Thanos creator Jim Starlin has responded to a pro-Trump video appropriating the climactic moment of Avengers: Endgame where the Mad Titan attempts to wipe the universe from existence.
In case you missed it, the tweet in question was posted by Trump War Room, a Twitter account run by the President’s re-election team that shares unconvincing rebuttals against criticism and propaganda about his opponents. It shows the President’s head poorly superimposed over Thanos’ as the supervillain declares himself to be “inevitable,“ accompanied by a message making the same statement for Trump’s re-election.
House Democrats can push their sham impeachment all they want.
President Trump's re-election is 𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲. pic.twitter.com/O7o02S26nS
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) December 10, 2019
Starlin, who created Thanos in 1973 as a young writer-artist just beginning to break into the comics industry, has now posted to his Facebook page with his reaction and thoughts on the use of the character in such a context, saying:
After my initial feeling of being violated, seeing that pompous dang fool using my creation to stroke his infantile ego, it finally struck me that the leader of my country and the free world actually enjoys comparing himself to a mass murderer. How sick is that? These are sad and strange times we are going through. Fortunately all things, even national nightmares, eventually come to an end.
Thinking about it for more than thirty seconds, the video comes off as a tone-deaf use of a pop culture moment invoked without properly understanding it, or at the very least considering the connotations. Either that or the social media drones who posted it have no qualms about equating the President with a genocidal madman who’s deaf to reason, whose only allies are a cabal of worshippers slavishly devoted to him and a mindless army of faceless foot soldiers, whose woefully short-sighted strategy fails to take into account numerous aspects of existence he doesn’t understand, and when afforded the highest power all he can think to use it for is a as a force of unfocused destruction.
Even more than that, the tweet is blithely ignorant of the fact that the moment from Endgame utilized is right before Thanos realizes that Tony Stark has grabbed the Infinity Stones from the Gauntlet, as in the point at which the Mad Titan feels at his most arrogant, victorious and omnipotent. When in actuality, it’s right before all of his crimes and scheming have come to naught that he realizes he has vastly underestimated his opponents, and everything he’s attempted to bring about will come crashing down around him.
With apologies to Starlin, hopefully its use is more appropriate and prescient than intended.
