Thanos is one of the Eternals of Titan. The son of Mentor (leader of the Titans) and his wife, Sui-San. Ever a morose, brooding problem child, Thanos eventually grew to manhood and became obsessed with violence and death. At some point his nihilistic nature and murderous tendancies would attract the attention of Death herself. Thanos eventually came to meet Her, and fell hopelessly in love with her manifestation. After a series of forbidden experiments killed some test-subjects, Mentor had Thanos exiled from his home world. During this time, Thanos would journey to the fringes of the Galactic-Rim, where he would hone his dark skills among the scum of the universe. Thanos returned almost a century later, filled with violence and hatred, and launched an atomic attack upon his home-world, slaughtering most of the inhabitants. Out of 35,000 Titans, the attack claimed all but 100, and left Sui-San among the dead. For reasons unknown, Thanos departed, leaving Titan in ruins in his wake.

Sometime thereafter, Thanos would again return to Titan, this time with a space fleet crewed by some of the worst the Universe had to offer. With his crew of murderers, brigands, and pirates, Thanos brought Titan to its knees, and became its ruler. During Thanos' rule over Titan, Mentor pleaded to his father, the cosmic-Titan called Kronos, for help, and aid was rendered in the form of Drax the Destroyer. Drax pursued Thanos across the cosmos, trying to thwart his schemes time and again. Finally, Drax confronted Thanos on a distant world and a battle ensued that ripped the planet asunder. Weakened, Drax was taken prisoner by Thanos and transported to a secret base that Thanos had set up on Earth. However, Drax managed to make telepathic contact with the armored Avenger known as Iron Man, who, with Mentor's aid, freed Drax, defeating Thanos' thralls, the space-vampires known as the Blood Brothers, and destroying Thanos' Earth-base in the process.

However, this setback was a small one as far as Thanos was concerned, and he quickly began the second phase of his plan. He employed the services of the Super Skrull and another Skrull scientist named Skragg, and used them to draw out the Kree-born hero Captain Marvel. When they failed to defeat him, he quickly maneuvered Mar-Vell into a battle with the Thing. The Thing and Captain Marvel battled on until discovering they had been manipulated, and the pair of heroes went on to encounter and confront Thanos himself. However, the Titan easily blasted the Thing into unconciousness, and forced Mar-Vell to switch-places with Rick Jones, who Thanos then captured. Jones was quickly teleported to Titan, where Thanos drained his memory with the help of the Titan super-computer, ISSAC. Using the info stolen from Jones' mind, Thanos finally acquired the location of the Cosmic Cube (a field of nearly sapient energy possessing vast power, enough to grant the bearer nearly any wish), the device he planned to use to control the cosmos. Thanos - with Death beside him - quickly journeyed to the underground cavern located beneath an island off the cost of Louisiana where the Cosmic Cube was secreted, and Jones was left in a room alone, virtually unguarded. However, Jones was soon visited and freed from captivity by Mentor and Eros, and they soon took him to the Hall of War, a place which so angered and moved Jones, that he summoned Mar-Vell, who instantly pleged himself to their plight. Together, the trio then attacked Thanos' minions, including the Super-Skrull who fell in single-combat against Captain Marvel. That done, Mentor sent Mar-Vell to Earth, where he sensed that the Captain would soon be most needed.

As Captain Marvel notified the Avengers of the threat they all faced at Thanos' hands, Thanos himself found Drax the Destroyer waiting in the cavern to oppose him. Drax failed to stop Thanos, however, falling to the Titan in mental combat as Mar-Vell struggled with Thanos' other ally, the Controller. In the process of this struggle, Mar-Vell was contacted by the cosmic entity known as Eon, who made the Kree warrior the newest Protector of the Universe. Along with this mantle, came the gift of cosmic awareness, making Mar-Vell a true champion and Thanos' true nemesis. Using his new abilities, Mar-Vell fought the Controller to a standstill, until Thanos grew weary of his minion's inability to defeat his foe, and spirited the Controller away to parts unknown.

Despite Captain Marvel's new status, and the total defeat of the Blood Brothers at the hands of Iron Man and the Thing, all seemed lost when it was revealed that Thanos had indeed secured the cosmic cube at last. Soon, Captain Marvel had rallied the Avengers to his side, but Thanos used the powers of the cosmic cube to bring Mar-Vell, Moondragon, and Iron Man to Titan, where they joined Drax, Mentor and Eros, who had been imprisoned in a bio-electic field. Thanos went on to boast of his accomplishments, and of his future plans, showing them that he had succeeded in imprisoning even Kronos himself. However, Captain Marvel was not so easily defeated, managing to short out the field holding he and his comrades prisoner using his Nega-Bands. With the field destoryed, Thanos' enemies attacked en masse, but found that even their combined abilities were insufficient, and Thanos ascended to Godhood.

