Comic Review: The Silver Surfer – Rebirth of Thanos

With the Guardians of The Galaxy movie coming out later this year, I figure I’d take another look at a Cosmic Marvel comic book, and one based around one of the villains who will probably be featured in The Avengers, and another character who unfortunately won’t be appearing – Thanos and the Silver Surfer, respectively.

Title: The Silver Surfer – Rebirth of Thanos
Written by Jim Starlin
Art by Ron Lim, John Beatty, and Tom Christopher
Published by Marvel Comics as “The Silver Surfer” #34-38 and “The Thanos Quest” #1-2
Publication Date: 1990

Available from Amazon.com.

The Premise

The Silver Surfer discovers that Thanos has been resurrected by Death, his beloved, and tasked with killing half of all life in the universe. The Surfer sets out to stop him.

Meanwhile, Thanos seeks out the Infinity Gems, which will give him the power to perform his true love’s request and, he hopes, make him her equal.

High Points

Everything in this volume with Thanos is incredibly well done, both in terms of writing and artwork.

Low Points

The issues where the Surfer is contending with The Impossible Man and Drax The Destroyer are amusing, certainly, but they seem like they’re only there to pad out the story.

Scores

Originality: This is definitely a story that is unique to the Cosmic part of the Marvel universe. 5/6

Story: Aside from the filler, this is very well written. Still, the filler takes up almost a quarter of the collection. 4/6

Artwork: Cosmic superhero stories like this one reminds me of how much I love comics, and in particular how much can be done with Space Opera in comic books. 5/6

Characterization: The one really good thing I can say about the filler is the character development that it gives the Surfer (though I don’t know what The Impossible Man could have taught the Surfer that Spider-Man, The Human Torch, and The Thing couldn’t have taught him. 4/6

Emotional Response: Thanos search for the gems felt a lot more mythological then some of the New Gods stuff I’ve read in the DC Universe. 5/6

Flow: 6/6

Overall: A very well written storyline, and another book I would recommend to those getting into the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe. 5/6

In total, The Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos gets 34/42.

One reply

  1. The Impossible Man showed up because this was during the “Acts of Vengeance” crossover, when heroes traded villains. There are a very limited number of spacefaring villains that weren’t already associated with the Silver Surfer at the time. It was an incredibly amusing issue, but I am surprised they included it in the trade, since it did feel like a detour.

    I should see if “Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade” have all been reviewed here previously…

Comments are closed.