The Marvel Comics villain Thanos gets a lot of credit for being a genocidal madman in search of the ultimate power, the Infinity Gauntlet. But fans will be shocked to learn that the scariest thing about him is actually his spaceship. It famously appeared in the 2019 series Thanos written by Tini Howard and illustrated by Ariel Olivetti.
The series is narrated as a flashback by Gamora, who had killed Thanos earlier in a previous series. This story focuses on how the two of them met. In search of his love, Death, Thanos visits a planet to battle his archrival Magus. Inside a home, Thanos encounters a young Gamora. Thanos is surprised that she can see the personification of Death as well. It is at this moment he decides to take Gamora under her wing.
Gamora starts narrating this series by saying she might have been born on that planet but Thanos’s ship became her home. Its official designation was Sanctuary, but it became better known by the name Zero Sanctuary. The way Gamora describes it, the ship is more of a crazy haunted funhouse rather than a straight-up warship. It has winding hallways that lead to nowhere and secret compartments that only Thanos is aware of. In fact, not even his crew of killers and mercenaries are completely familiar with the ship's layout, and Thanos likes it that way. He has no problem abducting members of his crew for him to torture, experiment on, and ultimately kill to satisfy his lust for death.
The way Gamora describes the ship is eerily reminiscent of a man often described as America's first serial killer. H.H. Holmes was a man who constructed and designed a hotel in Chicago. But the hotel was outfitted with many secrets. Holmes used the hotels trap doors and hidden hallways to stalk and murder unsuspecting guests. Thanos treats the ship much the same way. In the series’ early pages he kills a member of his crew and the other members have trouble sleeping because of the screams.
It's easy to think of Thanos as a cosmic-level threat because of his desire to collect all the Infinity Stones and use them in the Gauntlet. He's often spoken about in the same cosmic group as powerful beings like the Silver Surfer and Galactus. But at his core, Thanos is really just a sadistic killer. Zero Sanctuary proves this by allowing Thanos to satiate his need for blood and torture whenever he desires.