Synopsis / Summary / Plot
This issue continues directly from the end of the previous 1 where Thanos prepared to dissect his mother Sui-San (alive) trying to discover what made him different from the other Titanians. Now he's finished and he's no wiser. He says he thinks he can remember the day he was born when she tried to kill him, and claims to be sorry she didn't succeed.
A long time later young adult Thanos is lying in bed beside an alien woman. He gets up and packs his bags, leaving her with a young baby who supposedly looks like the mother but to me takes after him. Captions say he left Titan the day his mother died and headed for the lawless outer rim of the galaxy. In the Crab Nebula he married and sired the child. But now he's walking away ...
... and joins a pirate ship called the Horkos. The Captain wants to attack a Shi'Ar supply ship but his crew fear retaliation because they know they can't jam Shi'Ar comms. But Thanos *does* jam them and the raid succeeds. The pirates murder all the Shi'Ar but Thanos refuses to join in that. However they obviously let him stay on for his tech skills.
Later he grew tired of pirating and left to mate with another alien and beget a son, wondering if he too would grow up a monster. Then he returned to the Horkos. The captions say he does this many times but none of the children look like him. Supposedly Thanos is looking for love to replace the mystery girl who rejected him on Titan (last issue). But he never finds it. And he continues to refuse to kill.
1 day Thanos is warned that next time he returns the Captain will kill him. But after his usual alien dalliance he *does* come back to the ship. And as foretold the Captain challenges him to a duel or die. The Titanian taunts his boss into stabbing him and intending to cut his head off. Thanos closes his eyes and prepares to die. But when he opens them again he has killed his foe and is hailed as the new Captain of the Horkos.
Next he returns to Titan and his mother's grave. The mystery girl (now also grown up) joins him there and tells him that all Titanians believe he killed Sui-San except his father Mentor who refuses to accept it. She (who Thanos fans will know is Death) upbraids him for his alien harlots and their bastards. He swears his undying love for her and she asks him to prove it by killing all the women and children. We then skip to when he's killed the last of them, but the mystery woman tells him there are still many more people to kill.