In Thor Corps #4, the main antagonist, Demonstaff, is defeated not through the strength of two Mjolnirs, a Stormbreaker, and a Thunderstrike, but through regaining his lost humanity. Demonstaff was a scientist whose obsession nearly drove his wife away prior to an accident that transformed him into a being of dimensional energy that he tried to shape and cage to look human. The thrust of the story is him trying to destroy all alternate realities into a single version, while also taking revenge on his wife, who he thought caused the accident. He’s finally defeated when, first Dargo Ktor, the future Thor, resists every temptation Demonstaff can put in front of him in order to get his own wife back from the villain and, then, Demonstaff’s wife goes to him and gets him to both believe that she never did anything to harm him, and to finally see that this path was his own making. He ultimately regains his humanity and the two are sent to a limbo-esque dimension as punishment for his crimes (she willingly goes with him). Basically, the Thor Corps wins through love and empathy and just giving a shit about others.
And how exactly does Thor defeat Toranos in The Immortal Thor #5? He makes him feel love and empathy and give a shit about others.
Beyond its echo back into a previous version of the Thor Corps, Al Ewing isn’t exactly original in this approach, one that we’ve seen at least twice this century and, oddly, both drawn by Frank Quitely: The Authority #20 written by Mark Millar where an evil version of the Doctor is defeated when the full extent of those powers kick in, including global overwhelming empathy for all; and All-Star Superman #12 written by Grant Morrison where Lex Luthor, having stolen Superman’s powers, is defeated when the full extent of those powers kick in, including global overwhelming empathy for all. I’m sure there are other notable examples and I don’t raise them to criticise Ewing for being unoriginal, more to acknowledge their existence as well-known comics that Ewing and many readers no doubt have knowledge of.
While they clearly weigh as influences to the scene where Toranos experiences the caring that comes as part of Thor’s power, particularly the horror that comes with it as an experience so foreign and different, forever altering his very being, the idea that Thor’s plan always rested upon a feign of strength being the path to victory when it’s really love truly does echo the way that the Thor Corps mini-series plays out. A story seemingly about a group of Thors coming together to travel across time and save all of reality through hammers and muscles and lightning... yet, the solution is genuine human caring. There, it was a trick played on readers by the creators of the series; here, it’s a trick played by Thor on Toranos.
The epigraph that Ewing uses for this issue is a clever foreshadowing of what happens to Toranos, one that he doesn’t telegraph by presenting it in Latin rather than English. Coming from the Carmina Burana, it’s fairly well known in Latin when set to music, so it’s not quite so unusual to present it that way. Set next to the quotes from the Poetic Edda, though, which are always translated into English (and so are any future epigraphs from sources not originally in English), it’s a purposeful choice. In a work about language, the meaning of words, and translation, this is the one quote presented where the reader needs to work to understand it on even the most basic level. Once translated, the meaning and connection to the issue is immediately clear, but so are other epigraphs. My best guess is that it’s meant to echo the experience of Toranos holding Mjolnir and receiving the power of Thor in full. At first, it’s impossible for him to understand who Thor is and what his true power is; but, once it’s ‘translated’ for him, it’s so obvious and overwhelming in its true meaning.
The translated epigraph (taken from here):
The wheel of
fortune turns;
And I descend,
debased;
Another rises in
turn;
Raised too high
The king sits at
the top
Let him fear
ruin!
It seems almost pointless to actually analyse/discuss that epigraph given how literally you can apply it to Toranos (who holds the wheel), Thor (who lowers himself by giving his power away), and the result of Toranos gaining Thor’s power only for it to cause him to flee in horror. There’s also the opposite meaning, that the wheel turns, Toranos falls, Thor rises higher and must fear his future death (as sensed/seen by Jane Foster near the end of the issue). Or, to take it further, it’s the cycle that Gaea begins to plan in the short sequence at the beginning of the issue. Endless rise and fall, endless renewal, the wheel turns.
The revelation that Gaea is the one that set the Utgardians loose is shocking, yet telegraphed at the beginning of the issue. The idea that she would attempt to create a break in the war of the Ur-gods by introducing something new, thus spawning, eventually, the various pantheons, each with their peak, each variations on one another. The caption “A wheel that turned... yet, with each turning made new,” also relates to the manner in which Toranos is bested by Thor. They are both storm gods, Thor meant to be ‘weaker’ than Toranos in raw power, yet Thor has a strength that Toranos lacks: restraint. The judicious use of his power. While set upon Earth by Gaea, there’s also a sense that Toranos would simply do this anyway. He only knows destruction under the punishment of the superstorm. When the wheel turned enough times to produce Thor, while there is overlap with the elder god, there’s enough new to be foreign.
