How Strong Is Thanos In The MCU Vs The Comics?

Marvel started making big mistakes after “Avengers: Endgame,” but for its first three phases, it was a consistent blockbuster machine that steadily built toward a final confrontation with the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s then-ultimate big bad: Thanos (Josh Brolin). The Mad Titan turned out to be a true threat to the entire cosmos, thanks to his relentless quest to solve overpopulation with the novel tactic of using the Infinity Stones to wipe half the universe’s population from existence — a goal that he temporarily achieved at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War.”

Thanos, of course, was not an original creation for the movies. In the comics, this incredibly powerful, mutated Eternal has been a terrible threat to the fabric of creation for decades, and whenever his name is mentioned, Marvel characters tend to be in trouble.

There are certain things that the MCU Thanos and the Marvel Comics version have in common, while there are others that make them incredibly different and thus difficult to juxtapose. However, they both have shared baseline abilities and feats that make specific aspects reasonably easy to equate, such as their strength. But just how strong is Thanos in the MCU, and can he hold a torch to his counterpart in the comics? Let’s find out.

On paper, both versions of Thanos are powerhouses

The MCU Thanos is a warlord, a fighter, a cunning strategist, and a charismatic leader who can command and inspire a galaxy-threatening army of powerful minions. He devotes untold years to his quest to collect the Infinity Stones and fulfill his vision of halving the population. This makes him somewhat off-kilter, but not quite on par with his comic book counterpart. The print Thanos, after all, is known as the Mad Titan and falls in love with Death herself. What’s more, he’s an universal anomaly who exists slightly to the left of reality, thanks to his assorted brushes with great power.

When it comes to pure strength, the comic book Thanos can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Thor, Silver Surfer, and the Hulk. Even so, the MCU Thanos makes a grander entry in “Avengers: Infinity War” by brawling with the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), defeating him so soundly that the green giant subsequently refuses to show his face as long as Thanos is around. Since the Hulk is the yardstick of strength in just about any universe that features a version of him, that’s an automatic gold medal.

It remains to be seen whether the impending arrival of Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom in “Avengers: Doomsday” will level the playing field in any way. In the comics, an empowered Doom defeats Thanos quite definitively in the 2015 “Secret Wars” comic book event, simply by reaching into the villain’s body and pulling out his spine and skull. It’ll be interesting to see whether “Doomsday” or “Avengers: Secret Wars” references or even outdoes this event, thus potentially providing further insight into the power levels of the MCU and the comics version of Thanos.

The Infinity Gauntlet will give the edge to the comics Thanos

Thanos’ Infinity Gauntlet is his signature weapon: a specially-constructed glove that houses the Infinity Stones and grants him vast powers. But just how vast?

The MCU Infinity Gauntlet, honestly, isn’t a whole lot. Sure, it grants Thanos the aforementioned ability to just snap his fingers and reduce the universe’s population by half. Apart from this, things get a little murky, because the MCU Thanos doesn’t actually do much while fully empowered. He can rain doom on just about anyone with an imperfect set of Infinity Stones, but the Snap is one of the two things he really does with the full set; In “Avengers: Endgame,” he also uses the stones to destroy themselves, and the toll of the action is nearly fatal to him.

What’s more, Thanos actually seems to be reasonably defeatable while wielding the Infinity Gauntlet. In “Infinity War,” Thor (Chris Hemsworth) manages to grieviously wound him with the Stormbreaker ax, while taking a full blast from the Gauntlet with relatively little discomfort.

This would not have flown at all with the comic book version of an Infinity Gauntlet-wielding Thanos. During the Infinity Gauntlet saga of 1991, this version of Thanos takes on and easily defeats just about every major superhero and some of the villains, using cruel reality-bending tricks and outright sadistic body modifications. Yes, he’s a comic book villain, so of course he’s eventually defeated. But for most of this arc, Thanos is effectively invincible. As such, if both versions of Thanos get their versions of the Infinity Gauntlet, the MCU Thanos doesn’t really have a snowball’s chance in hell.