There is a certain category of creatures out there in the universe that represent the malice e of all creation. These creatures have no specific purpose other than war, death, and destruction. That is what they feed on, that is they thrive on, and that is their only means of survival. We often witness such characters go up against each other in the Marvel Comic Verse and it just goes to show how experimental the writers are feeling and how much liberty they want to take with the source material. Let’s talk about a possible matchup that is sure to titillate your inner writer, Galactus vs Thanos. The destructor of the universe goes up against the mad Titan. I wonder who comes out of this triumphant.
Galactus
The current version of the Marvel universe (referring to the one where apes evolved into Terrans and Terrans developed superpowers giving birth to the current Marvel Canon) was a creation of the Eternals. Eternals were beings of ancient ultra-powerful civilizations that had control over reality itself. Think of it as a developer writing a new game. The Eternals created the current universe and populated it with life; they let Terrans evolve and allowed them to gain sentience.
But during their creation and observation, the Eternals realised that by creating a life they had hampered the balance of life and death. You see, as the lore goes, there can’t be too many souls on one side of the spectrum, meaning that if death or life, a worker simply overrated the other then it would break the cycle and hence seater the creation with it.
So the Eternals created what they called ‘barriers to life’. The objective was to ensure that there is some sort of mechanism by which the universe constantly corrects it’s own population, making sure that the scales of life and death stay in balance. For this purpose, a creature simply known as Galactus was created. Galactus is the Marvel equivalent of the apocalypse. His job, as the Eternals dictated, was to eradicate excess life when and if he sees fit. The entire idea being that Galactus can’t stop even if he wants to. The creature thrives on energy consumed from other life forms. His entire character arc reflects this as the entity known as Galactus consumes one planet after another to perpetuate his existence throughout the universe.
Galactus is locked in a never-ending power struggle, a power struggle for his own life, he must consume to survive and he must continuously do it or he will starve. He is death incarnate for his food. We are his food.
Thanos
The tyrant of the dark quadrant and the creature wildly renowned throughout the universe as the Mad Titan is, in fact, a hybrid born of the Eternals. The Eternals were a race created by the primary creatures of the Marvel Comic Verse known only as the celestials. These celestials include beings we are already familiar with including the grandmaster and the collector. You see, the Celestials were the creators of all life in the Marvel comic-verse, or so the writers have led us to believe. Although these beings of supreme power populated the universe with complex life, along the way they also realised that they had somewhat disturbed the balance of the universe in doing so. Hence, to correct their mistakes the celestials took to experimentation on the life they had so created, to judge it worthy enough to let it perpetuate itself or not, hence, the segregation of the humans into three categories by the celestials.
The first were the beings who were a distorted image of the human life, a subterranean species that would become the source of rumours of trolls and monsters in the modern era. The second was the normal humans themselves that populated the planet earth. And lastly, the second variation of the human species was near perfect genetic beings known only as the Eternals. The Eternals were blessed with perfect genetic structure giving them perfect physical and mental attributes and longevity.
These Eternals did not wish to occupy the same planet as with this of their primitive “ancestors” so they decided to leave the planet earth and occupied a moon of Saturn now named Titan. It was here that a child was born to the Eternals, a child with purple skin who would take up the name of the Greek God of death Thanatos. This child grew up to be Thanos. His strength unrivalled and his intellect to match even the greatest of tacticians Thanos assumed command of not only Titan but the entirely of the dark quadrant, ruling with an iron fist. This Titan was not all brawn, he had love in him too. But this is Thanos we are talking about, so the object of his love can’t be as simple as a female.
No sir, the entity Thanos fell in love with was Lady Death herself, or rather the personification of death. Lady Death convinced her estranged and powerful lover that the universe was out of balance and the balance of life needed to be restored to the universe, the only way to do so was by wiping out half the life in all of existence and only this act would win Thanos Death’s favour.
This is what instigated the Mad Titan’s hunt for the infinity stones and his pursuit of absolute strength and tyranny.
So what happens when the two greatest antagonists of the Marvel universe come face to face? What happens when the creature that razes planets for fun comes up against an indomitable beast like Galactus? What happens? This is exactly the question we will attempt to answer this very question today in this post but first, we must establish the true premise of battle and the respective mentalities of the combatants. Let’s start, shall we?
First and foremost the sheer scale of the battle and the characters involved dictate that this be a death match. We have, at numerous times, witnessed just how cruel both Galactus and Thanos can be. Galactus is a beast who operates on a completely different level than us plebeian human beings and Thanos is a Titan with a severe superiority complex, the creature has defeated eternity with his shrewd thinking and strategizing that he’s so proficient at. Death is not a consideration for these beings for they have shown the art of coming back from the cusp of the abyss more than once.
Let’s start the battle, shall we? Galactus and Thanos meet in outer space facing off for a planet. Thanos wants to conquer it for the military advantage and for its abundant resources while Galactus just wants to eat. The beasts leap into battle. A turmoil that is sure to lead to complete chaos. Thanos has the black order at his disposal and Galactus controls his heralds as his foot soldiers and as his last line of defence (not that he needs one). The world eaters collide in a mist of blackness as the black order is wiped out by silver surfer, who eyes Thanos and plans to punish the Titan for his transgressions against the master of the surfer. The Herald takes on the Titan and falls like dominoes to the might of the Mad Titan.
With a glint of madness and anger, Thanos leaps for Galactus, making his way up the universe Ender’s machinery. It is only when he reaches the top and comes face to face with Galactus does he realise what he has been doing. Thanos has been running towards his death. The Mad Titan still does not fault and assemble all of his might to battle the tyrant. He loses. Very fast, very decisively, after all the Mad Titan is no match for the remnant of the last universe and the member of the living council. Galactus wins.
