax showed up and ripped out Thanos's heart, killing him. Still, the Mad Titan later appeared at Death's side as she witnessed Annihilus' defeat. His place next to her is believed to signify that she finally welcomed him with open arms.

Later, after Thanos rose again, the Avengers decide to ambush the Titan due to a precognitive vision from the Inhuman known as Ulysses. In the fight, War Machine was killed and She-Hulk was mortally wounded. Devastated by the loss of his friend, Iron Man worked to make sure that no one used Ulysses' prognosticating abilities again. This put him at odds with Captain Marvel, who wanted to use the young Inhuman to stop tragedies from happening.

Recently, Thanos discovered perhaps the only being in the universe that could defeat him permanently. That being, of course, was Thanos himself. In an event set millions of years into the future, at the beginning of the end of the universe, Thanos met his older self in one final quest to win the heart of Death. There could only be one suitor for her, however, so he was forced to fight himself for the Goddess' hand.