But, to be unfair one more time: it was kinda his fault for writing Thor: Ages of Thunder.
The first of three one-shots released in 2008, Ages of Thunder was a decidedly post-Ragnarok (the Michael Avon Oeming- and Daniel Berman-penned story) comic felt so fresh and new, so bold and confident. It began with the caption “IT IS THE ERA OF THE THIRD RAGNAROK,” while the second story (each one-shot had two stories) began “IT IS THE ERA OF THE ELEVENTH RAGNAROK.” That alone set it apart, leaning into the cyclical nature of the Asgardians, of their continued existence that ends with the gods dying and beginning anew. This wasn’t a superhero comic; this was a comic about Thor the myth. The Thor of stories. In that first one-shot, word balloons were rare as Fraction relied mostly on narrative captions to tell the story alongside the art, a complete break from a decade of dialogue-driven writing with few captions save ones that indicated a location. Ages of Thunder was so different from the monthly Thor comic – and everything else Marvel and DC were putting out.
Even the idea of telling stories of Thor’s past, of leaning into the mythology Viking god side of the character was something new at the time. Others had told stories of Thor in the past, interacting with Vikings or other people of Earth. Not many had done so with such brutality and ugliness. Of leaning into the idea that the gods were once everything that humans are, only bigger and more dramatic. Their highs are higher, their lows lower. It very much seemed like Fraction was coming at Thor and his world from a perspective we’d never seen before and that was exciting. We wanted more – and we got it two months later with another one-shot that continued the loose larger story that would connect all three issues. The third one-shot took several months and was followed quickly by a fourth, unrelated one that would actually be more of an indication at where Fraction was coming from. It’s a little surprising that the second two one-shots didn’t temper expectations and the demand for Fraction on the monthly book. The God-Size Special, in particular, seemed like a disappointment at the time. It’s not a bad issue by any means. It’s a loving tribute to one of the memorable moments of Walt Simonson’s run, the last stand of Skurge the Executioner (a moment so memorable and cool that it made it into a movie) that also ties up a dangling thread, of sorts, from the Tom DeFalco/Ron Frenz run. If you take the issue as it comes, it’s an entertaining read and has some great art by Dan Brereton (recreating the Simonson story) and Michael Allred (such a goofy chapter) amongst others. It also reprinted the original Simonson issue, Thor #362, so... how could you complain? When I read it now, I tend to look upon it pretty favourably. It’s the finale of the Ages of Thunder trilogy, Man of War, that gives me much more of a pause.
We return to expectations and reality, once more. In this case, it’s the expectations created by the story and the reality of how it plays out. The broader story of the Ages of Thunder one-shots is that the Asgardians are thoughtless and frivolous people. They are gods in their glory, making rash, short-sighted decisions that require them to find a rapid solution to the problems of their own making. Odin is arrogant and selfish, quick to blame others and to demand that he get what he wants. And, usually, what he wants is for Thor to fix things. And Thor does it. In that first issue, he saves Asgard from itself by killing Frost Giants at his father’s behest – but he also clearly understands that the reason why he’s needed is his own people’s foolishness, particularly that of his father. So, he’s resentful and usually not in much of a mood to celebrate saving his people. In Reign of Blood, Odin’s selfish lust puts both Asgard and Earth in peril, prompting Thor to act – only to be betrayed by the people he’s trying to save. The thrust of these two issues is that, yes, Thor grows cold and cruel, but it seems somewhat justified given that the problems he’s solving with his hammer are created by the people he’s saving. Who wouldn’t, after a while, grow tired of saving everyone from themselves? Particularly when the main cause of these issues is his own father, Odin?
From the end of the first issue, it’s clear that a confrontation between Thor and Odin is coming when Odin invites Thor to celebrate the return of Idun and her ability to cultivate the golden apples that grant the Aesir immortality, and Thor rejects the offer, saying “SOME OF US HAVE BEEN KILLING GIANTS TODAY AND AREN’T IN THE MOOD TO HAVE A TEA PARTY.” Artist Khari Evans gives Thor such a wonderful sneer as he says this, solidifying just how little Thor thinks of his father and the rest of Asgard in that moment. What are they celebrating? What did they do? What did Odin do, except beg his son to solve his problem? The issue ends with the following captions, which point to the eventual confrontation:
AND THUS DID ONE-EYE, AND THUS DID ALL-FATHER, AND THUS DID THE SUPERLATIVE ODIN COME TO SENSE THE COLD AND ARROGANTLY CRUEL MAN HIS SON HAD GROWN TO BE.
AND A CHILL BLEW THROUGH ASGARD...
BAD DAYS WERE COMING.
