"Thanoside."

Does anyone else remember an X-Men or New Mutants or possibly even X-Factor Annual from the late 80's, maybe early 90's, wherein the crappiest New Mutant Cypher gets the crappiest afterlife ever? Poor dead Doug doesn't go to Valhalla, or a big casino, or even hell: he's just a ghost, sitting on top of his gravestone and apparently not allowed or able to go anywhere, and with only the other nearby corpse-shades to talk to. And the others weren't even mutants, since Doug got buried in a normo cemetery. They were depressing stories about the pointlessness of life, since Cypher sucks so much...

I was setting this strip up to tie into the return of Thanos in Guardians of the Galaxy, and then didn't post it until after two issues of the Thanos Imperative. It's too early to say if this is a classic like Infinity Gauntlet, but I've enjoyed it so far: actually, I wish like the Infinity books of the 1990's, Imperative had some crossover books, but none of the cosmic characters have their own books right now. Which does add to some of the tension: any number of those characters may not make it out.

Thanos has returned, but it wasn't his idea. He's not especially keen on being alive, since he was happy and at peace dead. Unwilling resurrections have been done before (Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a notable one) but it really makes sense here. Conversely, even though he'd vastly prefer being dead, Thanos still isn't the type to just lay down and die. Since he considers just about every living thing his inferior, he can't just let any old thing kill him...