Voice in Sledge's Head: Hey look, another annual with a series of stories.

Sledge: Ugh... I have a love hate relationship with these things. I still haven't reviewed AC #1000

Voice: It's Marvel, so you know your chances of striking out are even higher.

Sledge: This is trying to convince me, voice?

Voice: Al Ewing does one of the stories.

Sledge: I'm in.

Voice: You should buy more miniatures you'll never paint...

Sledge: Not listening.

This isn't your average annual. Sure, it compiles some great writers and talented artist to give you snippets of the Mad Titan's reign. Sure it's heavy on snark and dark humor. Sure, it's got well known characters doing small cameo's. But what this annual has that no other comic has is: Dave.

Now, there are a bunch of stories in this book about what a monster Thanos is, and all are actually really good, a few are really twisted, and even one might serve as an ethics lesson. Each are great in their own right, but none really grabbed me more than the one about Dave.

In it's own way, this story demonstrates what evil is. Every year sense David's birth, Thanos fucks with him on his birthday. It started with taking his blanket as baby and escalates from there. Sometimes they range from being just a dick to David, to other times killing off everyone but him at a frat party. The one constant in Dave's life is Thanos... well, except one year. His entire life keeps getting repeatably ruined by Thanos, which leaves him constantly with the question "why?" Thanos never answers until Dave thinks he finally figures out the reason. Then Thanos hits him with the truth.

This is evil at it's simplest and purest form. Being evil for evil's sake. There is no motive other than that. No greater goal. Just pure malice from heart filled with hate... and possibly poetry. I felt such weird sense of schadenfreude with Dave being constantly shit on, I felt myself turning evil. Is that what Thanos does? Turn men evil?

Not that he cares or anything.

Plus there is a teaser at the end of the book for Donny Cates' Cosmic Ghost Rider. So you should definitely buy this book. 

Rating: 9/10 Teddy Bear Heads