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Today, we look at the What If…? comic that officially connected Thanos to the Eternals.
This is “Foundationed Deep,” a feature where we look at particular odd/strange/interesting instances of retroactively connecting different comic book characters (for instance, Uncanny X-Men #268 retroactively established that Wolverine knew both Captain America and the Black Widow from World War II).
Reader Rodrigo M. wrote in a while back to ask, “It seems that in Jim Starlin’s original idea there was no relation between Thanos and the Eternals. When was this link first established and when did it then become canon?”
Well, Rodrigo, the simplest answer is that Jim Starlin did not connect Thanos with the Eternals initially because the Eternals had not yet been CREATED when Jim Starlin first came up with an origin for Thanos, as Thanos was created by Starlin in 1973 and was given an origin later that same year. Jack Kirby was still at DC Comics at the time, so it wasn’t until Kirby left DC to return to Marvel that the King invented the Eternals, but even there, the Eternals were kept distinct from the rest of the Marvel Universe for some time until they were eventually mixed in there, retroactively. So WHEN that happens is the issue here.
THE ORIGINAL ORIGIN OF THANOS
It’s really kind of fascinating to see how much of Marvel Comics history is sort of based around the concept of “Some guy didn’t like that idea.” In other words, major changes to the histories and backgrounds of characters will be because one writer or one editor just decided, “I don’t like that story” or “I don’t think that story works.” We’ve seen this in the series of Kang articles that I’ve been doing these past few months where it seems like we went back and forth between Mark Gruenwald and John Byrne/Roger Stern there for a while (which is particularly weird, considering Gruenwald was the editor on Roger Stern’s Avengers at the time and yet then retconned a bunch of the stuff later in What If…? and later Avengers issues).
To begin, in Journey Into Mystery Annual #1 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Vince Colletta), we first met Zeus of the Olympian gods (there were later stories that connected him to Marvel’s Golden Age superhero comics where there was a Zeus involved, but that was really a whole other thing)…
In 1973’s Iron Man #55 (by Jim Starlin and Mike Friedrich), we first met Thanos and his father, Mentor, and his brother, Starfox…
Later that year, in Captain Marvel #29 (by Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom), Starlin revealed the history of Thanos’ homeworld of Titan and connected it to Zeus and Olympus…
And we see that there was a split with Zeus that led A’lars to go to Titan…
where he eventually had Thanos as his son (note that Starlin, within a year’s time, has decided to now make Thanos look different from the other Titans)…
THE ETERNALS CONNECTION IS REVEALED!
Okay, so a couple of years later, Jack Kirby introduces the Eternals and the idea of that series is that the Eternals were the inspiration for certain figures in mythology, which includes Zuras, who debuted in Eternals #5 (by Kirby and Mike Royer)…
Zuras, of course, was the inspriation for Zeus. The problem, though, was that the Eternals were meant to be in their own continuity, one where there wasn’t an actual Zeus around, so Zuras would take his place. Later writers, though, decided to merge the Eternals into the Marvel Universe, so now there is a Zuras AND a Zeus running around.
And in 1980’s What If…? #25, Mark Gruenwald, Ron Wilson and Alan Kupperberg revealed that it was actually ZURAS who was related to A’Lars, not Zeus, and thus A’Lars was an Eternal…
The Eternals form the first Uni-Mind in this story (a novel concept Kirby introduced during his Eternals series)…
and after it is finished, A’Lars decides to split from Zuras (now a calm split, instead of a contentious one) and find his destiny among the stars, which we know is the creation of the Titans and eventually, Thanos!
As I noted, this really came down to Gruenwald looking at the Starlin story and deciding that it didn’t make sense to tie Thanos to the actual gods of the Marvel Universe, and since we now had the Eternals as part of Marvel continuity, why not just use the new addition of Zuras to make the Titans tied in with the Eternals instead, thus making Thanos and his people part of the broader cosmic setup of the Marvel Universe rather than getting into the world of the gods.
It is interesting, though, to think that initially, Starlin’s intent was for Hercules and Thanos to have a familial connection, of sorts, which is an interesting idea in and of itself, no?
Thanks for the suggestion, Rodrigo! If anyone else has a suggestion for a Foundationed Deep (retroactive connections between characters), feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.
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