A supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer-artist Jim Starlin, the character first appeared in The Invincible Iron Man #55 (cover date February 1973).
An Eternal–Deviant warlord from the moon Titan, Thanos is regarded as one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel Universe. He has clashed with many heroes including the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men.
Traditionally depicted as a power-hungry tyrant who wields the Infinity Gauntlet as his signature weapon. He was recharacterized in his Marvel Cinematic Universe incarnation as a tragic villain who wanted to erase half of the universe's population in order to "save" it from its eventual destruction from resource shortage.
In the MCU, the character was first played by Damion Poitier in the film The Avengers (2012) and then by Josh Brolin in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), and the first season of the animated series What If...? (2021).