It’s hard to write about Matt Fraction’s
Thor. It looms oddly large in my life. His run was going to be big. It was
going to be amazing. It was going to be fantastic. It was going to be one of
those legendary runs that people talk about with a bit of awe and love in their
voice for decades. The build up was huge, the wait was long. Firstly, for J.
Michael Straczynski to wrap up his run, then for Kieron Gillen to tie off loose
ends and, then, vamp for time. But, Fraction was coming! That was the promise!
And, then, he came and... well, expectations are a right bitch. And living up
to them just isn’t in the cards sometimes. If you weren’t there, it must all
seem so silly. I feel silly when I write about it. I feel mean and unfair, and
I don’t intend to be, but maybe I’m still hurt, unjustifiably I’d concede. The
comics weren’t as bad as they seemed and the demand to be not just good but
Great was unfair, even if it came from a place of love and excitement. And it
did, I swear. None of us were sitting there building Fraction up, hoping that
he would fail. I don’t think I’ve been quite as excited for a writer to take
over a work-for-hire book, before or since. It was a specific sort of
excitement and anticipation, because it started well before the gig was announced.
I don’t know if it was always part of the plan or if it was because we demanded
it. The fervor for Fraction writing Thor started over two and a half years
before his first issue came out, which is an absurdly long time. So absurd as
to be presumptuous on fans’ parts. Jeez, it was unfair, wasn’t it. How do you
live up to two and a half years of waiting? I guess you don’t.
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.
