Thor #323 does not have Jim Starlin’s name anywhere
in the credits. A random fill-in issue (no doubt an inventory issue used for
one reason or another) by Steven Grant, Greg LaRocque, Ricardo Villamonte,
Diana Albers, and George Roussos, it breaks up the meat of the Doug Moench run
on Thor with a story in Thor’s past. While out on some sort of adventure with
Loki and the Warriors Three, they come across a large, muscular blue being with
a giant war hammer that threatens them for coming too close to the border of
his domain. What follows is a bit of a spin on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
with him insulting Thor into agreeing to a contest where, first, Thor will
strike the first blow and, then, the ‘Dark One’ will return the blow. Thor hits
him with Mjolnir and knocks his head off and, like the Green Knight, the ‘Dark
One’ simply picks up his head, jumps on his horse and demands that Thor follow
him to his domain or be dishonoured. Thor insists on following despite the
warning from Fandral that only Odin has ever come back from that region and
that it is certain death. Taking Loki with him, as they come to a golden
bridge, they encounter a seductive woman who tries to get Thor to stay with
her. Before he rebuffs her, Loki rides off, leaving Thor concerned that he will
tell all of Asgard that he has behaved dishonourably. To prove that he did not,
Thor charges ahead, overcomes the bridge crumbling, and squares off with the
‘Dark One.’ Despite nearly dying from the first blow, Thor continues on, even
as he’s beaten down more and more, taunted by both the ‘Dark One’ and the woman
(his wife) as they tell him he’ll soon be their prize, turned into a statue to
accompany the dozen or so that he passed at the entrance that were once
warriors like him. In the end, Thor is spared because, as he’s about to die, he
thinks only of his love for his father and the love Odin has for him. The ‘Dark
One’ spares him and sends him back to Asgard with the gift of a horse having
triumphed as Odin once did. Odin dismisses the gift and tells Thor that he
faced Fear and his wife Desire, the enemy of all warriors, and that he would
face them many more times in his life as a warrior.
It’s such a strange story, based in part on
the story of Gawain and the Green Knight, but doesn’t adhere to it strictly,
instead taking the rough plot and a little bit of the seductress/noble knight
resisting elements. The opening scene is downright delightful in how it leans
into Thor being a jerk of a big brother to Loki, fitting in nicely with the
reworked issue 272 in the recent Immortal Thor #6.
Where I see the similarity to the work of
Starlin is in the end and some of the artist choices. The idea of a story where
Thor faces off against the physical embodiments of Fear and Desire is very much
the ‘metaphor made literal’ approach that Starlin often embraced, particularly
when a character would allow for that sort of mystical quality. His cosmic
being often represented a specific quality like this and, even his Thor run
with Ron Marz, leaning heavily into the physical manifestation of a
psychological aspect.
In the art, it’s hard not to see Starlin
both the ‘Dark One’ and his wife’s designs. The ‘Dark One’ is a blue-skinned
giant of a man with a goatee and a Mohawk, looking straight out of ‘random
alien casting’ from Warlock or Dreadstar. His wife, on the other hand, has
similarly blue skin, but circles discolourations around her eyes, recalling
Gamorra or Heater Delight along with similarly form-fitting garb. Apart, it
would be easy to dismiss as a coincidence. Together, it definitely seems like a
concerted effort to mimic Starlin’s aesthetic. LaRocque is around seven years
younger than Starlin and could have been influenced by him, especially if this
was an inventory fill-in done years previously when Starlin’s Warlock would
have been a particularly strong enough. The line work of LaRocque and
Villamonte definitely has a few Starlin-esque moments, while maintaining a
different enough style.
While reading the Moench run, this fill-in
was a pleasant treat. The ending is a little hokey, but, for a Starlin guy, it
was interesting to read something that seems influenced by his work, even in
small ways.
