When he finished his run on Thor, I immediately wanted to lock off the character from everyone. That you had this massively successful (critically and commercially) run and it just went right into another Thor run (the ill-fated Donny Cates/Nic Klein run) seemed wrong somehow. It felt wrong to not give the story that had just finished some time to breathe and settle. Like, we just read one of the best Thor runs of all time and I thought that respect was owed, for a moment of silence or something. Unrealistic when the spice must flow, of course. I didn’t think going right into a new creative team was doing them any favours by having to immediately follow King Thor #4. It was an unjust comparison and standard to have to live up to. But, you know, the month after Kirby left, Thor still came out. The month after Simonson left, Thor still came out. The churn is real and there’s always someone ready to step up and keep that train moving. The periods where the character didn’t have an ongoing title (and subsequently launched huge) were both fallow periods, in a sense. Moments where things had slid into apathy and the break was, in part, a way to generate interest. Interest, both creatively and commercially, isn’t low at the end of an historic run... that’s when all eyes are on the book and you strike while the iron is hot. Or, you feed some folks into the grinder to make way for the next run that no longer has quite as many lofty comparisons to meet...
It was more than that, though. I thought that the character should be locked off from Aaron, specifically. That he should be somehow prevented from writing Thor for a long, long time, to let the run sit untouched in another way. To not let him tarnish his achievement due to later, lesser work. Completely unfair and possessive in a weird, kind of creepy way. It’s a bit of the opposite of what superhero comicbook fans want, though. Usually, there’s strong demand for successful creators to return to their most beloved work – and, quite often, they do. Sometimes it pays off, as I’d argue it has for Jim Starlin’s periodic returns to Adam Warlock and Thanos; sometimes, it doesn’t, as it has for Chris Claremont’s periodic returns to the X-Men; and, usually, it’s a mixed response or an apathetic one, as we’ve seen in Frank Miller’s return to Batman and countless creators’ returns that appeared to some hardcore fans while everyone didn’t even notice. Hell, Walt Simonson has returned to Thor and his world numerous times since he departed the book and that hasn’t tarnished a thing.
But, the feeling persisted – the desire that Aaron remain at a remove from Thor, that he not fuck with the run he wrote... And that desire was almost immediately crushed by his still in-progress Avengers run, of which Thor was a central member of the cast along with Loki. I’ve made my feelings on that run (particularly the final year or so) pretty clear elsewhere. You’d think that would have been enough for me to get over myself. It wasn’t. It was easy to write that off as already in motion or evidence that I was right. Then, he did a story in Marvel Age #1000 that revisited the Jane Foster Thor and it was fine. Nothing amazing, nothing special, but not bad either. Almost akin to a lot of Simonson’s return to that world where he’ll come back for a short story that tells a nice little tale before moving on... It was easy to live with this and sigh in relief that the case around that Thor run was still intact.
Until.
Joined by his Avengers Forever collaborator, Aaron Kuder, Jason Aaron was doing Godzilla vs. Thor as part of a series of one shots of “Godzilla vs. [Marvel hero/team].” You can imagine my internet reaction. I don’t think I said anything online as I’m pretty good, at this point, about keeping my more obnoxious thoughts private (oops). I was not pleased, I was fearful, and I, of course, told my shop to order me a copy, because, like so many superhero comicbook readers, I am broken and dumb about this stuff.
The idea of the comicbook kind of offended me. It lends itself to all of Aaron’s worst sensibilities, the sort that I saw run rampant over the final year of his Avengers work (and dip in an out of his Thor work, admittedly). He is one of those lingering writers from what I’ve long dubbed The Age of Awesome in mainstream superhero comicbooks. The hallmarks of that period are still with us, sometimes for good, often for ill. The overreliance on the multiverse is one such trait; the inclusion of dinosaurs whether it makes sense or not is another; the odd obsession with Groot and MODOK and Deadpool... Thor as fucking Iron Fist... You know it when you see it and, after a period, I grew weary. Godzilla fighting Thor as written by Jason Aaron seemed, immediately, like the entire concept of The Age of Awesome taken to its logical conclusion in the worst way...
And, on my first read of the issue, that’s what it read like. Spinning out of his most recent Punisher book – which was itself an unneeded return to a character he has great creative success on (his Punishermax run with Steve Dillon is fantastic...) and, in conversation with that earlier work, diminished it, I’d argue – did not endear me to the comic at all. Culminating in Godzilla absorbing part of Gorr’s Necro-Sword to ravage Asgard only confirmed my worst fears. It was a fluffy bit of nonsense that took meaningful art for inane ideas that held nothing more than a shiny thrill with no substance. This is what he wants to add onto his Thor run’s legacy?
A couple of days later, I read it again. And it’s fine. It’s not a great comicbook. I wouldn’t call it fun or awesome or any of the superlatives I could find said about it elsewhere if I looked. But, it’s not terrible. It’s a dumb crossover licensed book that delivers on the title. What else could it be. It doesn’t tarnish anything. As I myself told many people when they were upset at The Dark Knight Strikes Again for ruining The Dark Knight Returns: “The original is still there!” It was unfair to hold on so tightly and personally.
I do think that there’s a conversation to be had about the legacies of great runs in an age where those runs don’t fade into back issue bins anymore. Of writers and artists maybe taking a beat before returning to characters and titles that they did their best work on. But, I also know that schmucks like me are not the people to decide that. We get to read the work (or not read it), be affected by the work, and decide where it sits for us. That’s it.
