One took place in a monthly series called Thanos, most recently written by Donny Cates the other in sporadically published graphic novels written by Starlin.

There have been, confusingly enough, two unrelated, ongoing comics storylines involving Thanos.

Indeed, to a layperson, it might be hard to even understand what’s going on. On its surface, the present disagreement may seem like a tempest in a proverbial teapot. “I’m not working for them anymore and this time, I think that it’s for good,” he says. Now, on the eve of Infinity War - what should have been the apotheosis of his time with Marvel - he thinks relations are worse than they’ve ever been. He’s acrimoniously quit working for the publisher no fewer than six times, periodically coming back largely because of his love for creating Thanos stories. Starlin has a relationship with Marvel Comics that stretches out over four and a half decades, and it’s long been a turbulent one. It’s a situation that’s awkward but far from unprecedented. In December, he announced on Facebook that a recent editorial dispute has led him to decide he’s “moving on” from the publisher. He reached a financial détente with them, but his feud with the comics folks has only grown. But even that is a recent development - just a few years ago, he threw shade at Marvel Studios for paying him an unsatisfying amount after using his characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. To be clear, his main grudge is with Marvel Comics, Marvel’s publishing arm, not the filmmakers at Marvel Studios.

Related StoriesĪvengers: Infinity War Will Dazzle, Stagger, and Rile You Up Most important, he’s the guy without whom this month’s Marvel mega-blockbuster movie Avengers: Infinity War couldn’t have happened - in the pages of his comics, he created its supervillain, the intergalactic killer Thanos, as well as its magical MacGuffin, the Infinity Gauntlet.Īnd he swears he’ll never make another comic for Marvel again. He’s primarily known as the leading light of so-called “Marvel Cosmic,” the general term applied to the company’s printed tales of trippy adventuring through the far reaches of time and space. The 70-year-old writer-artist is a giant in the comic-book industry, with hundreds upon hundreds of credits to his name. That’s a bitterly ironic statement, given what the multi-billion-dollar Marvel brand owes to Starlin. “But Marvel tends to bring out the worst in me, at times.” “I’m not an angry person, which you can probably hear from just me talking to you,” Jim Starlin tells me over the phone. This article was originally published in April 2018 and we are republishing it as part of our coverage of Avengers: Endgame, which prominently features Thanos. Photo: Jim Starlin / Marvel Entertainment.

Warlock by Jim Starlin by Jim Starlin