The Ash

~Thanos in the Infinity War art book Part 1: cover and first pages by Ryan Meinerding (nº1,2,4,5) and Alexander Mandradjiev (nº3)~

From introduction:

[…] Thanos aspires to collect [the stones] for what he believes to be a noble purpose: to prevent the cosmos from destroying itself by eliminating half the life in the universe.

“Thanos has been lurking in the shadows of our universe since the end credits of the first Avengers film, and as we learned maybe even before that,“ President of Marvel Studios and Executive Producer Kevin Feige says. “He has had his hand in almost every action that has occured on a grand level in the MCU, all surrounding his desire to obtain these Infinity Stones […]“. 

“That’s really the connective tissue that pulls our entire MCU together: the fact that the stones are spread out throughout the franchises,“ Co-Director Anthony Russo says. “And that’s how Thanos, as a villain, connects everybody in going after those stones“.

Unlike their previous owners, Thanos is able to harness the stones’ powers on a completely different level. “They’ve been misused by people who didn’t understand their true power”, Co-Writer Christopher Markus says. “And now that the real master of them, Thanos, has shown up, we can see what they actually do. […]”