Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“Thanos Rising” by Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi starts off from the very origin of the Mad-Titan – his birth. We meet Thanos as a newborn, whose mother violently rejects the purple colored baby born from her womb. However, Thanos’ father A’lars is more welcoming, and thus Thanos lives an almost regular life on the Utopian Titan until his thirst for knowledge drives him quite mad… Thus begins Thanos’ lifelong affair with death, destruction and mass murder.
The artwork in ‘Thanos Rising’ is fantastic, with bright neon colors dominating panels, Thanos is drawn like a deviant god. In the second half of the series, when Thanos is a full-grown man with a ravenous bloodlust for death, his illustrations dominate the pages, portraying him as an imposing, immortal Titan that cannot be vanquished. However, I wasn’t fond of the character illustrations of teenage Thanos; he resembled a young Nightcrawler from X-Men rather than having his own distinctive personality. Since this is a retelling, the creators should have strived to make him look more unique
As far as the story is concerned, it was far too rushed and uninteresting. The incident that (sort of) triggers the change in Thanos’ pacifist self didn’t seem significant at all. Owing to that, the rest of Thanos’ actions didn’t seem diabolical. Even though they are. Although it’s understandable that Thanos is evil for evil’s sake. He has a pretty regular life – is brilliant at school, has the highest grades, isn’t even bullied or mocked by his peers, yet, he is consumed a desire to know what makes him different. But this madness isn’t executed in an engaging manner in this five-part comic book series.
The summary of all five book is essentially this – Thanos brilliant, Thanos crazy, Thanos kills. So, yeah, plot-wise, this was very bland. The artwork redeems it.
Rating: 3 on 5 (extra star only for the art).
The collected edition of “Thanos Rising” is available on Kindle Unlimited.
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