Throughout the MCU’s Infinity Saga, Thanos proved to be the biggest menace to the Avengers and, indeed, the whole universe, as shown epically in the film Avengers: Infinity War, in which Thanos cut through a number of strong creatures to get all six Infinity Stones. However, there is one villain that Thanos seems to have slain who could have halted Thanos’s wicked mission in an instant if he had access to one Marvel Comics weapon.
Thanos had already demolished Xandar to get the Power Stone and was in the process of doing the same to what remained of Asgard to obtain the Tesseract, called the Space Stone, at the start of the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Avengers: Infinity War. Thanos then determined that the next Infinity Stone he required was the Reality Stone, which was in the possession of the Collector. When the Guardians of the Galaxy attempted to ambush Thanos on Knowhere, it appeared that Thanos was questioning the Collector about the location of the Reality Stone, but it was quickly revealed that Thanos already had the Reality Stone and was using it to play his own trick on the heroes—and the Collector was presumed dead.
In Stan Lee and Don Heck’s Avengers #28, the Collector abducted Janet Van Dyne as the Wasp, and Hank Pym nicknamed Giant-Man turned to the Avengers for assistance in rescuing her. When the Avengers hurried to the Collector’s lair, the Elder attacked them with a variety of weapons, the most helpful of which was a crystal ball that projected mystic rays so strong that no one could withstand them.
According to the evidence revealed in this issue, the Collector’s crystal ball’s mystic rays infiltrate a victim’s brain and cloud their brains with blinding, unending misery, leaving the victim with no means to counteract the magical effects. If the Collector possessed this weapon in his armory when Thanos arrived at his door in the MCU, he may have destroyed Thanos with his magical relic since Thanos would have had no means to oppose it at the time owing to the weapon’s magical characteristics and Thanos’ lack of a strong enough mental defense.
If Thanos possessed the Mind Stone, he could have utilized its power to repel the magical invasion of the mind that the Collector’s crystal ball would have unleashed on him. However, before stealing the Collector’s Reality Stone, Thanos only had the Power Stone and the Space Stone, so the Collector’s mystic blasts of unyielding mental anguish would have crippled Thanos in seconds, just as it did to the Avengers in this issue, proving that the Collector could have beaten Thanos in the MCU with just one Marvel weapon.
Following that, Scarlet Witch established herself as the most powerful Avenger long before the MCU.
Spencer Connolly is a Screen Rant Staff Writer with years of writing and journalistic experience as a Photojournalist and News Producer. Spencer has always been a fan of comic books and manga, with a particular fondness for Marvel and Dragon Ball (though his interests change like crazy so take that with a grain of salt). Spencer enjoys reading into certain scenes or bits of speech and creating fascinating (often contentious) essay subjects to further explore that thinking process. They may be calm and amiable at times, yet they can also be irritable and contentious. Whatever your feelings are on his work, Spencer hopes you had as much pleasure reading it as he did creating it. You can also tell Spencer how much you liked or disliked his writing by following him on Twitter: TheSpencerVerse (albeit he is one of those’sensitive authors,’ so please be courteous).
