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Jim Starlin Clarifies Why Infinity Siblings Will Be His Final Thanos Story

Published Tue, 19 Dec 2017 14:00:36 -0600

Jim Starlin told CBR why the upcoming Infinity Siblings graphic novel (previews in this article) with Alan Davis would be part of his final Thanos story.

"For quite some time, I have had the privilege of pretty much solely determining where our Mad Titan would go in his fictional life. Thanos is the property of Marvel Entertainment, and with the movies on the horizon, Big Purple is about to enter the rarified classification of being a cultural icon, a character bigger than the comic books, writers and artists that birthed him. Marvel Editorial has made it clear they want fresh takes on the Titan, so who am I to argue with them?" Starlin added, recognizing that the character he created is bigger than himself. But before all is said and done, the writer still has a final, epic story left to tell."

But after this was reported as Marvel taking him off Thanos, he clarified it further on Facebook, saying:

Just to set the record straight, Marvel Comics didn't pull me off any books, they just made it clear they weren't interested in using me on any of the tie-in series to the movies or regular series. Even though I lobbied heavily to write the Thanos on-going that task was twice given to other writers, which is Marvel Editorial's right to do.

What I objected to and what will be keep me from doing any further work for Marvel Editorial was Tom Brevoort approving a plot for the current on-going series, which was pretty much the same as the Thanos story arc in the graphic novel trilogy Alan Davis and I have been working on for Tom for close to the past year. He had 200 pages of script and 100 pages of pencils on this project when he gave the green light to a strikingly similar plot. The on-going will be in print before the graphic novel trilogy. To avoid spoiling anyone's enjoyment of these two stories I will not be summarizing the striking similarities.

At first Tom denied giving his approval to the plot. When that turned out to be false, he switched to claiming there was nothing similar about the two plots. When that didn't fly he changed his story to it was all an accident. These changes of excuse and other bits of procrastination ate up a month, by which time the current Thanos on-going art team was too far along for anything to be done about the situation. Too bad for me. So I am moving on.

And, yes, Marvel Entertainment has treated me very well and generously. Them I like.

As he earlier wrote about visiting the set for Avengers: Infinity War, being careful not to broach any NDAs.

What I can say is that absolutely everyone in the cast and crew went out of their way to make Sonny and I feel welcome. The biggest surprise was how open everyone was with us about what they were doing. I learned far more about the two movies than I was expecting.

So because of that I want to tell all you Thanos fans out there, without giving anything away, you're not going to be disappointed, far from it. I truly believe folks will be pleasantly shocked by how delightfully different these two movies will be from previous Marvel films. Joe, Anthony, Chris, Stephen and the rest of the gang have my complete confidence in their ushering of our favorite Mad Titan out from the world of comics and into the Marvel cinematic universe. My first born leaves the nest to wreck havoc on the heavens. What more could a proud father hope for?

Thanos: Infinity Siblings will be published in February.

Jim Starlin and Alan Davis return in the first volume of a new trilogy! The Mad Titan has everything he ever wanted — but satisfaction is not in Thanos' vocabulary. When a temporal distortion on Titan draws his attention, he finds the purpose he's been searching for: saving himself! An old enemy lurks in the far future, and it will take the combined wits of Thanos, his brother Eros and time-travel master Kang the Conqueror to stop it — and save the Multiverse. But there are other players in this cosmic chess game — and Thanos may find himself outmatched! What lies ahead for the so-called Avatar of Death?

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