The plot of the issue is straight forward: Thor and Skurge, trapped in NRGL, the Elder God that is the endless city, battle their way through the creatures that are also NRGL, encountering both Hermod and Heimdall, both thought lost to a death beyond the Realms. Which, of course, is true, given that Utgard is a Realm outside of the Realms. The conceit of the issue is that Utgard-Loki sets us on the path of the issue and we advance or go back by the flip of a coin. Hence why pages must make sense in either direction. Eventually, when we (and Thor, Skurge, etc.) make it through, the issue ends with the embodiment of the image upon Utgard-Loki’s coin representing heads: the bull/minotaur. Yet, even in a relatively straight forward issue (if you’re lucky), there are still bits and pieces of interest.
The framing where Utgard-Loki takes charge of the narrative, including flat out preventing Loki’s usual narrative captions from addressing is the ‘meat’ of the issue, as it were. The conceit of the coin that moves you forward or back, of leaving your progression to chance or luck – or fate – is meant to mirror the journey that Thor has already taken. Guided by some unseen force that appears random and without motive. Yet, the path is straight, a road that heads in two directions. Even if you seem to go back, the story continues and, eventually, you move towards the fated end. Thor encounters Toranos, manages to progress past that challenge, yet encounters him twice more. Thor passes Loki’s test/riddle... and, then, must solve another. Thor journeyed to Utgard... and so has returned. To go forward, you sometimes go back.
And, like Loki being the unseen author of Thor’s tale, providing a framework and correcting things, we’re also reading a story seemingly constructed by Utgard-Loki – but all of it is really Al Ewing and Jan Bazaldua with Matt Hollingsworth and Joe Sabino. They are the storytellers and the story is their work. Utgard-Loki, the coin, the whole thing... it’s not actually luck or fate, it’s just a comic and the idea that, we in real life, would flip a coin to determine which direction we go is them breaking the rules, in a way. They’re breaking the illusion, which actually works against the point of the comic, which is to show Thor, Skurge, Hermod, and Heimdall trapped in the endless city that is NRGL. Theoretically, the coin technique could trap the reader in the comic, never allowing them to finish it, but it also pushes them out of the comic. After all, how engrossed can you be if you’re flipping a coin at the end of each page? The natural flow of the comic is broken, making it nearly impossible for a reader to actually lose themselves in its pages, even if for a few minutes. It’s oddly paradoxical.
The coins that Utgard-Loki uses are never shown to actually contain both sides. We see each displaying a single side. Whenever they’re flipped, one always comes up tails and one always comes up heads. It’s implied that both contain each a heads and a tails, yet... Utgard-Loki is the archetypal trickster god, so, when it flips a coin right to introduce the idea that we may move forward or back, that the coin flipped is the one that shows heads suggests that it’s all a lie. If you look closely at the panel where it’s turning in the air, you can only see heads, no tails. We’re only meant to move forward. There is no going back. Even the repetition of the past is different, has a different meaning, plays out differently... it’s always moving forward.
The two coins contain various meanings, some of which is told by Utgard-Loki. The design of each is specific, containing both an image and a familiar rune.
For tails, per Utgard-Loki: “THE SERPENT ENCIRCLES YOU AS IT EATS ITSELF. CIRCLES THE WORLD, AN ENEMY PROPHESIED BUT NEVER DEFEATED. / THE COIN TAKES YOU BACK TO WHAT YOU THOUGHT YOU’D LEFT BEHIND.” It has the image of the serpent as Ouroboros along with the rune raidho, the rune of journeys. (“Now I’m going back to Canada on a journey through the past...” the man sings.) Looking back, the snake eating its own tail, the way that this comic is built upon the work of the past, referencing it over and over again, a modernist work that is ultimately self-referential. The journey of Thor through time, through stories. But, also, when Thor encountered the riddle of raidho, he crafted Tormod, his ax of wit and wisdom. After all, when taking all of these pieces of the past, of feeding stories into this story, isn’t that showing off cleverness and knowledge? But, the serpent also points to the Midgard Serpent, Thor’s past and future enemy. His past and future deaths. In this series, the serpent is not just the Midgard Serpent, though, it’s Donald Blake. His past self, the other half of his soul, his future self, after a fashion. As Thor moves forward, he’s actually moving back towards Blake. And, as enemies, since they are, in fact, one being (in a sense), isn’t their conflict the Ouroboros?
For heads, per Utgard-Loki: “NOW THE COIN IS WITH YOU. IT MOVES YOU ON, PUSHES YOU FORWARD... BUT TO WHAT? FOR WHAT? / WHAT WAITS AT THE END OF THE MAZE?” It has the image of the bull’s head along with the rune uruz, the rune of endurance. You get through it. You make your way through the maze to the end of the comic. The story goes on and on. Literally, the issue ends with Kemur, the Elder God that looks like a bull/minotaur. But, he’s not the only one that has that imagery. Dario Agger is also the minotaur associated with money. He keeps coming back, his corporation Roxxon a constant threat to Earth, which Thor is trying to save. But, also Utgard-Loki’s head, as it appears to us, resembles the image on the coin. The horns and the skull-like face. After Kemur lies Utgard-Loki. And after Utgard-Loki is Loki, whose headgear also makes them resemble the bull. And both Utgard-Loki and Loki wish to move Thor forward, move the story forward, for their own ends. Just as Dario wishes to progress. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Progress. The line going up? Each bull just another enemy to move past on the way to that eventual serpent thought left in the past. Because you don’t journey through the story, you endure it. You live it.