Which returns us to the Thor Corps and the way that this new version is a reversal/variation. As I said last week, the original iteration gathered twice and, each time, took on a threat from the future that threatened all reality, backwards through time. Toranos is literally the oldest (ish) sort of threat from the past, come to threaten the future, merging the two once he gains hold of Mjolnir, as he notes, “THE ANCIENT STORM MEETS WITH THE NEW! THE PAST AND THE FUTURE ARE ONE IN ME!” However, the past is quickly swept over by the future with modern ideas and considerations basically unstoppable. The wheel turns and, if this weren’t a Marvel comic, you can picture a world where the epigraph was simpler, taken from Deadwood:
“You cannot fuck the future, sir. The future fucks you.”
*
As we progress through the course of The Immortal Thor, I will sometimes have to flag so-called ‘essential’ comics that fall outside of the 25 issues of the monthly serial. Full disclosure: none are actually essential. You can read The Immortal Thor #1-25 from beginning to end without going outside of those issues and never fail to understand what’s going on. But, sometimes, Al Ewing wrote other comics that are as close to ‘essential’ as you can get without actually, you know, being that. Many will bear the name Thor on their cover, but not this one. Avengers Inc. #3 provides the answer to the unsaid question at the end of The Immortal Thor #5: how is Skurge alive and in Dario Agger’s office with Amora? Isn’t he meant to be dead?
Well, funnily enough, the issue begins with Skurge in Valhalla... dying. His own axe, the Bloodaxe, somehow flies at him and kills him. This is a seemingly impossible sort of murder given that Valhalla is full of the honoured dead and how can someone who is already dead die again? Jane Foster, in her role as the new Valkyrie, enlists Janet Van Dyne and Victor Shade to come to Valhalla and solve the mystery. In the course of their investigation, they figure out that the only way for Skurge to have died was with his own permission as a ruse to help him escape Valhalla and return to a mortal life. And only someone with an intricate knowledge of Valhalla and the rules governing it, including ways to leave it, could have assisted. Namely, another resident, Odin. He reveals that Skurge had had visions of Thor’s death and sought to return to Earth to take that death again, even if it meant never returning to Valhalla.
All of this is eventually revealed in the pages of The Immortal Thor, so this issue acts as a bit of a revelation sooner than you’d get otherwise. As such, I do wonder if it’s best read around this point in The Immortal Thor or left until after issue 21 when the story is retold (minus the mystery elements). There’s something to be said about leaving the mystery in the pages of the main story where Skurge’s references to Thor’s death and trying to take it on behalf of the Thunder God as he did the first time he died, and it’s not made completely explicit what happened until the fight outside the gates of Utgard. It adds a bit of edge to Skurge’s actions with Amora and Dario Agger, I find.
Yet, I can’t pretend that I didn’t read this issue around this point of The Immortal Thor as it came out. It came out October 23, 2023, while issue four of The Immortal Thor came out November 15. So, it pre-dated this two-issue Thor Corps story, making it known fairly early in the run. That means Skurge showing up at the end of issue five isn’t a complete shock for those of us who read Avengers Inc. #3. We knew Skurge was back and would run into Thor at some point. I wouldn’t say that that diminished the reading experience any... and yet...
This is the sort of debate I have with myself at times when constructing reading orders where the spine is set and you need to decide where best to place ancillary issues. While the original release date meant that you could read it at X, does it maybe work better narratively at Y? When I did my Brian Michael Bendis-focused reading order for Secret Invasion, I very much ignored release order in favour of what I thought was the optimal reading experience. In the case of Avengers Inc. #3, I remain somewhat undecided. It’s clearly a direct tie-in to The Immortal Thor with the way it gives even Leonard Kirk the chance to draw the flash-forward image of Thor bloody with Mjolnir and Tormod in hand, ready to fight and die. It’s hard to ignore it.
Its placement here, after issue five, seems as good as any place. It doesn’t disrupt the flow from issue-to-issue, which it would a bit more following issue three, which ends on the tease of Thor going to meet Storm. And it follows up on that final page reveal where Skurge is there with Amora. The idea that Skurge returns from the dead due to a prophetic dream, in an effort to stave off that future, also ties in nicely with some of the ideas discussed above about the confrontation between Thor and Toranos. Skurge is rushing from the past toward a future, doing his best to change it, to overcome it... but, as we’ll see, it’s not possible. For the second time:
“You cannot fuck the future, sir. The future fucks you.”
Next week, The Immortal Thor #6, which shows how you can change the past, if you want, along with Thor #159, the first big retcon in Thor’s history.
