When it comes to demi-gods, Marvel and DC both have heavy hitters in the form of Thanos and Darkseid. If the two were thrown into the galactic ring and forced to pound on one another until one emerged victorious, who would win?
Stephen Schleicher
Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment. You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...
64 Comments
Marvel/DC discussions never go well.
The only choice is Darkseid! (Or Thanos, it’s a poll with two options..you can choose either..you click the…nevermind)
Thanos is just a pale imitation… Well he was. He actually has had some pretty great stories and Marvel’s Cosmic arena is kinda amazing right now. But if we only have to look at the characters (And their complete history) then I say Darkseid is superior.
In a fight however… Nah Darkseid still wins. Unless Thanos gets the infinity Gauntlet and all of it’s the gems. But then Darkseid might as well also get the Anti-Life equation…
Darkseid IS!
What good is the anti-life equation when you wipe out half the zombies in a thought with the infinity gauntlet.
Thanos FTW.
I think you are mistaking Anti-Life for Black Lantern Rings?
“Everything” would become Darkseid if he had control of the equation, so even if The Gauntlet could bend reality it wouldn’t respond to Thanos because both the Gauntlet and Thanos cease to exist…
Wouldn’t that be some sort of funny mobius strip of them both becoming the same, and it being a draw? ;) Or a never ending (since both can’t really die) fight for all eternity.
Basically i can’t really stand either, although i kind of liked Thanos during the Infinity gauntlet bit, but the whole all powerful can’t be beaten thing really got old with me. Plus, darkseids helmet always bugged me, rarely looks anything other than silly.
wrong, darkseid is just despot in a mini skirt. thanos is way more powerful. and think on this, darkseid has been looking for the anti-life equation all his life and never found it, thanos determined what the infinity gems actually were, found them, beat the snot out of who ever had them,” the elders of the universe and the in-betweener”, and went on to not only challenge the entire universe but providing millions of readers endless reading into his cosmic badassness.
I agree 100%, Thanos, is the Cosmic Universe Badass!!! Just read what’s been going on at Marvel lately. Hands down Thanos would bitch slap Darkseid!
wrong, i like darkseid, he’s one of my favorite kirby characters but the fact is thanos isn’t a pale imation of darkseid, he’s a better villian thanks to jim starlin’s writing. he has greater scope and achievments than darkseid.
My understanding was that Thanos can’t die because Death won’t accept him. Make the fight to the death and he wins by default.
Neither of them can die. Darkseid is basically a collection of concepts coming alive as an individual. (He’s sort of The God and Incarnation Of All That Is Bad in the DCU)
Except that he recently did die in Final Crisis when Superman sang a note. If Darkseid can be killed with singing then I’m sure Thanos could warm up those vocal cords and take him out.
Did you understand what happened?
Yes I did. Everything in the world vibrates at a specific frequency and a counter frequency can destroy it. Darkseids soul/essence/being was destroyed when Superman sang the counter vibration.
If Superman can figure that out what makes you think Thanos couldn’t?
I think he’s more so referencing the fact that Darkseid has had multiple deaths yet still exists as a threat in the time of the Legion. Death to someone who resurrects as often as Darkseid isn’t really that much of a death.
If that’s the case then Thanos has resurrected just as often. Hell, the guy is dating the personification of death itself and in recent issues can resurrect even if he is utterly destroyed with an anti-mater bomb.
wrong, where do you get your info?
I read it myself? What are you saying I’m wrong about?
wasn’t disagreeing with your comment but to doctor sleepless, major spoilers website put my reply in the wrong place. i’m all thanos all the time.
wasn’t disagreeing with your comment but to doctor sleepless, major spoilers website put my reply in the wrong place. i’m all thanos all the time.
Major Spoilers website replies work perfectly fine when utilized correctly. :)
Also, please note that the poll of the week is meant for fun and entertainment purposes. Please do not take it too seriously, and most of all, as with any Major Spoilers activities and public interactions: CIVILITY IS NOT OPTIONAL. Please make certain that it doesn’t get personal…
This has been a public service announcement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled comments.
No contest. Thanos actually HAD AN AFFAIR with Death! (And Jim Starlin drew Death as a really GOOD looking woman).