Later in the issue, Utgard-Loki makes their presence known again with the phrase “THAT’S THE QUESTION, ISN’T IT?” in response to two different questions. Because Utgard-Loki is a liar and a trickster. In this page, we’re almost tricked into thinking that there’s only one coin, that it’s a fair even choice between going back and moving forward. In the second panel, Utgard-Loki holds the tails coin in their right hand (on our left). In the third, it looks like they’ve flipped the coin, now showing heads mid-air, yet the fourth panel, showing the coin in rotation still only shows heads. I can’t see any suggestion of the serpent eating its tail. Because, as Utgard-Loki tells us, the coin is the lie that tricks us into repeating our actions, day after day. Our dreary lives spent in toil for coins to survive, doing the same tasks, living the same routines... except, the coin is actually propelling us forward. Making us think we’re journeying through frustrating repetition while we’re actually enduring our lives, always going forward. Utgard-Loki boiling our lives down to this pathetic imagery as justification for the destruction of humanity at the hands of the Elder Gods.
“HOW MANY COINS ARE THERE? / DO YOU KNOW?”
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If Utgard-Loki is heads, NRGL is tails... the endless maze, the Ouroboros...
With NRGL, Ewing adds a bit of playfulness and looking beyond the Norse pantheon for the denizens of Utgard. The name seems a reference to Nergal, a Mesopotamian god associated with war, death, and disease, translated from Sumerian as “lord of the big city,” specifically the underworld. Using the dual meaning of that translation, Ewing envisions a literal lord of the big city in the sense that NRGL is a living city, endless (immortal), and able to be whatever it desires. But, NRGL is also a literal underworld in that gods that die in a certain way go to. The underworld that NRGL is lord of is the oblivion that awaits the gods if they die beyond the Realms. Heimdall came here in Valkyrie: Jane Foster #3, while Hermod was obliterated by the Oblivion-possessed Tyr in The Immortal Thor #12. If you’ll recall, Tyr was given to the In-Betweener by Loki in an effort to learn something... perhaps, an alternate route to Utgard?
Much of Immortal Thor is spent revolving around various afterlife locations and their relationship with these seemingly eternal gods. The story literally starts with an unending war between the Elder Gods that is ended by Atum who absorbs and digests them, causing them to flee. Utgard is held behind a locked gate, basically an eternal afterlife for the gods that sought shelter there. Removed from existence, it’s a sort of limbo existence. Which is also the way that Vidbláinn is described, the other big afterlife of the series – one that Thor has already visited and will visit again. Where Skurge is threatened to go should he die again. It’s interesting that neither Heimdall nor Hermod went there when they were removed from the universe by different than usual means. And, when Thor dies in Utgard, that’s where he goes. And these various places all relate to Loki’s quest for freedom for all. Die enough times, live enough afterlives, and...?
With NRGL, there are two additonal details that struck me when doing the bare minimum online research. A logogram used for Nergal from the Middle Babylonian period forward is dU.GUR, which was originally associated with Ugur, an attendant deity to Nergal. It’s hard not to see the visual similarity to Utgard. Maybe that was what sparked the initial connection.
For comics, the name Nergal also brings to mind John Constantine. Nergal is the demon that Constantine summoned at the Casanova Club to combat the demon summoned by Astra Logue and the result of that is the big moment of guilt that hangs over Constantine throughout his life. Nergal became a regular antagonist to Constantine throughout Hellblazer and is sort of representative of the only demon that holds any upper hand over him consistently, if only because of that initial mental scar inflicted when he was younger. Bringing up Constantine and words like ‘magic’ and ‘trickster’ in relation to Loki and Utgard-Loki isn’t a direct clue to anything. If anything, it’s a very faint allusion where connections are visible without much true meaning. If pressed, there’s something in Loki sacrificing others in pursuit of their larger goal that recalls Constantine’s willingness to let others pay the price for his actions. However, Constantine is usually reactive, while Loki is fully active here.
The final bit on NRGL: the continued use of the word ‘maze’ in this issue is misleading. NRGL is not a maze, it’s a labyrinth. That’s part of the trick of the coins: the only way is forward and there is only one path. A maze is a contained, winding path puzzle with various false branches that shunt off from the one true path; a labyrinth only has one winding, twisted path that you can’t veer off from. That’s this issue, the story. It may seem disorienting and like you’ve gotten lost, but it’s always a direct route from A to B. And, at the end, is a minotaur...
Next week, the minotaur and the king in The Immortal Thor #23.
