Marvel was expanding rapidly in the early 1970s and brought in a bunch of young talent. Jim Starlin was one of these. He joined Marvel in 1972. One of his first assignments was three issues of Iron Man. He already had a stable of characters created along with a plot arc. He used his time on Iron Man to introduce them.
The issue began with a call for help from Drax, the Destroyer. At the time he was normal size and intelligence. He had been captured after a battle with Thanos and needed Iron Man. Iron Man assumed that he needed to use his repulsor rays on Drax's restraints. That failed and the backlash knocked him off his feet. Our first glimpse of Thanos was his foot stomping Iron Man's hand with pieces flying off. Obviously he was a force to be reckoned with. While there were lots of similarities to Kirby's Fourth World, Starlin did quite a bit of world-building on his own. He already had a whole back-story for the characters. Thanos was son to Mentor, the leader of the Titans. Thanos had a brother, Eros. All of these are Greek concepts - mind, love, and death. Thanos had become enamored with Death years (possibly decades, the continuity was spotty) before. He had attracted an army of followers.
On one scouting run his spaceship was seen by a family returning from an Elvis concert. Thanos ordered the family killed. Their daughter survived and was raised in martial arts and telepathy, later becoming known as Moondragon. The father's soul was intercepted and given a powerful new body, becoming Drax.
On one scouting run his spaceship was seen by a family returning from an Elvis concert. Thanos ordered the family killed. Their daughter survived and was raised in martial arts and telepathy, later becoming known as Moondragon. The father's soul was intercepted and given a powerful new body, becoming Drax.
Starlin managed to work both Rick Jones and Mar-Vell into the story arc. Thanos needed Rick Jones and Mar-Vell had been selected for enlightenment by a cosmic entity. As a lead-in to this, Mar-Vell was characterized as stubborn and too quick to react. This got him through some fights but after the Controller dropped a house on him, he was spirited away and given Cosmic Awareness.
Even this wasn't enough to stop Thanos. Years earlier, Rick Jones had been stimulated by the Kree Supreme Intelligence to stop a war with the alien Skrulls. As a backup measure, the Supreme Intelligence had placed the location of the Cosmic Cube in Rick's brain. Thanos's grand plan began with recovering the Cube since it had nearly unlimited power. Thanos managed to find the cube and transferred all of its power to himself making him a god.
Thanos seemed unbeatable but Mar-Vell's Cosmic Awareness let him realize that Thanos was still drawing power from the Cube. Mar-Vell managed to destroy it (or at least cut Thanos off from it), defeating the mad god.
Starlin did a couple of more issues of Captain Marvel before moving over to a different comic, Warlock. And that's a good time to end this entry.
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