THE END Vol. 2

THE END is a six-issue miniseries launched by Marvel in 2003, written and drawn by Jim Starlin, the "father of Thanos," in a style close to an apocalyptic parable about Thanos; the official editors also explicitly stated that it is not part of Marvel's main canon. The story begins with the ultimate energy source called the "Heart of the Universe": a group of alien explorers discovered and mastered it a thousand years ago, formed the "Celestial Order," and forcibly appointed rulers over every region of the universe, with the agent for Earth being the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten. This power corrupts the pharaoh, who returns to the modern Earth, claims dominion, and defeats Earth's heroes and various gods in succession. Doctor Doom tries to travel back in time to erase the pharaoh while he was still mortal, but fails. After realizing the existence of the Heart of the Universe, Thanos gathers the surviving heroes and villains to join forces, cuts off the pharaoh's energy source, takes the power of the Heart of the Universe into himself, and promptly erases the pharaoh and everything he did. The price of power, however, is the truth: the universe itself has an inherent flaw and will eventually end, and even the Heart of the Universe cannot fix it. The Living Tribunal assembles Eternity, Death, Galactus, the Celestials, and other cosmic beings to stop him, but all are defeated, and Thanos at one point swallows the entire universe into his body. In the end, Adam Warlock and the goddess Death appear one after another, and Thanos chooses to erase himself, sacrificing himself to restore the universe's existence—a sacrifice remembered by only a few. This volume is Volume 2 of the series, continuing the narrative of Volume 1 and forming the core part of the series' unfolding "endgame."