You’ll have to pardon me because I’m not super up on the fine details of Marvel lore, but: How did Thanos manage to stomp half the Avengers, alone, with no stones?
When he manhandled Hulk and Thor in the last movie, it seemed like “Ok, he’s strong and he has two stones, so that makes sense” (I think it was the Power stone and one other stone? Can’t remember).
But in Endgame he flies in from the past, zero stones, and bodies the Avengers crew by himself like it’s no big deal.
So I’m wondering if someone who follows the comics can explain this to me
Didn't read all of the other comments, so maybe your question has already been answered, but:
Thanos is from the planet Titan and belongs to the race of the Eternals, who are capable of manipulating matter in various effects. That alone makes him quite powerful. On top of that Thanos has the Deviant gene inside him, which makes him something like a mutant of his own race (same with regular humans in the Marvel universe and mutants like Wolverine or Colossus). The Deviant gene makes Thanos even more powerful. And on top of all that Thanos has enhanced his own body with various kinds of magic spells and cybernetic parts to become even more powerful. He is obsessed with Lady Death (the personification of the concept of death in Marvel comics) and he always seeks for more power in order to cause more destruction and death in order to impress her.
In mainstream superhero comics power levels are usually split up in various tiers. You have the meta tier for example. A character like Angel (the flying mutant) is considered a low metahuman. A character like Spider-Man is considered a mid metahuman. A character like Captain Marvel is considered a high metahuman.
After the meta humans you have heralds, ranging from low heralds to high heralds. In the high herald tier you usually have characters like Thor, Silver Surfer, Superman and many others.
Then there is the next, somewhat in-official tier, which is known ans the trans tier. It's the link between heralds and skyfathers. Someone like Odin, Thor's daddy, would be considered a high skyfather. That's a character, who can perform magic on galaxy sized scale. High heralds are more or less limited to planetary level and a little bit above levels of power. Thanos is in the middle. He is powerful enough to wipe the floor with pretty much any high herald and a bunch of lower to mid trans tier characters, but on average he losses to every low to mid skyfather and gets stomped into the ground by someone like Odin.
The full Infinity Gauntlet grants Thanos universal power. With that he is capable of easily defeating abstract concepts such as Death, Infinity and others. They have universal power as well, but they're limited to their own concept. They're basically split up amongst themselves and all make one whole. The Infinity Gauntlet makes Thanos that one whole. However, he is still only limited to that one universe, since the Infinity Gauntlet can't influence anything outside that one universe.
It's also worth being mentioned that there are omega level mutants, who are complete anomalies and have FAR more power than the Infinity Gauntlet. Scarlet Witch for example, at the height of her powers, was affecting reality on a multiversal scale. She wasn't just limited to her own universe. She was messing up everything left and right. But she was still a glass canon, since she was stopped by an arrow if I remember correctly. She just had an insane power output. However, there are other mutants like for example the omega level reality warper Mad Jim Jaspers, who reside outside the regular reality and if they appear in front of you and you kill them, they'd still simply manifest again and turn you into a rabbit. And Thanos can't compete with that, with or without the Infinity Gauntlet.