But during this affair Thanos had developed an interesting trait, whereby he subconsciously supplied the means to his own defeat. His nemesis, Captain Marvel continued to oppose him, and instead of using his vast might to merely destroy the Kree Captain, he toyed with him, giving Mar-Vel the chance to shatter the Cosmic cube. The agonized scream of the defeated Titan echoed through the victors' ears for what seemed like an eternity afterwards.

However, Thanos survived. He would go on to find that Death had abandoned him, and though wracked with grief, he would form the basis of a scheme to regain her favor. During this time, he would go on to develop part of a plot designed to remove the only foe that could pose a true threat to his ultimate goals, this threat was a being called the Magus, who ruled a vast religious empire with himself as the lone Deity. In order to successfully remove the Magus, Thanos introduced several paradoxical elements into the Magus' reality, one of which was a woman called Gamora, whom he had plucked from the timestream years earlier as a young child and had raised to become a deadly assassin. Also, Thanos would aquire 5 of the 6 legendary Soul-Gems and combine their power with the intention of using their vast might to destroy every star in the universe. One facet of this scheme required Thanos to make an ally of the artificial being Adam Warlock ( a facet wich Gamora assisted him in. ), who possessed the 6th Soul-Gem. Thanos did this by offering Warlock aid aginst Warlock's evil, future self, the malevolent Magus. This got Thanos close enough to siphon off the energy signature of his Soul-Gem, so that he might duplicate the stone for himself. Thanos, however, did go on to help Warlock eliminate the Magus by first helping Warlock slaughter an army of 215,000 of the Magus' troops, and then battling the powerful Magus himself while Warlock went on to eliminate the divergent timeline from whence his evil future-self had sprang.

Even though Thanos did end up eliminating his greatest percieved Threat, in this also, Thanos would again plant the seeds of his own undoing. First, his ward Gamora found out about his horrid plan, and attacked her foster father, intending to kill him. Her attack backfired, and Thanos mortally wounded her and left her for dead to be found by Warlock. When Adam found her, he drew her soul into his gem and thus learned of the plot hatched by his former ally. Needing help to stop Thanos, Warlock contacted Captain Marvel and the Avengers. Together, they all attacked Thanos' armada. Thanos would further enrage Warlock, by wiping the mind of Adam's companion Pip, and leaving him to be found. When Warlock found Pip's mindless form, he drew the spirit of his friend into his Soul-Gem. But before Thanos had attacked Pip, he told him the full details of his plan. And when Warlock drew Pip's soul into the Gem, he learned what Pip knew. Warlock and Captain Marvel immediately attacked Thanos, destoying his projector. Mar-Vel was rendered unconcious, but Warlock savagely attacked Thanos, who promptly struck him down. Before Thanos could move his Star-Gem into another Projector, he was attacked by Thor and Iron Man, who followed behind Warlock and Mar-Vel. Thor attacked Thanos, while Iron Man shattered the Star-Gem. Thanos teleported away with Warlock's lifeless body, and led his crew to defeat the Avengers. With Warlock's gem he possessed enough Power to at least destroy the Earth's Sun. But before he could do so, a wild card was introduced in the form of Ben Grimm (The Thing) and Spider Man, who was compelled to find the battleground by Lord Chaos and Master Order. Spider Man freed the Avengers and in the melee' that followed shattered the sphere holding the Soul-Gem. The gem hit the floor and in a flash of light the Soul of Adam Warlock appeared from within the Gem. Now a being of pure energy, Warlock lunged for the panicked Thanos, and killed him, turning the Titan's body into solid Granite. Afterwards, the spirit of Warlock retreated back into the blissful world inside the Gem itself, and his body was soon buried by the heroes he had fought alongside.

