Thanos' Love, Death, Was Originally Going to be a Skrull

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, find out whether Jim Starlin originally intended for Thanos' love, Death, to be a Skrull!

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and seventy-ninth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.

COMIC LEGEND:

When Death was introduced in Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel, she was going to be a Skrull

STATUS:

Basically True

Many moons ago, I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed about the introduction of Onslaught. If you recall, after the Age of Apocalypse, all the X-titles took a time leap forward, and they all introduced new storylines, with the post-Age of Apocalypse/post X-Men Prime (X-Men Prime was a one-shot that followed the end of the Age of Apocalypse) stories all meant to be good "jumping on points" (while also being breathers for a number of the artists who helped make Age of Apocalypse such a big deal, so Paul Smith filled in for Andy Kubert on X-Men, Duncan Rouleau filled in for Adam Kubert on Wolverine and Tom Grummett filled in for Joe Madureira on Uncanny X-Men).

In Uncanny X-Men #322, Juggernaut was thrown the sky and landed in front of the X-Men, uttering only a single word "Onslaught."

The other X-writers were intrigued, and wanted to know who Onslaught was, and Lobdell explained:

I told them that I had no idea, but I just thought it was a cool way to open a story. Imagine someone so strong that they could hurl Juggernaut across the sky! I ended up doing that opening sequence, but I still didn't know who Onslaught was.

While a cool story, it's actually not all that uncommon in the world of comics, where you begin a plot without necessarily having the direction of said plot in mind all the way through. This, of course, brings us to Jim Starlin and the introduction of Thanos' love, Death!

HOW DID DEATH FIRST APPEAR IN JIM STARLIN'S MARVEL COSMIC COMICS?

Jim Starlin took over writing Captain Marvel in 1972's Captain Marvel #25. In the issue, Captain Marvel finds himself facing off against the Hulk in a plot involving the Super-Skrull. We learn that the Super-Skrull is working with SOME mysterious bad guy that we can't see, and in the next issue, we see a Skrull operative talking to two mysterious shadowed figures, one wearing a robe of some sorts. Finally, after the Skrull is turned to stone as part of his punishment for failing to defeat Captain Marvel, we meet the shadowed figures, it's Thanos and....some robed being!

The robed being is then a constant presence in scenes with Thanos over the next few issues. However, they don't say anything, and we don't see anything about them. They're just constantly there whenever we check back in with Thanos. This goes on for a few more issues until finally, in Captain Marvel #28 (an important issue in the direction of the series, as I pointed out in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, as Starlin was allowed to script a chapter of the issue himself, to see if he was good enough to drop Mike Friedrich, who had been scripting the book over Starlin's plots), Thanos finally refers to the robed figure as Death...

The fascinating aspect of this, though, was that there was no indication that Death was being presented as a female figure in these issues. It was just "Death," and in fact, in the following issue, Death is specifically refereed to as a HE...

It is not until Captain Marvel #31 that Death is finally unmasked, and Death is shown to be an attractive woman...

Obviously, the implication is clear that this is merely a personification of the concept of Death, and thus, we're not meant to think that Death is inherently a woman, or that Death even naturally walks around chilling with people like this, but rather that Thanos' crazed plot is just significant enough that Death is willing to hover around the situation, similar to the way that the Watcher shows up whenever a big event happens in the Marvel Universe.

In any event, Thanos' plan falls apart in Captain Marvel #33 (interestingly, Jim Starlin had gone back to having other writers script his stories by this point in the run, with Friedrirch even returning for #32, and Steve Englehart scripting #33) and we learn that Death is quite a fickle mistress, as she (it?) totally gets a kick out of Thanos' defeat, laughing along the way as Death transforms into the more typical skeletal figure that we associate with Death...

Since then, Thanos and Death have been fairly inseparable in terms of storylines involving the pair. However, that was not Starlin's original plan for that robed figure.

WHAT WAS JIM STARLIN'S ORIGINAL PLAN FOR THE CHARACTER WHO BECAME DEATH?

As it turns out, Starlin's original plan for the robed figure was, in general, "Let me figure it out when I come to it," much like Lobdell with Onslaught. However, he at least had a GENERAL idea of whom the figure was, and as he explained at a comic book convention a couple of years back, his original plan was for the robed figure to be another Skrull, as well. Interestingly, Starlin recalls coming up with the idea of making the robed figure a female personification fo Death after he inadvertently drew the figure with breasts, but I think he's misremembering, as the robed figure didn't have a female figure UNTIL Starlin revealed that it was a female personification of Death.

Still, it's amazing that such a major part of the character of Thanos in the comics (although not so in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, interestingly enough) was down to essentially, as Starlin notes, "just an accident."

Thanks to Jim Starlin for the infomation!