WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Cosmic Ghost Rider #3, by Donny Cates, Dylan Burnett and Antonio Fabela, on sale now!
For those of you who are not currently reading Cosmic Ghost Rider by writer Donny Cates and artist Dylan Burnett, well, why not? It's an absolute blast! The series tells the story of The Punisher, who is imbued with The Spirit of Vengeance, trying to rehabilitate Thanos' planet-murdering ways. So how does Frank decide to go about doing this? By kidnapping the Mad Titan as an infant and becoming his surrogate father figure, of course. (Look, if that doesn't sell you on this book, then there might be a rift betwixt us which ne'er shall be bridged.)
Now, three issues into this miniseries, and we're realizing The Rider didn't think this whole thing through. We can certainly appreciate hopeful ignorance in a hero's crusade, but Frank's idea was borderline ridiculous from the start. The Punisher is the human representation of iron will and self-justified murderous impulses, and, well, Thanos is the Titan representation of the exact same thing. Just because their respective madnesses are filtered through different prisms doesn't mean their end results are not one and the same. That result, of course, is death. Lots and lots of death.
RELATED: Cosmic Ghost Rider’s ‘F– The Rules’ Story is Exactly What Marvel Needs
In all fairness, the alternate timeline from which Cosmic Ghost Rider hails doesn't offer him many options. After all, in this timeline Thanos has pretty much killed... well, everyone (and no, that's not an exaggeration). Slim pickings in the appropriate role model department aside, Frank Castle must have known that taking on the parenting role of Thanos would have some sort repercussions. Even if Thanos was raised under strict guidelines to only kill those who harm the innocent, it doesn't guarantee how his moral compass will ultimately calibrate. Notions of good and evil, innocent and guilty are all principals people shuffle into columns based on their relative perspectives on the world.
Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Cosmic%20Ghost%20Rider%20Should%20Have%20Known%3A%20Thanos%20Is%20Gonna%20Thanos']
Thanos is a character whose entire reasoning in almost everything he does is predicated on an obsession with death. And while this might be justified in that big purple noggin' of his, it's translated as a mission of absolute terror for those around him -- i.e. pretty much every living thing. Frank Castle, on the other hand, is a character who is driven by death, but not in the same way as Thanos. He is driven by the deaths of others and a twisted sense of justice.
Of course, we would be remiss if we didn't point out that there was a time when Frank Castle actually pledged himself to the literal embodiment of Death. In the limited series Born, by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, Castle made a deal with Grim Reaper, a deal that cost him the lives of immediate family members.
RELATED: Thanos Suits Up as The Punisher on Cosmic Ghost Rider Cover
If that continuity holds up, even a little bit, then it would mean these two characters are indebted to the same entity... or at least similar entities. The connective tissue between the Punisher and Thanos is surprisingly thick, considering their stations in the Marvel Universe prior to Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw getting their mitts on them during their run on Thanos. The proverbial final nail in the coffin, however, comes in the form of the closing splash page of Cosmic Ghost Rider #3, which is an image that proved the upcoming cover to issue #5 is more than a fun little nod to Frank raising Thanos.
Despite receiving constant warnings that the version of Thanos Frank raises will somehow become worse than the one we're all familiar with, The Rider cuts down wave after wave of different Guardians of the Galaxy teams led by an increasingly older Cable. When the dust settles, only a disarmed and wounded Cable is left... but not for long. As Cable tries to warm Frank one last time, an older version of Thanos blows the time-traveling mutant away. But what makes a moment like this stand out in an already insane comic book is the fact Thanos is dressed like the Punisher, white gloves and all.
This posits the idea that maybe Frank was able to rehabilitate Thanos in as much as to make him less of a mass-murdering monster and more of a hyper-vigilante tyrant. If Thanos' desire to rule and ruin worlds is still buried deep in his heart, then the tutelage of Frank Castle would only sharpen it to have more of a purpose. If this is the case, it would be one of the most gonzo commentaries on the nature versus nurture debate ever seen in comics. Maybe Thanos isn't intrinsically evil after all... Nah, he probably is, but hey, you never know.