Iron Man #55

Thanos in a psychology class

Jim Starlin conceived Thanos in college psychology classes, taken between his military service and his first comics work, and drew on Sigmund Freud's idea of a human death drive, called Thanatos. Drax the Destroyer came out of the same notebook. "I'm not sure how he fit into it," Starlin later said, "just anger management probably."

When Roy Thomas, then Marvel's editor, offered him an issue of Iron Man, Starlin felt it might be his only chance to introduce a character, since he was not confident his career would last more than a few weeks. So he jammed his ideas into it. His first Thanos was thinner and looked, if like anyone, like Metron from Jack Kirby's New Gods at DC. Thomas looked at the figure and told him to beef him up: if he was going to borrow from the New Gods, he should take Darkseid, the really good one.

Iron Man #55 went on sale on October 31, 1972, with a February 1973 cover date. It cost 20 cents and ran 36 pages. The lead story opens with Drax shouting, "Hear me, Iron Man! I am Drax, the Destroyer!" Its indexers count it as the first installment of what fans call the first Thanos War, continued in Captain Marvel #25.

Jim Starlin

Starlin was born in Detroit on October 9, 1949. In the 1960s he served as an aviation photographer in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam. After leaving the Navy he sold two stories to DC, drew for fan publications, and entered the industry in 1972. His first Marvel job was finishing pages of The Amazing Spider-Man, and then he drew three issues of Iron Man that introduced Thanos and Drax.

Mike Friedrich scripted Starlin's plot, and Friedrich is listed as Thanos's co-creator and credited with helping create Drax. Death and suicide became recurring themes in Starlin's work, from the personification of Death that Thanos courts to The Death of Captain Marvel, the first graphic novel Marvel published itself. He also co-created Shang-Chi and Gamora, and at DC he wrote A Death in the Family, the story that killed the second Robin.

Starlin came back to Thanos again and again. Reviving him in Silver Surfer in 1990, he wrote The Thanos Quest and The Infinity Gauntlet, in which Thanos gathers the six Infinity Gems and wipes out half the life in the universe to win the love of Mistress Death. Starlin appears in a cameo in the 2019 film Avengers: Endgame, as a member of Steve Rogers's support group.

Drax, Thanos and the Titans

The issue throws Iron Man into the middle of a cosmic war. Drax, hunting Thanos, collides with Iron Man, and the story introduces Thanos's family and allies from Saturn's moon Titan: his father Mentor, his brother Eros, later called Starfox, and Kronos. The Blood Brothers serve as Thanos's muscle.

Drax's origin, later spelled out in full, is a revenge story. He was once Arthur Douglas, whose family was attacked by Thanos's ship while driving through a desert because Thanos thought they had seen him. Kronos placed Arthur's spirit in a powerful new body built to destroy Thanos. Arthur's daughter Heather survived and was raised on Titan, and became Moondragon.

The Thanos story continued through Captain Marvel #25 to #33 from 1973 to 1974, then through Marvel Feature, Daredevil and The Avengers. Starlin's later work established Thanos as an Eternal carrying the Deviant gene, one of the most powerful beings in the Marvel universe.

A Bronze Age key in quantity

Iron Man #55 survives in large numbers. In October 2025 the grading census listed 349 copies at CGC 9.2 and 545 higher. In April 2025 it counted 86 copies at CGC 9.8. A leading annual price guide, which ranked the issue tied for 19th on its list of the top 25 Bronze Age comics, gave a value of $2,000 for a 9.2 copy in its 2024 edition.

Copies at 9.2 with white pages sell at auction regularly, including one in November 2025. At the top of the market, the issue's highest result at one major auction house was $19,200, in June 2022.

From fill-in to film villain

Thanos reached the screen in a brief appearance in The Avengers in 2012, played by Damion Poitier, then by Josh Brolin in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). Drax became a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy, so this one issue introduced both a screen villain and one of the screen heroes.

Not bad for an Iron Man fill-in by an artist who thought he might have only a few weeks in comics. The Infinity Gauntlet, Starlin's 1991 culmination of the Thanos saga, remains the character's best-known story.

The numbers

Cover price

20 cents

Pages

36; lead story 20

Print run

Not documented in the sources consulted

Census, April 2025

86 at CGC 9.8

Census, October 2025

349 at CGC 9.2; 545 higher

Frequency

Monthly

Timeline

1. Oct 9, 1949

   Jim Starlin is born in Detroit.

2. 1972

   Starlin enters the comics industry, working for Roy Thomas.

3. Oct 31, 1972

   Iron Man #55 goes on sale, introducing Thanos and Drax.

4. Mar 1973

   The Thanos story continues in Captain Marvel #25.

5. Jul 1974

   The first Thanos saga concludes in The Avengers #125.

6. Feb 1990

   Starlin revives Thanos in Silver Surfer #34.

7. Jul 1991

   The Infinity Gauntlet #1 is published.

8. 2012

   Thanos makes his first film appearance in The Avengers.

9. 2018

   Josh Brolin plays Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War.

10. 2019

    Starlin makes a cameo in Avengers: Endgame.

11. Jun 19, 2022

    The issue's top result at one major auction house, $19,200, is set.

12. Apr 2025

    The census shows 86 copies at CGC 9.8.

13. Oct 2025

    The census shows 349 copies at CGC 9.2 and 545 higher.

14. Nov 4, 2025

    A CGC 9.2 white-pages copy sells at auction.

The world in 1972

• Sep 1, 1972

  Bobby Fischer defeats Boris Spassky to become world chess champion.

• Sep 17, 1972

  M*A*S*H begins its run on CBS.

• Oct 22, 1972

  The Oakland Athletics beat the Cincinnati Reds to win the World Series.

• Oct 26, 1972

  Henry Kissinger says peace in Vietnam is at hand.

• Nov 8, 1972

  HBO begins operating as a pay television service.

• Nov 14, 1972

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 1,000 for the first time.

• Nov 29, 1972

  Atari releases the arcade game Pong.

• Dec 14, 1972

  Eugene Cernan becomes the last person to walk on the Moon, on Apollo 17.

Price record

A realized private sale is a completed transaction outside an auction room. The amount is what changed hands on the date shown. Private sales are reported less consistently than auction results, so a single comparable carries less weight than a run of them.

By reference price, Iron Man #55 is number 65 of 100 in the comics entries of the FLOAT 100. 92 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (65 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Thanos's name echoes Thanatos, Freud's term for the death drive, which Starlin met in a college psychology class.
• Roy Thomas told Starlin that if he was going to borrow from Kirby's New Gods, he should take Darkseid.
• Starlin served as an aviation photographer in the Navy in Vietnam before working in comics.
• Starlin put Thanos and Drax into Iron Man because he feared his career might last only a few weeks.
• Drax's daughter grew up on Titan and became the hero Moondragon.
• Thanos's creator has a cameo in Avengers: Endgame.