The central scene of this issue is the return of Toranos, which, at the end of the previous issue, was implied to be a threat of similar scale and magnitude as Toranos’s attack on New York City in the first two issues of the series. Instead, it’s not an attack, but a warning in the form of Toranos nailed to his wheel. “The wheel turns,” as it were. There are two pieces of note in this scene (maybe more once I start working my way through them), so I’ll start with the obvious one that continues my often repeated arguments about the larger story: Thor kills Toranos.
Toranos is the retconned Elder God of Utgard that preceded Thor as a sky god. The original god of thunder and storms. The way that Toranos is presented, in a sense, is as the platonic ideal of the idea of Thor as a god. Thor is meant to be the bastardized watered down version of Toranos. In reality, you could argue that he’s the refined, evolved version of this particular archetype as evidenced by the way that his modern perspective ‘infects’ Toranos and, ultimately, makes Toranos more like Thor. The idea of Thor is a stronger one than the idea of Toranos. But, the idea of Toranos is still the root of the idea of Thor, so, when Thor kills Toranos, he’s killing off a piece of his own identity. Another part of Thor manifested in physical form so, when it is destroyed, a part of Thor is destroyed, all in service of Loki’s efforts to free Thor from being Thor, idea by idea, piece by piece.
However, I’ve also argued that the Utgard-Gods (and Elder Gods at large) are not only a retcon by Al Ewing to build out this older pantheon and link it to Thor for the purposes of this story, it’s actually a retcon made by Loki in their telling of the story. A false sense of the old and the base ideas of the gods to fight against, to overcome, to transcend. Part of what enslaves the likes of Thor and the other Asgardians (and enslaved Loki) are these ideas of what it means to be a god. By forcing Thor to confront the basest idea of himself, one that’s a bit more akin to the Thor of mythology than the current Marvel Comics character, Thor isn’t simply destroying a part of himself, he’s freeing himself from himself. He’s choosing to be something else. When Thor declares that his true power isn’t in the storm, it’s in the power to hold the storm back, he’s stepping out of a cage of what it means to be the Thunder God.
And, of course, the real twist is that Thor kills Toranos not out of malice or anger or hatred. It’s not an effort to kill that part of himself that he wishes to be gone. In essence, when he gave Toranos a sense of him compassion, he did that. Instead, when he kills Toranos, it’s out of the very compassion that set Toranos apart from his peers. Toranos dies at the hands of compassion more than once. I don’t know, that idea makes me chuckle a little. Thor’s compassion for Earth causes him to make Toranos feel compassion, which causes Toranos to argue on behalf of Thor and Earth, which causes the Utgard-Gods to nail him to wheel, which causes Thor to kill him out of compassion. The gods destroy no matter their motives, I suppose...
The betrayal of Toranos also sets the Utgard-Gods in undisputable opposition to Thor. It’s a sign that his fated confrontation with them is unavoidable, as is his death. His victory against Toranos is turned into a defeat. But, it also sets up Utgard-Loki as a more deadly and heartless enemy than previously thought. Until this point, it was set up as the Utgard-Gods against the Asa-Gods, in a sense. The old against the new. And, here, the new had managed to win over a member of the old and, instead of taking that as a sign that an accord could be reached, the old reacted by killing their fallen brother.
Utgard-Loki killing Toranos to further his purposes is also the warning, the message sent to Thor, if he were clever enough to notice. He’s not, unfortunately. As the Skald, Loki is unable to insert foreshadowing that teases Thor’s eventual death via puncture wound at the hands of Loki. If Thor were more observant, he would see his sibling’s all-too-clever warning. “Go to Utgard and your Loki will betray you and run you through until you die.”
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The epigraph for this issue is a bit of a mystery to me. Said to come from “The First Lay of Sigurd Fafnicide” in The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson, I’ve never been confident that I’ve found it in my copy of The Poetic Edda as compiled and translated by Carolyne Larrington. The epigraph in this issue reads:
Now part we, now farewell!
Fate
may not be withstood.
While it’s not unusual for Al Ewing to reference a different name of a poem, there’s nothing in my copy that quite matches that title. There are numerous poems of Sigurd and Gudrun, but none specifically called the first lay of Sigurd in any way. The closest I’ve come to finding this epigraph is from the last stanza of “A Short Poem about Sigurd” and it’s not as close a match as I’d normally like:
‘Much I have
said, I would say more,
if fate granted
me more time for speech;
but my voice
fails, my wounds are throbbing,
I told only
truth and now I must depart.’
There are commonalities between the two and, maybe, Ewing cut down the four lines of the version he’s quoting into two for effect. If you take the second and fourth lines of the version I have and reverse them, it’s a rough approximation of the epigraph of the issue. Looking through the other Sigurd/Gudrun poems, there isn’t any passage that comes close to the epigraph. Proceeding as if what I’ve quoted is the passage Ewing selected, the full stanza is more revealing and fitting for the issue than the epigraph, in a ‘spot on’ sort of way. It very much fits with Toranos’s message for Thor. Probably a bit too much. It seems to narrow in on Toranos specifically and, at best, alludes to the future fate of Thor, though that hasn’t arrived yet.
The epigraph, by contrast, is more vague and general. Thor has three departures in this issue and the epigraph could apply to all three, particularly with the idea that fate can’t be stopped. Thor is fated to die, so, if he didn’t leave Freya or Toranos or Sif when he does, he would eventually. There is no avoiding the fate that lays ahead of Thor.
As this is meant to be the beginning of the end of the series, it’s also a fitting epigraph to begin the final six-issue story. I don’t know if Ewing manipulated the stanza as it appears, but, if he did, it was to great effect.
Next week, I’ll discuss The Immortal Thor #21 and the sacrifice that Skurge hopes to maintain.