Reign of Blood only increased the conflict between father and son with two stories where Odin’s selfish lust nearly brings ruin down on Asgard. In the first, Thor is mostly a bystander, albeit one who makes it clear that he knows that Odin and Loki need to find a way to clean up their own messes; in the second, Thor goes to Earth to defeat an army of the undead. It requires creating a Blood Colossus, this monstrous creation of dirt and metal and lightning with Thor at its heart. It takes forty days and forty nights for Thor to defeat this army of the undead and, before he goes into the Blood Colossus, he tells the people of the village he’s helping to save, that he needs his horses to win. That, though they will die, if the people drag their bodies onto a fire and burn them, they will be reborn the next day. No matter how hungry they are, they must resist eating the horses. It’s the one thing Thor asks. Loki, of course, convinces them to eat the horses and, upon saving the village and discovering that they had eaten his horses, coupled with the long and weary battle he’d undergone, he, ah, gets a bit angry, brings down rain and floods, creates a new horse, and vows to bring down a rage on humanity unlike any before. This is where things begin to turn with the third issue, Man of War, having Odin send his Valkyries to stop Thor (until they unite against a common enemy) and, then, suiting up in the Destroyer armour to fight his son directly.
The thrust of the story up until the end of the second issue is one where Thor’s diminishing patience for those around them seems justified. We see Odin and Loki make choices that are poor and require Thor to act to right matters. Odin’s choices come from arrogance and selfishness; Loki’s from envy and maliciousness. The result is that Thor is beyond his breaking point and the third issue’s resolution is to cast Thor as little more than a child throwing a temper tantrum in sore need of a lesson in humility. It may be that Fraction’s perspective is not that of Odin, but it is the dominant (and victorious) perspective in the comic. There’s a coupling of ‘humility’ with ‘cheerful obedience’ that’s difficult to accept.
Perhaps, that discomfort is where this comic needs to live. There’s a genuine sense that Thor is treated unfairly by his father who decries his son’s lack of humility while displaying only arrogance and selfishness. The issue ends with Odin besting Thor in battle and, then, stripping him of his godhood and sending him to Earth in the body of a human who tends to the sick while suffering from a weak and handicapped body: Arkin Torsen. In the end, we see that Odin sending Thor to Earth to learn humility is just another element of the cycle. It’s a cruel sort of ending that never sits right with me, particularly the final captions: “IN SHORT, THE MAN KNOWN AS ARKIN TORSEN WAS KNOWN FOR HIS HUMANITY. / IT WAS A START.” I hesitate to call that a ‘happy ending,’ yet it’s clearly portrayed as a positive ending. One where justice has been served on a brash, young god who should have just shut up and did what he was told with good humour. It’s a disconcerting sort of ending, because Thor’s rage at the end of the second issue and beginning of the third is excessive and needing someone to curb it. Yet, it was the choices and actions of Odin and Loki that brought him to that point, and they suffer not even no consequences, but no recriminations. Taken on its own, you would think that Thor’s anger was rooted solely in the arrogance of a young god who has overreacted to a minor slight.
The stories told in these issues are not fair or nice ones. People suffer unjustly. The Frost Giant that Thor kills at the end of the first issue is tricked by Loki’s schemes just as much as Thor is in the second issue, for example. And he dies anyway. That Thor suffers an unjust fate with no regard for what caused his rage is not necessarily out of place with the overall tone of the issues. There is little fair or just in these pages. All there is, truly, is the idea that the strength and will of the mighty dominates that of the weaker. And that’s what happens, in the end. Odin is more powerful than Thor and that might is the true decider of who is arrogant and in need of a lesson, and who is justified in their actions. It’s as much a part of that ‘bold, new approach’ to the character that I mentioned above as anything.
That the different stories all take place across different eras of Ragnarok firmly places these stories within the idea that Thor and the Asgardians are inextricably tied to cycles. These stories form one larger one spread out across different cycles of existence, suggesting that these events repeated themselves again and again, confirmed by the final pages of Man of War where Thor becomes a man clearly meant to allude to Donald Blake, hundreds of years before Blake existed. These are recurring mythical stories where the events are somewhat divorced from typical motivations as we know them. These characters are less characters than roles that they inhabit by decree of fate. Odin is the arrogant patriarch; Loki the trickster that no one trusts yet everyone tolerates; Thor, the brash young god. It doesn’t matter why they do the things that they do, they just do them and events play out as they will. Fraction revisits this idea, in a subtle manner, in his Thor run when Thor resurrects both Odin and Loki, seemingly for no reason other than he misses them and wants them back. You could place that in Fraction’s recurring theme of family, or that, even though Thor has broken the cycles of Ragnaroks, there is some generational memory that he can’t escape. He can’t help but recreate these familiar roles and situations as displayed here. How many times must Loki betray them? How many times must Odin rage at Thor’s arrogance while displaying his own? How many times must Thor get over himself and do what’s ‘good for Asgard?’
Despite the frustrating third issue, Ages of Thunder remains a startling work, one that clearly influenced the Thor comics that came after Fraction. You don’t get much of the Viking metal elements of Jason Aaron’s run with these comics. Nor even the bleak Thor of Donny Cates. Look closely enough and much of what Fraction did as the writer of the ongoing monthly book is foreshadowed here. But, these comics exist outside of continuity. When was the era of the third Ragnarok exactly? Or the eleventh? Or the twenty-third? I know when Fear Itself takes place, though. Ages of Thunder raises expectations and promised a bold, new perspective for Thor, even if it’s one that isn’t compatible with mainstream corporate superhero comics. Sometimes, in hindsight, you can see everything that led to a specific place and, still, someone has to get punished, has to fall, has to get a lesson in humility.
Sorry, Matt. I’m trying.
