Who would have thought that Thanos saved reality!
Until now, the Living Tribunal is the most powerful creature in the Marvel Universe, basically it is the supreme judge of all possible reality in the Multiverse; however, readers are likely to be unaware that the person responsible behind the creation of its current iteration is none other than Thanos, the Mad Titan.
Who is the Living Tribunal?
This iconic character first appeared in a Doctor Strange story, “The End of the Old One!” in Strange Tales #157, the Stan Lee and Marie Severin issue. The function of this cosmic entity is to ensure the security of the Multiverse against anything that threatens to alter the spatial balance. The One-Above-All (or rather, the Marvel equivalent of God), he created specifically for this purpose, and as such the Tribunal is considered almost an omnipotent being. For example, his “judgment” can nullify even the power of the Infinity Stones combined. This is possible because, unlike other cosmic beings, the Living Tribunal does not have a counterpart in each universe, but rather there’s only one in the entire multiverse.
After his first relatively sporadic appearances, the Living Tribunal established his role as the supreme being in the universe after the Infinity Gauntlet saga. After Adam Warlock acquired the Gauntlet, his right to absolute power was contested by cosmic beings in a gathering, including Eternity, the embodiment of reality, who felt somewhat usurped by his role. However, the Tribunal was tasked with presiding over the trial and thus ruling that Warlock was unfit to wield the power of the Gauntlet, leading to the distribution of the Stones (then known as Infinity Stones) among members of the Infinity Watch. For that occasion, the Court even borrowed a famous phrase from Spiderman, saying: “With great power comes great responsibility and little happiness.” But surprisingly, the paths of the Living Tribunal and Adam Warlock would unexpectedly cross again later.
How did this character come about?
In Infinity Finale (by Jim Starlin, Ron Lim, Andy Smith and Guru-eFX) the tyrant of the Negative Zone, Annihilus, obtained absolute power by diverting the omnipotence that a version of Adam Warlock from another universe (Earth-19141) achieved after absorb all of its reality into itself. But this desperate attempt to rescue Warlock backfired so badly that he inadvertently lost control of his power and erased the entirety of time and space (something that happens all too often in Starlin’s wacky cosmic sagas). In the void that followed, Thanos and Warlock were the only beings left, but the Mad Titan had to use a last resort to restore the universe after that incident.
The main idea was to negotiate this plan with someone Thanos has always loathed to come into contact with: the One-Above-All, the true supreme being responsible for the creation of the Multiverse. And despite their differences, Thanos put pride aside and managed to convince him to recreate his reality, with an interesting condition: that Warlock be the one to take the place of the Living Tribunal, after being killed by the Beyonders during the Secret Wars event. This could only be possible because when the alternate Warlock absorbed his reality, it also included his own version of the Tribunal.
In fact, Thanos was the only character who could possess the willpower and cunning to strike a deal with God himself, and sure enough, he did. The current reality was restored with a new and more powerful Living Tribunal as guardian, the threat of Annihilitus was thereby neutralized and the Warlock of Earth-616 was brought back to life with a totally different fate. In this moving story, Thanos has shown us that he is not only a nihilistic madman (although to date he is somewhat cruel), but a creature of great empathy who cares about maintaining the cosmic balance. Thanos not only did he take it upon himself to save reality and almost become a hero this time, but he this megavillain was more than decisive in the creation of the new version of the most powerful character in the Marvel Universe, the Living Tribunal.
Related topics: Marvel
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