Thanos: Titan Consumed

On the alien planet of Titan, a baby named Thanos is born. Thanos, the only child of influential leader A'Lars and an estranged mother, is feared from a young age and unable to fit into Titan society due to a combination of having genius-level intellect and his skin being a deep hue of purple - a color which his people see as a representation of death - as a result of a genetic mutation. His only companion is Sintaa, the son of another leader, with whom he forms a tight-knit relationship. Years later, Thanos learns that his father had bribed Sintaa's parents and he is subsequently banned from seeing Sintaa. However, one weekend, A'Lars has to go away on a business trip. Sintaa takes advantage of the opportunity to visit Thanos and take him out and introduce him to a girl named Gwynith. Gwinyth quickly falls in love with Thanos and shares a kiss with him, inspiring him to visit his mother, whom he finds has gone insane since his birth. As Thanos returns home sulking, he has an epiphany in which he realizes that Titan has become overpopulated and is headed for an extinction-level event. When A'Lars returns from his business trip, Thanos tries to inform him about his discovery, but A'Lars refuses to listen and severely scolds his son for visiting his mother, as he had previously ordered him not to do so. Frustrated, Thanos takes matters into his own hands and broadcasts a message to everyone on Titan warning them about the extinction-level event and proposing that they kill half of their population in an attempt to prevent it from happening, but this only creates panic. In the aftermath, Gwyinth and Sintaa cut off ties with Thanos, and A'Lars sentences him to exile from Titan. Thanos refuses to give up on his people and sets course for the Kree home world of Hala, hoping to return with their armies to convince his people to listen to him, but his ship is intercepted and picked up by another ship which is led by a fascistic leader called His Lordship, who subsequently enslaves him. Thanos begrudgingly accepts his new life as a slave after finding out that there is no way to escape the ship, but he gets a lucky break and earns His Lordship's respect when his intellect allows him to help save the ship when it runs dangerously low on fuel. His Lordship tells Thanos that he is trying to return to his home planet, but one of his crew reveals to Thanos that he is lying and that the ship is scouring the galaxy searching for a mysterious object of stupendous power which is located in Asgard. Thanos leads a mutiny with his newfound companions Cha and Keebi, killing His Lordship and taking command of the ship. They travel to Xandar and liberate the ship's population, then head off to an outpost where they can use the Bifrost to enter Asgard. They torture the outpost's guardian into giving them information on the mysterious object - which is an Infinity Stone - and Asgard before killing him, then wait for an Asgardian ship to arrive. When it arrives, Thanos and his companions lure in and kill three warriors. They then try to board the ship, but are ambushed by a fourth warrior named Yrsa. In the ensuing fight, Kebbi and Yrsa are killed and the ship's controls are damaged, causing it to travel through a wormhole to the home world of a reptilian alien race called the Chitauri, where it violently crashes; Cha is only slightly injured but Thanos is left near death.

After he recovers, Thanos and Cha meet The Other, the ruler of the Chituari. The Other and Thanos make a bargain in which The Other will give Thanos an army and passage to Titan with his gargantuan Chitauri Leviathans in exchange for Thanos training the Chitauri in combat. As Thanos trains the Chitauri, he seeks out news from Titan and is dismayed when he learns one night from Cha that the extinction-level event that he had predicted has happened. Once Thanos has fulfilled his end of the bargain, he and Cha travel to Hala aboard a Leviathan, which they sell to a trader in order to purchase a medical vessel which they use to travel to Titan. Thanos detects a weak signal from Titan's surface and takes a smaller ship down to the surface to investigate, hoping to find survivors, while Cha remains in orbit. The signal leads Thanos to an encounter with an artificial version of A'Lars, who tells Thanos that the extinction-level event wiped out all life on Titan - making Thanos the last of his kind. Realizing that his father had expected his return, Thanos berates his father for not listening to his warnings. The artificial version of A'Lars urges his son to let go of the past and tells him that sometime after his banishment, he had examined Thanos' data and, upon realizing that his son was right, had collected DNA samples from some of the most influential Titan leaders and preserved them in the hopes that Thanos would return and use them to resurrect Titan. Instead, an enraged Thanos destroys the artificial version of his father and the samples of DNA, saying that they deserve it because of his people's failure to listen to him. He then returns to the medical vessel in orbit and tells Cha there are no survivors. After suffering through a long episode of depression, Thanos dedicates the rest of his life to preventing other planets from suffering from the same fate as Titan. Accompanied by Cha, Thanos returns to the Chitauri home world, acquires an army of Chitauri, and then begins traveling to other planets that are suffering from overpopulation, where he proposes to their peoples the same solution that he offered his own people. Angered when no one listens to him, Thanos commands the Chituari to invade the planets and kill all living sentient beings, believing that doing so is mercy compared to the slow, painful death his people suffered. As a result, Thanos becomes one of the most feared and hated beings in the universe. In time, however, Thanos learns that there are a select few individuals who agree with him, including Ebony Maw, Cull Obsidian, Proxima Midnight, and Corvus Glaive, who seek him out and form his Black Order. Based on their example, Thanos decides to change tactics - he will now randomly kill only half of the people on each planet he invades, hoping that as the survivors recover, other planets will see that his methods are effective. In one particular raid, on a planet called Zehoberei, Thanos sees a girl named Gamora bravely attempting to protect her mother from his forces. Thanos picks her up and declares himself her father. Sometime later, Thanos picks up another girl named Nebula, and through brutal training, he turns both of them into assassins. Thanos hopes that one day, one of the girls will become his successor and follow through with his mission.

Eventually, Thanos realizes that there are too many planets for him to balance using military strength alone, and that the universe as a whole will inevitably run out of the supplies necessary to support life. While discussing this realization with Cha, The Other, Gamora, and Nebula, Thanos recalls his previous failed attempt to enter Asgard and learns that there may be more Infinity Stones besides the one located there, and that a mysterious being called the Lorespeaker who lives in isolation near the edge of the galaxy could confirm if they are real and, if so, where they are located. Cha, believing that Thanos has finally gone too far, confesses that he believes Thanos has become nothing more than a monster obsessed with a goal he cannot achieve and desperately attempts to tell him to change his ways, only for Thanos to reluctantly snap his neck, killing him. Thanos then travels to where the Lorespeaker lives. Upon meeting the Lorespeaker, Thanos asks him for information about the Infinity Stones. The Lorespeaker eventually agrees and tells Thanos all about the Stones, of which there are six in total, each controlling an aspect of existence: Space, Reality, Power, Soul, Mind, and Time. The Lorespeaker reveals that he is in possession of the Mind Stone, and that he has waited for hundreds of years for someone to test it on. He tortures Thanos with the stone and boasts about his plans to take over the universe and make it such that every story features only himself, but Gamora and Nebula enter and kill him. Thanos takes possession of the Mind Stone and obliterates the Lorespeaker's home world. Afterwards, Thanos ponders how the Infinity Stones could help him. He eventually realizes that if he can acquire all six of them, he can accomplish his goal of wiping out half of all life in the universe, so he begins a quest to find where the remaining Infinity Stones are located.

The novel was officially announced, along with a cover reveal and summary, by io9 Gizmodo in April 2018, ahead of the release of Avengers: Infinity War.[2]

Lyga began work on the novel in November 2017, and held lengthy conference calls with Marvel Entertainment in order to get the correct information on the character.

Thanos: Titan Consumed was released on November 20, 2018.

Stephen R. McEvoy wrote on the book blog Books Reviews and More that the novel was "an exceptional read" and said it was "excellent for fans of the comic books, and stories, or the more casual fans of the movies."[3]

• Official website