But Death was not yet done with the Mad Titan. Years later Death decided that since there were more beings living now than had ever died, the universe was in a state of imbalance. Deciding that half of the sentient population of the Universe needed to die, she ressurected Thanos, and greatly augmented his already incalculable might. Thanos would find the only possible real opposition to his schemes in the form of the Silver Surfer. Thanos at first tried to convince the Surfer that he should aid his crusade, lest planet after planet suffer fatal population growth. The Surfer refused, and soon afterwards Thanos would distract the Surfer, and escape. As the Surfer journeyed to Earth to learn more of his new foe, Thanos would go on to reclaim his control over his Starship, and his Armada, wresting the mantle of command from Nebula, his alleged Granddaughter. Immediately afterwards, Thanos would fake his own demise, thus getting the Surfer off his trail. From there, Thanos decided that the most expedient method to do his Mistress' bidding was to collect the 6 Soul-Gems once more. But Thanos expanded his knowledge of these potent trinkets, and re-dubbed them the Infinity Gems. Learning the true nature of their power, he used murder, deceit and guile to wrest the Gems from their bearers ( see my section called the Thanos Quest. ) and attached all 6 to his left glove forming the Infinity Gauntlet. With all six gems in his possession, he was granted ultimate power and became God of this actuality, an act which gained the attention of the demon-lord known as Mephisto.

In one of his first major acts after claiming this lofty mantle, Thanos summoned up the Silver Surfer and Drax the Destroyer, and toyed with them in a demonstration of his limitless might. That done, he drew their spirits into the Soul Gem, and returned to his Armada, where he disovered that Nebula, though horribly burned, was yet clinging to a fraction of life. Using the power of the Infinite, Thanos locked Nebula into this state of living death, turning her into a shambling mockery of life. That done, Mephisto appeared before Thanos and petitioned to become Thanos' first true disciple, an offer Thanos initially refused. However, Mephisto cannily suggested that he could teach Thanos to use the gems in ways he had yet to imagine, an offer that piqued the Titan's curiosity. Soon, at Mephisto's suggestion, Thanos used the power of the gems to reach out and touch every mind and soul in creation. With Thanos thus distracted, Mephisto attempted to wrest control of the Gauntlet away from Thanos, but failed. Amused by the Demon's efforts, Thanos agreed to let Mephisto remain as his lackey.

Meanwhile, in Soul-World, Drax and the Silver Surfer soon encountered Pip the Troll and Gamora, who told them of Adam Warlock and his past battles against Thanos. Drax, insane with the desire to break free of Soul-Wold and fight Thanos yet again, became a very real threat, forcing Warlock's involvement. After defeating Drax, Warlock revealed that while Soul-World gave him the peace and serenity he had been denied in life, he realized that ultimately it would offer no sanctuary from the threat of Thanos. Thus, Warlock returned the Surfer and Drax to their bodies, vowing that when they needed him most, he would be by their side. Soon, the Surfer raced towards Earth, hoping to warn its heroes of Thanos' renewed menace. He only got as close as the moon before being attacked by the animated stone husk of Thanos' original body. Using this golem, Thanos probes deeply into the Surfers' mind, looking into his past as Norrin Radd, where he discovers the sad fate of Norrin's father, Jartran, who had committed suicide after he was accused of of idea-theft during the creation of an award-winning recreational device while Norrin was a young man. Norrin's last conversation with his father after the accusation had been harsh and judgemental, and his guilt over his father's subsequent death was so traumatic that he completely supressed the memory of it. Thanos promptly declated the Silver Surfer, a man who had become Galactus' first herald in order to save his world, a fraud and a hypocrite. The Surfer then finally managed to destroy the mocking Golem, and attempted to travel to Earth. However, his struggle had drained him, and he crashed into the Sanctum Sanctorium of Dr. Strange.

As the Surfer warned Dr. Strange of the dire peril they all faced, the souls of Adam Warlock, Pip and Gamora left the peaceful world within the Soul-Gem and promptly inhabited the bodies of three recently-deceased criminals. As Warlock's powers began the process of re-shaping the bodies to better suit their new hosts, Death continued to spurn Thanos' advances, despite his best efforts to impress her. Mephisto went on to suggest that perhaps Death was displeased because of something he had NOT done, and so Thanos moved to fulfil the wishes of his beloved Mistress Death, so he thought, by extinguishing half of all life within the Universe with a snap of his fingers. All over the cosmos, the effect was immediate, as entire populations were halved instantly. Predictably, the Skrulls and the Kree blamed one another and prepared for war, while on Earth, its remaining champions worked as hard as they could to stem the many disasters that resulted from the great dissapearance, as Warlock made astral contact with Doctor Strange and gained his trust. Back on Titan, Eros worked furiously with the help of ISSAC to determine the cause of the vanishings, an occurance which had claimed his father, Mentor. Suspecting Thanos' handiwork, Eros had his suspicions quickly confinred when Thanos summoned him to his floating momument to Death, where he quickly made Eros his prisoner. Meanwhile, in Asgard, Odin summoned a meeting of his peers, the Sky-Fathers that ruled the various Eartly Pantheons, where they decided to fight their enemy as a unified force; Epoch summoned his Champion, Quasar, and together they journeyed to a remote sector of Space to wait; And the Silver Surfer awoke to find the home of Doctor Strange invaded by none other than Doctor Doom, who quickly felled Strange's weakened guest. Using the threat of further violence, Doom commanded Strange to tell him all he knew of the great dissapearance. However, his threats were cut short by the sudden arrival of Warlock, who blasted Doom's robots into scrap, and offered to tell Doom what he wished to know.