Has this conflict actually happened once before? Also, didn’t the Amalgam event feature Thanoseid? (That was a headache.) For my money, I’d go with the avatar of death, give me Thanos! (Also, the cartoon version of Darksied in the Superfriends cartoon was just lame, always wanting to make Wonder Woman his queen and such.
As I recall, Peter David once described- I wish I could remember where but I can’t- a great Darkseid/Thanos gag he wanted to work into the DC vs. Marvel miniseries. Rather than battle in a typical physical way, they were supposed to simply be standing on opposite sides of a battlefield for the length of the issue, the implication being they were in a contest of wills on some higher plane. To the casual observer, they seem just to be standing there staring at each other. Finally, at the end of the issue, one of them (I believe the loser was Thanos, I’m sure Jim Starlin would be thrilled) would simply keel over on his face. The idea was nixed by editorial on the grounds it wasn’t visual/action-oriented enough for a comic. Pity.
Thanos probably blinked first
There was a variation of that in the Thanos quest two part between Thanos and the Gamemaster, however they were wearing some sort of VR helmet that allowed them to play a game against each other so there was action shown while they were sitting there.
Thanos! Because he was awesome in Annihilation: Conquest and the dude actually dated Death. He’s the avatar of death and his goal in life for the longest time was killing everyone in the universe as a token of love to his lady Death. Darkseid was cool until Flanel Crisis, I can never see him as anything but some megalomaniac with a God cmplexe now…
I have to give it to the ruler of Apokalips, though Thano’s has had some good stories he doesn’t sound like Michael Ironside.
Darkseid, because he has cooler underlings.
cool underlings aside, that has nothing to do power stats. besides, darkseid had one planet of followers, not even loyal, just afraid of him. at various times, one or more have tried to take him out, desaad anyone one. thanos has billions of devoted worshipers and followers thru out the universe, you just don’t see that often these days cause thanos doesn’t need them to do his dirty work. he prefers to get his own hands bloody if you will.
Other than that horrible Gamemnae “Obsidian Age” mess, Darkseid is the only being in recent time who’s been able to pull off killing Batman… sort of. But who else can make that claim? And in Batman’s defense, he was sick during the climax of “Obsidian Age”.
Michael Ironside for the win.
Bane could have after he broke batman’s back but he thought it was funnier to just leave batman as a silly cripple.
Bane > Darkseid
I don’t see your logic. Darkseid actually killed Batman. Bane didn’t kill Batman. How does Bane triumph?
Darkseid had to resort to killing him. Bane could have easily killed him but thought it was more fun to leave him as a broken shell.
Anyone can kill a man, it’s much more difficult to humiliate and horribly demoralize him.
Anyone can kill a man, it’s much more difficult to humiliate and horribly demoralize him.
That’s Stephen’s theory, anyway…
wrong, what the hell are you talking about? darkseid didn’t kill batman, if you look at the end of that storyline, he sent bruce wayne back through time hence the return of bruce wayne we are now seeing.
He both killed him and sent him through time. Hence the smoking corpse that was left behind.
No dude the body was one of the clones. Batman got physically sent through time and armed to destroy the universe the second he returns..Darkseid’s final “F&%/ you guys”
Clones? What clones? Did I miss something while reading Final Crisis?
Also if it was a clone wtf happened to bruce to send him back in time?
Darkseid.
He just strikes me as the the smarter villain. Thanos is obsessed with Death, but Darkseid is all about control, and I think he would wear out someone like Thanos in a well-planned war of attrition rather than one battle.
wrong, i like your arguement but thanos is just as brilliant if not more so than darkseid. just look at their accompishments and than decide.
Why do that when you don’t seem to know anything about Darkseid.
what the hell are you talking about? i know more about darkseid than you, i know more about both these characters than you. tell me something about darkseid that i don’t know. if i didn’t know both these villians, i wouldn’t have voted. go do your reading and then come talk smack.
