Thanos creator Jim Starlin is known for helping dream up iconic comic book characters like Drax the Destroyer, Gamora, and Shang-Chi — but his latest comic villain is a not-so subtle parody of ex-U.S. president Donald Trump.
Back in 2019, then-President Donald Trump and his re-election campaign team ran a video on the official Trump War Room re-election campaign Twitter account showing Trump’s face superimposed over Marvel villain Thanos as he snaps his fingers and attempts to destroy the universe in a scene from Avengers: Endgame. As Trump/Thanos gloats, “I am inevitable” and snaps his fingers, the video cuts to Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler and shows them turning to dust. The ad drew both criticism and confusion from viewers, especially since the scene takes place at a point where Thanos fails to kill anyone and is turned to dust by Tony Stark.
One of the ad's most vocal critics was Thanos’ own creator Jim Starlin who struck back at Trump by creating the evil alien king "Plunddo Tram" (an obvious anagram for "Donald Trump") for his crowdfunded graphic novel Dreadstar Returns. The comic, a continuation of Starlin's original Dreadstar comics published by Marvel Comics' imprint Epic Comics, follows Vanth Dreadstar, the leader of a space-faring team involved in numerous intergalactic conflicts. In the opening pages of Dreadstar Returns, Dreadstar encounters Plunddo Tram, an overweight, orange king with a huge sweep of blonde hair over his crown. After easily defeating Tram's minions and slicing through the king's gun with his laser sword, Dreadstar calls out the ruler stating, “clearly your own welfare is your number one priority. In my book that makes you disqualified. So consider yourself fired!”
The lines — a not-so-subtle riff on Trump’s catchphrase from his old TV show The Apprentice — precede “King Tram’s” ultimate punishment as a later panel shows his decapitated head on a pike along with the caption, “King Tram and his unjust rule are ancient history.” Starlin, who's been known to also create parody characters to mock his bosses at Marvel, later disclosed in an interview to Inverse that "Plunddo Tram" was created as a response to Trump's appropriation of Thanos for his re-election ad, stating, “A certain politician using a character of mine in one of his political ads may have riled me a bit…I figured he was open game at that point.”
This isn’t the first time Trump has appeared in comics. In Marvel Comics’ New Avengers #47, a pre-President Donald Trump’s limousine blocks an ambulance, prompting Luke Cage to lift it out of the way. While Trump threatens to sue the superhero, one glare from Cage is enough to scare Trump into cowering inside his car. Later, in All-New Wolverine #19, it’s implied that a nervous President Trump orders S.H.I.E.L.D to scorch Roosevelt Island and the thousands of people living on it when he learns an alien virus is spreading on the island. Fortunately, Nick Fury is there to delay the order.
It’s said that people shouldn’t upset writers, lest they appear as unfavorable fictional depictions of themselves in stories. Donald Trump may have chosen the wrong clip of Thanos to announce his “inevitable” presidency, but with the bad blood generated between him and Jim Starlin, perhaps it was inevitable that “King Plunddo Tram” would make his debut in Dreadstar Returns.
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