As the universe began to rally against him, Thanos continued in his efforts to gain Death's favor, and continued to fail. Enraged by her continued silence, Thanos' anger focused through the Infinity Gems, creating a cosmic shockwave that rippled through the ether in every direction, cushing entire star-systems in its wake and devastating a quarter of the galaxy. At only two-percent of its original strength, the shockwave slammed into Earth, derailing it from its orbit, and creating huge earthquakes and volcanic eruptions worldwide, and cutting Asgard off from Earth's dimension, trapping the assembled Skyfathers amongst the toppled spires of the golden realm. In the wake of this chaos, Warlock, and his allies Doctor Strange, Doom, Pip and the Silver Surfer teleported to the headquarters of the Avengers, where they met with Captain America, Thor, and the She-Hulk. From there, they summoned the most powerful champions that remained to join them in the upcoming struggle against Thanos. With the appropriate strike-force gathered, the Silver Surfer warped out into space to join the waiting Quasar and Epoch. Within an instant of their arrival, a gathering of the most powerful cosmic beings and abstract entities in the entire universe took place, presided over by Eternity and the Living Tribunal, and recorded by Uatu the Watcher. The Living Tribunal, however, decided that Thanos only sought to replace Eternity's place in the cosmic scheme with his own, and would thus not get involved in the conflict. Despite this development, and the dissention of Galactus, the assembled cosmic beings quickly agreed to follow Warlock's lead in the upcoming battle. Soon, Warlock returned to Avengers Mansion, where the assembled heroes also agred to follow Warlock's lead, much to the chagrin of Doctor Doom. Soon, the Watcher appeared near Thanos' floating shrine, and Thanos realized that his appearance hearalded the coming of hostilities, for which he was more than prepared. Thanos asked Mistress Death for her aid in the upcoming struggle, and she turned her back to him. If a fit of anger, Thanos created a consort for himself in the form of a woman he dubbed Terraxia the Terrible, a move he secretly hoped would give Death cause to become jealous. The ploy failed, and Thanos turned his attentions to the coming battle. With his army gathered, Warlock gave the order to attack.

However, Thanos quickly froze the attacking force in Time, and contemplated destroying them. But before he could do so, Mephisto suggested that perhaps Mistress Death's heart could be warmed by the sight of courage, the type of courage shown in battle. Thanos quickly agreed, and cut himself off the powers of the Soul, Mind, Space, Time, and Reality gems, drawing strength only from the gem of Power, a move which would give Earth's heroes a tiny chance of victory. That done, Thanos unfroze his foes, and the battle began, and the Titan was suddenly knocked off his feet by the combined might of the Hulk and Drax. It was all downhill from there, as one by one, Thanos defeated his foes. However, the battle was naught but a distraction, and as the battle drew to a close, with Thanos sure of his victory, Warlock gave the Surfer the signal to make his move: an attempt to snatch the gauntlet from Thanos' hand. However, the Surfer missed his mark, and Warlock was left with no choice but to allow Eternity's cosmic brigade to enter the battle. Sensing their approach, Thanos willed himself back to full-power, and struck back, causing a struggle so powerful that the cosmos was endangered by its scope. However, the cosmic beings soon fell one by one, and in the end Mistress Death herself struck out at Thanos, causing the Tiatn to collapse to his knees as the full force of the assembled cosmic beings was brought to bear against him. However, Thanos gathered himself and imprisoned his attackers, a move which drew Eternity out of hiding. Thanos quickly attacked Eternity, and within moments by our perceptions, the battle had ended. Thanos had triumphed, usurping Eternity's position and ascending as the center of all reality in the process. However, as with every other time Thanos seemingly gained victory, he had also supplied the means of his own undoing.

