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Thanos' Age:
An issue once surfaced on a couple of the Marvel related message boards (don't they always?), and that was the issue of Thanos' age.
I will admit to having mistakenly assumed he was around 100 years old. Then, when the issue was brought up I remembered something Mephisto said during the Infinity Crusade that made me rethink my position.
"I have walked this plane many centuries longer than even you, Titan."
When I recalled this statement, I realized that Thanos was older than I had thought, much older. So, just how old is he? Well, from what we have been told about his history, and the history of Titan, we can mull over a few facts and in the end we can ascertain the age of Thanos with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
The HBOTMU article on Titan states that the colony was founded 750,000 years ago. However, Robert Wicks, of the Unofficial Chronology to the Marvel Universe site, believes this number to be in error, since the Kree created the Inhumans twenty-five thousand years ago, an event closely related to the founding on the colonies on Uranus and Titan. Thus, I believe his date for the founding of the Titan colony, 23,000 B.C., to be more accurate.
That's one old colony. Now, referring back to the history of Titan, we realize that within a few hundred years of the founding of the colony, its society degenerates into Civil War. When the war started, the 3rd generation of the TItans were all probably young adults. Now, we also know that the original Titans were not quite as powerful or as long-lived as the now cosmically enhanced Earth Eternals, but they were still quite long-lived. To humans, a generation is around 50 years, so to the Titans a generation could likely be around triple that. So lets say that between 600-1000 years after the founding of the colony, civil war erupted, resulting in the death of all the Titans save for Sui-San who would later become the mother of Thanos. Now, shortly thereafter, probably less than 100 years later, Mentor arrived on Titan after his voluntary exile from Earth. And soon thereafter, they began to bear the first of their many children.
Here is where things begin to get fuzzy. The History of Titan related in the Handbook of the MU states that Thanos and Eros were the last of Mentor's children. However, in Silver Surfer volume 3, # 37 Mentor States that Thanos is his first Born. Now, we also know that Mentor has given facts about Thanos, particularly in the area of just exactly HOW Thanos killed Sui-San, that just aren't true. Mentor has built something of a delusion regarding the death of his wife, stating to the Surfer that Thanos eviscerated his mother when he was just a boy of 10. We know this statement is false for a number of reasons. 1) Due to the nature of the repopulation of the Titan colony, there is no way that Thanos' mother died when Thanos was 10 years of age if Thanos was indeed Mentor's first-born son, because Mentor and Sui-San had many children, probably hundreds (Geez...what a pair of Rabbits!). 2) It was long stated that Sui-San was a victim of Thanos' first attack on Titan following his exile. Due to these two facts, we can surmise that Mentors' tale of woe as related to the Silver Surfer (in issue # 67) is a complete fallacy.
Well, if Mentor is deluded about that, then what else is the man confused about? Could it be true that Thanos isn't Mentor's first-born, and that the History of Titan is indeed correct in stating that Thanos and Eros are the last of Mentor's children? To that I answer no. Mentor is telling the truth about Thanos being his first-born. At least his first-born Son. It is doubtful that Mentor and Sui-San would have had many more children if they feared the result would be more Mutants like Thanos, so it is indeed probable that Mentor and his Wife had several daughters first. Another piece of evidence to suggest that Thanos is indeed the first-born Son of Mentor is a statement made by the late Captain Marvel in his relation of the tale of Thanos. In Captain Marvel # 33, he makes the following statement.
"As a Prince he tasted Power...and it was a delicacy he found he craved!"
Considering just how many Children Mentor had, Thanos must be extremely favored by his father to have become a prince. So, it is likely that Thanos was indeed his first-born Son, with Eros coming soon afterwards. So here is where we can guess Thanos' age, and I estimate it to be around 20,000 - 24,000 years. And Eros isn't much younger, due to the fact that he mentioned that he was an influence in Greek mythology, the origins of which go back to the Greek Dark Ages (1200 to 1100 B.C.). So, even if all the above statements and assumptions are incorrect, and Thanos and Eros are indeed the last of Mentor's children, he is at least 4000 years old. But, based on what Mephisto stated...and the way he most likely views time, it its reasonable to believe that the older figure is correct and Thanos is very old indeed.
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