The honest thing here gilberto is that anyone who wants to can come into this comments section and simply choose to think that say Thanos would utterly destroy Darkseid because Darkseid wears a skirt, and you know what they’d be right. Someone else can say that Darkseid would be the victor because he has Granny Goodness and all his parademons and Omega Beams and whatever else, and again they’d be right. Any writer to take on this particular match-up could write it either way, whichever way they want it to play out. This is the exact same, in my head I think that Thanos would win, because I find Darkseid kinda lame and if I was reading this fight happening I would want to see Thanos win. I don’t think you or anyone else is stupid for thinking that Darkseid would win, obviously people like the character, but I don’t think those who’re voting for Thanos should be made to feel stupid for having their own opinions either. It’s not what this site is about, not in the amount of time I’ve been coming here. And either way it comes out I think in a battle between Darkseid and Thanos, we the readers would come out with the win.
How can people think Thanos would lose to Darkside?
Must be because they’ve animated Darkside and not Thanos. If there was a Infinity Gauntlet animation or a decent Silver Surfer cartoon, I bet that Thanos would be winning.
thank you.
Even though Starlord “temporarily” took down Thanos with a shot to the junk, I’m still picking the Mad Titan (now you know why he’s mad!)
don’t forget it was a broken cosmic cube starlord used, so that in it self is a lot.
I’m generally more in favor of DC, my collection is about 80% DC, but I like Thanos way better. I actually have a soft spot for Warlock and the Infinity Watch series, as well as the Chronicles.
Thanos just has way better stories, I like neither Cosmic Odyssee nor Fourth World or Death of the New Gods. Only Darkseid stories I liked were Rock of the Ages and his debut in Supermans Pal Jimmy Olsen.
Thanos is just mad cool in Infinity Gauntlet, The End, Warlock’s original run, Captain Marvel, Avengers or Infinity Abyss (yes, I totally loved that).
Thanos is evil, but too crazy “I LOVE YOU DEATH! WOOOO! KILL THE UNIVERSE!”
But Darksied? He’s stone cold SANE. and Evil. And calculating. Chalk it up to the better evil mastermind.
wrong, don’t mistake thanos for being a love sick maniac, he’s just as calculating
and brilliant mastermind as darkseid if not not more so.
Darkseid. I don’t know anything about Thanos though. I’ve heard a few things that make me think that the two of them are supposed to be roughly the same concept. That being said I give it to Darkseid for the following reasons:
1. Anti-life justifies my answer
2. Anti-life justifies my dislike of Thanos
3. Anti-life justifies my hate
wrong, know what your talking about before blindly voting. go look up everything about thanos and than come and vote.
Why is everyone else besides you wrong? We aren’t voting on our future president or anything. This is a poll of the week on a comic book/pop culture website. Might want to take it down a notch. I like Thanos better, therefore I voted for him. That’s all it has to be, if that’s as far as I want to think it through then so be it. I personally can’t stand much of the whole New Gods stuff, except for Mister Miracle that is.
please do me a favor and drop it. this poll is closed and over so i rather not keep beating a dead dog. please don’t reply to this as i would like to just move on.
It would, on the surface, be like a man trying to fight his own image in the mirror, since Darkseid is a thinly veiled copy of Thanos (or is it the other way around? I seem to remember reading Thanos stories a lot earlier than I ever saw a Darkseid story). But when you consider that Thanos worships Death personified but she rejects him so he can’t be killed, and that he is willing to singlehandedly wipe out the entire multiverse to please her, but Darkseid relies on his corrupted world of vile underlings and is able to be outsmarted by mere mortals like Batman repeatedly, I think Thanos would take out Apokolips and then mop up the floor with Darkseid. On the other hand, both of them would easily be taken down by the first Mary Kay salesgirl who wanders by. Maybe under all that rage and insanity, all they both really want, deep down, is a good face cream. Or a better hat. Seriously, though, who can forget the ending of “The Death of Captain Marvel” when Thanos returns to life and escorts the soul of the dead Captain Marvel into the waiting embrace of Death with grace and tenderness, even though they’d been mortal enemies. Darkseid never got a scene like that.