With Thanos enraptured by his victory, he failed to see the shambling form of Nebula moving beside his unmoving and vulnerable physical body. Before anyone could stop her, Nebula yanked the gauntlet from Thanos' hand and placed it upon her own hand, a move which instantly returned Thanos to his body. Reeling from the rapid change in perceptions, Thanos looked on in horror as Nebula claimed the mantle of supremacy. Seeking revenge, Nebula teleported Thanos and Terraxia into deep-space, where Terraxia would quickly suffocate, andThanos would drift for an eternity. However, Thanos quickly found himself teleported to Earth by Doctor Strange, and was promptly attacked by the Silver Surfer. At Warlock's request, Strange summoned a handful of Earth's champions to seperate the two combatants. That done, Warlock drew up a new plan for dealing with Nebula, and urged Thanos to aid them. Thanos balked at the notion at first, but Warlock quickly revealed that Thanos always lost on the cusp of victory because he believed himself unworthly, the Titan relented. Once more, Earth's defenders attacked, but Nebula quickly ensnared them, and was then confronted by Doctor Strange, the Silver Surfer, and Thanos hiumself. Warlock, also, had come along, but was invisible to Nebula's perceptions due to his unique nature. Thanos debated with Nebula about her suitability to retain the gems, and Nebula quickly decided to undo everything Thanos had accomplished in the past twenty-four hours. A move which returned Nebula to her previous undead state, but a development she quickly corrected. That done, Warlock made his move, drawing himself and the soul of the Silver Surfer back into Soul-World. Before Nebula could grasp what had happened, the cosmic beings attacked en-masse', and with Nebula distracted, Warlock began his work, using the Surfer as his spiritual anchor. As Nebula gained the upper hand, Warlock used his powers to become one with the pocket dimension within the Soul Gem, where he then reached out to the other five Infinity Gems, causing them to temporarily cease working in a harmonious fashion. Assaulted by the gauntlet itself, Nebula cast it aside, and a mad-dash for the fallen totem ensued, with Nebula and Thanos both darting to claim their divinity. However, before anyone else could reach it, a blinding flash of light stopped them all in their tracks, and when their vision cleared it became clear that the the mantle of Supreme now fell upon the shoulders of Adam Warlock. Unwilling to be captured, Thanos then activated a self-destruct device upon his belt, and Thor used his hammer to propel Thanos far into space, where they were subsequently unharmed by the resulting explosion. Warlock was then shocked that his former allies did not fully trust him now that he wore the gauntlet, and sadly teleported them back home, and then summoned Pip and Gamora to his side. They promptly journeyed to a remote planet where Pip and Gamora were shocked to find Thanos living as a simple farmer. Thanos went on to explain that he no longer sought ultimate power, deciding that 3 defeats of such magnitude were more than enough. Warlock wished him well, and went on his way.

Eventually the gems were split among Warlock's chosen guardians, Pip, Gamora, Drax, and Moondragon, in order to protect them from those who craved their might for evil purposes. The guardianship of the Reality Gem fell to Thanos himself, but none knew that he was protecting said gem, save for Adam Warlock. In fact, it would not be revealed until much later that Thanos was the gem's keeper.

Afterwards, Thanos decided that 3 defeats of such magnitude were enough, and seemingly abandoned the Goal of ultimate power. In fact he would appear to work on the sight of right in several subsequent confrontations involving the infinity gems.

The enourmous influx of energy did not go unnoticed by Reed Richards, nor did it fail to rouse the curiosity of Doctor Doom, who quickly deduced the source of the energies and enilisted the Aid of Kang the Conqueror in finding and capturing the source. As the Watch investigated the Magus' rebirth, the heroes of Earth were attacked by malevolent clones of themselves, and eventually they convened in 4 Freedoms Plaza. However, it was a trap, and 4 Freedoms Plaza would loose about 7 stories to a gamma bomb. Confused by the sudden appearance of the Magus and his Thanos double as they attacked and retrieved the possessed Reed Richards and Iron Man, the gathered heroes would mistakenly conclude that Warlock and the Watch were to blame. Thanos and the Watch traveled to the realm of Death and used her infinity well to discern the Magus' origin, and were shocked to find that while he was in possession of the Infinity Gauntlet, Warlock had subconciously expelled all good and evil from his soul to make his descisions as almightly less subject to emotional bias. Thus, the expelled evil nature gave rise to the Magus once more. Unknown to all but the Magus, Galactus along with the Silver Surfer, Nova and Dr Strange were undertaking a mission of their own in order to find and stop the induvidual behind the energy emanations. However, the vessel of Kang and Doom, trailing the ship of Galactus, went unnoticed by the Magus. Meanwhile, the Infinity Watch along with Thanos journeyed to an desolate planetoid where Thanos paused to recalibrate his instruments in order to track down the Magus' location once again.

