Now I have a question for my readers. Answer it honestly. Would Thanos be less of a badass if Death (whom he is in love with) were a man? Many of you know the story of Thanos and how/ why he tried to destroy everything in the Marvel universe. If you don’t know here’s a link. You should know a little something about it if you plan on seeing The Guardians of Galaxy, hitting theaters this week. If you don’t know, I will give a quick rundown.
Thanos was born of Saturn’s moon Titan, so yeah, this dude is a Titan. At first considered a pacifist, he was a nice kid, developing his super-genius level intellect that would make even Tony Stark look like a dunce, all while hanging with his brother (Starfox) and his pets. As he grew into a teenager he became fascinated with death. His interest evolved into worship it, worship transformed into infatuation and eventually he was in love with death. Death came to him physically embodied as a woman (Mistress Death) and declared that the only way to claim her affection was to kill as much as he possibly could, thus setting off the chain of events that would attract him the ultimate power in the universe, the cosmic cube (look for the correlation in the Marvel movies).
Ok, now you have a quick overview of the mad Titan’s story, so consider this, would his story be any less impactful if the physical embodiment of death were a man instead of a woman? Now, I don’t think Marvel should change history or anything, but I am curious to see if the reader would find Thanos just as intimidating if he had a thing for a dude. This thought came to me months ago while reading a post on Facebook about DC’s decision to make Alan Scott a gay man (during their relaunch of their characters in ‘The New 52’) and get married to his male partner.
As many of you know, when Alan Scott was originally written in the 40s and 50s, it was done so with him being straight. And of course DC did this to advise their readers of their stance on marriage equality. I saw the comments on this topic range from indifference, acceptance and ignorance, to insensitive and even hateful. I wondered if would it garner the same response if it this change were made to a different character? What about a character with extreme violence at his very core? There’s only one way to find out. So again I ask the question, would Thanos be less badass, or less respected and feared if he was in love with a man? Answer when you can peoples!
bigboyNERD 