Darkseid’s first appearance November 1970
Thanos’ first appearance February 1973
so the only way Thanos could win is if he had the Infinity Gauntlet (if he does then he wins in a route) Darkseid is just to powerful for Thanos.
wrong, where are you getting your info? thanos could beat darkseid with one hand tied behind his back and no he doesn’t need the infinity gauntlet to do it. what’s darkseid’s most powerful attack, his omega beams, and there are ways to get around those, just ask superman. besides, if you read the thanos imperative #4, thanos just came back from being disintregrated in a matter of minutes, seems death doesn’t want him and has made him truly deathless.
thanos would destroy darkseid, no doubt of that. ok, given that kirby created darkseid first but in thanos, starlin created one of the most powerful and interesting cosmic villians in any universe. besides, look at victory and loss stats… darkside ruled his one planet of apokolips for ages and has ocasionally
been a pest to DC’s earth but never on the scale that thanos has to Marvel’s entire universe. darkside has not only been beaten to a pulp by superman to the point his eyes were swollen shut that he gave up but has lost to doomsday and his son orion.
thanos on the other hand has destroyed half the universe then all of creation only to bring it back, defeated the cosmic beings who opposed him with the gems. he has soundly beaten the silver surfer,who i consider one of the most powerful character in comics even more so than supes and was even voted so in a poll by wizard, was into unconsciousness only to present him as a gift to death but defeated all her forces with the surfer when she rejected him once again. thanos has fought thor and the thing at the same time and held his own, pimp slapped hulk and drax,he has fought odin to a standstill, tyrant, a creation of galactus with vast power to a standstill and even shocked and enraged a weaken galactus, who had not feed, by blasting him to goad him into battle to then fight a greater threat in hunger, a dimensional parasite that feeds on whole universes. thanos then uses his tech to drop two planets together with galactus and hunger in between to defeat it. not to mention thanos’s defeat of the maker, a former cosmic cube being and the fallen, the first herald of galactus. the list just goes on and on, in closing, if you go back to the first infinity gauntlet, warlock tells thanos that he knows why his schemes fail, it’s because thanos himself subconsciously doesn’t wish to win, not because others have stopped him but he has subconsciously provided his own defeat.
but in the end what makes thanos deadlier than darkseid is not only his vast power but his vast intellect and think of their motivations, darkseid just wants to end life,maybe he’s suicidal but thanos will destroy everything just to prove his undying love for death herself just to be by her side. go back and do your reading history before blindly voting.
Okay, I admit I missed the early appearances of Darkseid. “Superman’s Friend Jimmy Olsen” was one of those titles that we only every saw when our parents bought the three-packs of comics books they used to sell in the grocery stores, for reading on long road trips. Anybody remember those? They usually had the best selling titles, like Superman or Batman on the outside, one facing front and one facing back, with a third comic hidden in the middle which was always some loser title that didn’t sell, like Jimmy Olsen, or Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lame, or Batroc the Leaper.
I think the main reason I vote for Thanos over Darkseid is that Thanos was a being with powers that rivaled the Gods and Demi-Gods, and he always battled beings and forces of a similar power level, with the occasional Warlock or Captain Marvel blunding in to derail some scheme or other and temporarily defeat Thanos. Darkseid on the other hand, is supposedly a being of supreme power but only when convenient to the plot. In one episode his “Convenient Beams” (I mean Omega Beams) can reduce the universe to ashes, the next episode he can’t even use them to give Robin a hotfoot. And he relies on all these grotesque Kirby designed sad sacks like Granny Goodness and Big Barda who can’t manage to even throw their hat at the ground without missing.
As much as I hate to prefer a Marvel character to a DC character, Thanos would win hands down in my opinion. Besides, Thanos has a better jaw line.
guys, if you’re a hard core thanos fan, don’t let this punk darseid win this poll.
vote for thanos and tell your fellow thanos devotees and friends to vote for thanos.
Thanos we know its you. End this charade ;)
doctor sleepless, i like that comment, i’ll take it as a compliment. listen, don’t get me wrong, darkseid is one of my favorite DC villians, i just look at both histories losses and victories and accomphishments and go with my boy thanos.
hey doc, please read the comment i left. later.
if i have offended anyone, i would like to apologize and seeing from the comments left from matt peterson and damascus, i must have. you’re right this is meant to be light hearted. i didn’t mean to infer that i was right and everyone else is wrong. it was not my intention, i simply was trying to info people as to who would win in terms of power base and past accomplishments. guess i feel very passionately about the subject. of course everyone is entitled to their opinion. guess i have to out of these talks. hope they never do a superman vs silver surfer poll, right?
anyway, doctor sleepless, you were a worthy foe, my friend. you disagreed with me but you did it with style and grace. you made me laugh with you last comment to me, wish you well.