Thanos. Even your grandmother knows who he is now. The Mad Titan rocketed out of solid B-list territory in the Marvel Comics to a class all his own in the recently completed Infinity Saga of the MCU. What a lot of people may not know about the purple guy with a thing for gloves is there are a few versions of him.

RELATED: Marvel: 5 Reasons Scarlet Witch Would Beat Thanos (& 5 Reasons Thanos Would Win)

Any comic book character with as much history as Thanos will have numerous iterations across different media. Some are more interesting than others. Let's take a look at the best and worst versions of Thanos.

10 Best: Thanos Wins

Thanos is sort of famous for winning. It was a long road to get there. He may have even taken a helicopter (we'll come back to that). One version of Thanos where there was absolutely no doubt of his power as a villain was the aptly titled Thanos Wins. In this mini-series, Thanos well, he wins.

Notable for also introducing the Cosmic Ghost Rider, this series has Thanos destroys the Avengers, Celestials and pretty much every living thing in the universe.

9 Worst: What If? Thanos

Captain America Thanos

The What If? series provided a couple of different takes on Thanos. This was probably the worst. In the What If? Infinity Thanos story, Thanos teams up with the Avengers to stop a powerful ancient alien race called The Builders.

Really, Thanos just wants to free his son from these guys, and when Captain America finds out, Thanos kills him and then makes like it was an accident. He takes over Cap's spot on the team and really, it just leaves a bitter, ugly taste in your mouth.

8 Best: Silver Surfer Animated Series

Unlike Avengers: Infinity War, this story ended with no hope of defeating Thanos. In the 90s Silver Surfer animated series, Thanos isn't searching for the Infinity Stones but a cosmic being called Lady Chaos. In the comics, he was obsessed with Death, but here its Chaos, trapped in a statue.

Thanos wants to release her and he does. Roll credits. Forever. The series was canceled after the episode and viewers never got to see if the Silver Surfer was able to stop Thanos.

7 Worst: Thanoseid

 

A 90s version of the character that was less successful, probably because it was a little too on the nose, was Thanoseid. A product of the Marvel/DC Amalgam crossover that fused popular characters from both companies into one, Thanos merges with the lord of Apokolips to become the Big Bad of the event.

RELATED: The 5 Best & 5 Worst Amalgam Comics Character Designs

Jim Starlin openly admits Thanos drew inspiration from Darkseid, and more specifically, Metron, after the introduction of Jack Kirby's Fourth World series at DC in the 70s. Debating which one is stronger is kind of hard though when they're the same guy.

6 Best: Ultimate Thanos

Thanos Ultimate Marvel

The Ultimate line of Marvel Comics was a great experiment in reimagining and reinterpreting major figures from main Marvel continuity. Thanos was no exception.

The Ultimate Thanos is the ruler of Acheron and his son is Ronan The Accuser (which might have been an interesting wrinkle in the films). He was also much more powerful; he could essentially prevent himself from dying, while at the same time killing his enemies by taking control of their minds.

5 Worst: Thanos Clone

thanos-shows-his-thanosi-clones

Clones are an iffy proposition in general in comics (Ben Reily, Madeline Pryor, etc.) and this particular Thanos clone is no exception. While a duplicate of someone as powerful as Thanos should be of real concern, this clone doesn't amount to much at all.

She-Hulk dispatches him fairly easily in his only appearance in She-Hulk #13. Kind of makes you wonder why they bothered. Still, that's not all she wrote on the subject of Thanos and clones.

4 Best: Galactus Thanos

But wait! Not all clones should be tarred with the same brush. This one is pretty cool. Bored and tired of losing, Thanos creates a clone of himself by combining his DNA with that of some of his most potent enemies.

The results are mixed, fair to say, but one trial run produced Omega. Omega wins any Cool Clone contest by virtue of the fact that he's an amalgamation of Thanos and Galactus. The only thing worse than Thanos snapping half the people is showing up to eat all of them.

3 Worst: Earth X Thanos

 

In the dark and disturbing alternate Earth X reality, Thanos has a pretty good set-up. He's died and rules over the Realm of the Dead alongside his great love, Death. Except he finds out his mom was actually a Skrull and Death kind of rubs his nose in it, so he kills her. Oops.

RELATED: Earth X: 10 Things To Know About Marvel’s Bleakest Timeline

With Death, well, dead, there is no way for those alive to pass on. Rather than correct this with some galactic crusade you might expect, he instead takes the guise of a protester, with a sign, and pickets New York City in the past in the hopes of convincing Captain America to change history. Sigh.

2 Best: MCU

Thanos in Avengers: Endgame

Hands down. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200 (more like two billion). The big-screen Thanos introduced in 2012's Avengers and who snapped the world to attention in Infinity War is the most successful version of the character.

It's hard to see how they could outdo a character who Earth's mightiest had to kill twice. With a fantastic performance from Josh Brolin and state of the art effects, Thanos became so real that he had some fans debating whether or not he was right.

1 Worst: Spidey Super Stories #39

Thanos flying the Thanoscopter

Not all versions of Thanos are created equal (or even on a continuum, especially within Marvel continuity) let's take a look at what is probably the absolute worst one. Thanos ramped up to his superpowerful halfsies point of view, but early on, it wasn't so great.

Case in point: Spidey Super Stories #39 in which Thanos rides around in the now infamous Thanos-Copter. He gets his butt handed to him by Spider-Man and Hellcat, gets taken away by the police and nearly draws a curtain on his bad guy career. Lucky for comic readers and moviegoers, things got better.

NEXT: Thanos: 8 Alternate Versions More Powerful Than The Original (And 7 That Are Weaker)