Then again, this isn’t a Thor comic. It’s The Ultimates.
Part of the Jonathan Hickman-led relaunch of the Ultimate Universe, the basic idea is that the Maker (Ultimate Reed Richards) remade universe 6160 in a manner to his liking, mostly by using time travel to suppress the Age of Marvels. Now, after he was trapped in the City for two years, Tony Stark and Doom (that world’s Reed Richards) have gathered a group of superpowered insurgents to prepare for the day when the City opens again, to take down the Maker. During this preparation, they’ve been trying to right the wrongs of the Maker, one of which was freeing Thor from the dungeons of Asgard where the king, Loki, had put him, marking him a traitor. In The Ultimates #11, Thor and Sif (his former jailer) return to Asgard to end Loki’s reign, the issue told via splash pages and a long poem.
Deniz Camp has written The Ultimates less as a superhero team and more as an activist cell. It’s been rare for the full group to appear in an issue, shifting its central focus each month to build a tapestry of the group’s activities and the world around them. He’s also done his best to treat each issue as its own unity of storytelling, attempting different formalist experiments, like the fourth issue telling four different narratives across every page with a panel on each page dedicated to each. As an issue of The Ultimates, this fits structurally and narratively with its focus on only Thor and Sif (with appearances by Stark and Doom at the very end) and told in a unique, specific manner. Thematically, its exploration of a fascist state, the means of oppression, and the ways in which the oppressed learn to live with it, afraid to fight back for fear that things will get worse, is very much in line with rest of the series, which has been a comic about resistance against tyrannical rule, both overt and covert.
It also features the book’s regular artist, Juan Frigeri, and, I imagine, he was pretty pumped to have an issue of splash pages where he can channel everything into single issues that allow his detailed line work to shine. It’s a different sort of storytelling, one that actually accomplishes that rare feat that everyone talks about as the standard for quality visual storytelling: the ability to follow the story without the words. Told through a series of single images, each representing a chunk of time or a moment, Frigeri manages to nail it page after page. Together with Camp’s poem, the effect is more like a children’s book than a regular comic. Fitting for the mythological characters featured. Despite its connection to the larger world, this issue is almost a fable of fascism and resistance, of disruption and endurance. Characters are more impressions and single images than flesh out, and the story is dead simple and straight forward: Thor and Sif arrive, obtain the means to move about the Realms in secret, we’re told of the status quo, they try to enlist help and meet with scared apathy, they begin to strike, the ruling class hits back against the citizenry, and things head towards open conflict. The message is dressed up with poetic language, yet is very directly put:
You don’t make
concessions
To autocrats and
their oppressions
You don’t make
deals
With tyrants
You make war!
The closest Thor comic that comes to mind is the Robert Rodi/Simone Bianchi Thor: For Asgard six-issue series. Also not taking place in the regular Marvel Universe, For Asgard tells of a time where Thor is king of Asgard and grows slowly more tyrannical with time, making choices that seem good for Asgard but incorrect morally. The big reveal at the end of the first issue is that he can no longer lift Mjolnir. As the story progresses, dissent is sown by unknown provocateurs and acts of sabotage are committed against Asgard, all while the younger generation pushes back against tradition. It seems like this is the slow death of a once-great kingdom until Thor finds a way to reclaim his former worthiness. By the end of the final issue, it’s clear that the story was meant to continue (but never did) and is only the first step in how to heal a nation that has begun to erode and die. (The issue also recalls the Loki mini-series also written by Rodi, but drawn Esad Ribić where Loki finally conquers Asgard and finds the throne not as comfortable as he always dreamed, though that is much more of a character-driven story with any politics merely there to serve Loki’s story.)
During Matt Fraction’s run on Thor, he changed the ruling structure of Asgard, first with the triumvirate All-Mothers taking over for Odin and, eventually, the Congress of Worlds, a democratic government made up of representatives of the various Realms. Despite these changes, there was little substantive longterm impact on Asgard. As is the usual way with superhero comicbooks, time passed and things reverted back to tradition. Thor comicbooks aren’t usually political.
The Asgard presented in The Ultimates #11 is one shaped to suit its thematic purposes. Camp twists known elements in the ways needed to tell his story. The largest change is to the Vanir, normally depicted as a race more or less the same as the Aesir. Here, they become something akin to the Fae and fill the role of those that are comfortable enough under the oppressive rule, afraid to lose what little they have by fighting for more. Of course, when Loki and the Frost Giants look to put the screws to the populace following Thor and Sif’s first attack, the Vanir are among the first group to have their rights limited. It’s an interesting play on the traditional tensions between the Aesir and Vanir in the comics where war between the two was settled via Frigga marrying Odin, and the Aesir ruled over the Vanir in a benevolent-yet-chaffing manner. The echoing of that arrangement implicitly calls into question the justness of Odin’s reign. While more benevolent and fair than Loki, the line between monarch and tyrant is a thin one.
That there’s no resolution in this issue is the boldest choice. A morality play such as this would seemingly be best served with a clear ending: the downfall of the tyrant king. Instead, the big payoff is the message from above about resisting, not appeasing, tyrants. It’s not the actual final word of the Thor portion of the issue. While the war against Loki is implied at the end, so too is one Thor’s methods: a deal with Surtur where he enlists the fire demon to “Burn it all down.” Again, Camp uses previous stories and conventions to imply action. There have been countless comics where Surtur attempts to bring about Asgard’s destruction and Ragnarok, and it’s even shown up in a movie (you may have seen it). While a lot of the story doesn’t actually rely on regular Thor continuity, that moment is surprising in how it references such a well-known Thor trope. It almost feels out of place in an issue that seeks to demonstrate just how different this Asgard is from the one we know in service of its message. And that’s where I land with this issue, taken from the viewpoint of a Thor-focused reader: it uses the characters and setting in a manner that fits the message it wishes to convey.
In many ways, this could have been a story about Hercules and Olympus, or Namor and Atlantis, or Black Panther and Wakanda. Pick a ‘country’ in the Marvel Universe and a similar issue could be told. The poem approach seems to suit Asgard conceptually and the idea of finally seeing through an Asgard under Loki’s rule is appealing. Thor as an insurgent guerrilla fighter has an odd charm as well. These characters work well as simple metaphors for this message of resistance and no appeasement, partly because of the contrast with the Asgard that we know. And it’s incredibly relevant for the current times, another rarity of Thor comics.