During this brief sojurn, Thanos would be seemingly spiritually drawn to Death's realm where she offered him her love in return for the death of Adam Warlock, whom she felt indebted to due to the events revolving around the original Infinity Gauntlet affair. Thanos returned to the realm of the living, but decided against killing Warlock due to the fact that he had no hard evidence that his meeting with death had ever occured. Thus, Thanos turned down the possible fufillment of his only desire rather than risk being the butt of a huge cosmic joke. Unfortunately, Thanos was left with little time to ponder this development before all hell broke loose. A strike force of Earth's most powerful defenders was tricked into attacking the Watch, while the remaining heroes on Earth were attacked by an army of dopplegangers. Complicating matters further, the Living Tribunal appeared before the entranced Eternity in order to adjudicate the current status of this reality. Before the struggle between the Infinity Watch and Earth's defenders could escalate to fatal levels, the fight was interrupted by Galactus, who used a mental scan-beam to unify the minds of the assembled heroes in order to gain needed information; a development which caused the Earth heroes to realize that Thanos and the Watch were on their side.

Finding that the Magus was in the middle of replacing the universe with a duplicate of his own design, the need to strike at the Magus became clear. Warlock gathered the infinity gems from the rest of the watch to once again form the Infinity Gauntlet. However, the powerful talisman would not to work, and Thanos deduced that the ruling of the Living Tribunal caused the gems to shut down when unified. Galactus, however, had prepared for such an outcome, and seeking to use Gamora to aid Eternity, transported away in order to meet with the Living Tribunal. The instant Galactus departed, the Magus and his Thanos doppleganger appeared, and kidnapped Warlock, along with the Gauntlet. Determined to thwart the Magus, Thanos found the Ultimate Nullifier in Galactus' ship and goaded Quasar into taking it to use against the Magus. However, Quasar's hesitance led to the Magus' discovering his presence and jamming the nullifier. Before the Magus could kill Quasar, he was attacked by Doom and Kang. Fighting them off temporarily, he sought to directly utilze the power he contained.; the power of Five cosmic cubes. However, when the Magus arrived at the containment unit holding them, he found it shattered, the cubes gone. Shocked, the Magus did not detect the hurtling figure of Doctor Doom, who blasted the Magus senseless. Before Doom could claim the Infinity Guantlet, Eternity awakened and asked that the gems work as one, unaware of Warlock's capture. The Tribunal acquiesed, and the gems were allowed to function in unison, granting the power infinite to the Magus.

His first act as supreme was to turn the ultimate nullifier upon Quasar, and then he set about adapting to Godhood. Detecting the horrid turn of events, Thanos goaded the heroes of Earth into striking, but they found only their own dark doubles waiting for them. Thanos then struck out to stop the Magus on his own, and was confronted by his own doppleganger. The two battled until confronted by the Magus, who invited the survivor ito his chamber at the conclusion of their battle. The Magus then sealed himself inside his chamber. The two Titans attempted to use their combined might to force their way into the Magus' sanctum, but the power of the infinite resisted even their near-limitless cosmic energies. Reasoning the entry would allow only the victor egress into the chamber, Thanos quickly attacked his canny doppleganger and found that his double was even more powerful than he was. Despite that fact, Thanos battled on, and finally delivered the killing blow to his clone, and in doing so gained insight into the Magus' knowledge. Just as the Magus had captured Galactus' brigade and was preparing to murder Warlock, the entrance to his chamber was blasted asunder by Thanos, who informed the Magus that he was missing an important part of the infinite.

The Magus accused Thanos of lying, but the Titan had spoken the truth. The Magus was unable to control reality, as the Reality Gem he possessed was not the genuine article, but rather a clever fake. Enraged, the Magus was distracted long enough for Warlock to free himself, and to grapple with the Magus for control of the incomplete Infinity Gauntlet. As they grappled, reaility shifted too fast for the Magus to percieve, and he was soon confronted by Eternity and Infinity who vanquished the Magus and placed him inside the Soul Gem. Afterwards, the Universe was restored to it former state, and Thanos found himself mulling over the changes wrought within himself, and went home a seemingly wiser being. Still he was somewhat troubled by the events of the Infinity War, and he surmised that soon they would have to deal with Warlock's good side. It was a theorem which would soon be proven accurate.