30 days of comics I love #16: One cannot fall from so lofty a height without breaking.

Thanos Annual #1

by Jim Starlin and Ron Lim

With such an overwhelming personality and ethos, less really is more when it comes to Thanos. He was never more of an imposing presence than when he was taken off the table for more than a decade in the 1980s, and frequent attempts to do more with the character in the past few years have only diluted his appeal.

Even creator Jim Starlin can take it too far, with a number of graphic novels in the past decade that were painfully inessential, and all I've ever needed in 21st century Thanos is in the one-shot annual from 2014.

With typically slick art from Ron Lim and Andy Smith, this Thanos comic is set in the mad Titan's past, with one aspect of Thanos coming from the split second where he is about to pound on Captain America in the Infinity Gauntlet series from more than 20 years earlier, and clashing with an even earlier version who is still suffering a cosmic cube hangover.

Thanos likes the sound of his own voice as much as he literally loves Death, and this comic ensures that everybody is clear that Thanos' only great foe is himself, and that he has let omnipotence slip through his big chunky fingers time and time again, because deep down he believes he isn't worthy of it, and whether he is fighting Mephisto or the Silver Surfer or everybody in between, he's really only battling himself.

Everybody and their grandma knows who Thanos is these day, he was the ultimate villain of the Marvel movies, and had to be slain twice before it would take and the universe could be saved. And while Josh Brolin's performance found some surprising depths beneath that grey skin, it's Jim Starlin's version who is the one, true Thanos, defeating himself over and over again, because nobody else is worthy.