Thor: God of Thunder, Volume 3

The Accursed
written by Jason Aaron
art by Nic Klein (#12), Ron Garney (#13-17) with Emanuela Lupacchino (#16-17), and Das Pastoras (#18)

Diplomacy is more difficult than warfare. Launched by the escape of Malekith the Accursed, former king of Svartalfheim and prisoner of Niffleheim, and his subsequent terror on his own world, Thor is forced by his far more sensible mother Freyja into a collaboration negotiated by the Congress of Worlds, the so-called League of Realms:  Sir Ivory Honeyshot of Alfheim, land of the Light Elves; Screwbeard of Nidavellir and the Dynamite Dwarves; Oggmunder "Oggy" Dragglevladd Vinnsuvius XVII of Jotunheim and the Longstomp Tribe; Ud the Troll; Lady Waziria of Svartalfheim, land of the Dark Elves; and, of course, Thor of Asgard.  And it is, for much of their time together, little more effective than a gang of racist, petulant children as eager to undermine one another as capture Malekith, barely capable of coexistence and entirely incapable of any meaningful cooperation.

Correspondingly, Malekith's story is a fairy romance of escape and peril and magical lands of violence and poetry.  Mostly violence.  His campaign of terror across the realms may not have evoked much wonder in the reader, who along with the League repeatedly arrived only in the wake of his destruction, but his jailbreak—orchestrated by a band of Dark Elves loyal to their deposed king—is a thrilling exploit into the frozen, tormented landscape of Niffleheim, the icy wastelands around Hel.  The League, on the other hand, is a farce punctuated by tragedy, a kind of fantastical anti-Avengers.

Despite his growing frustration at the League's petty quibbling, Thor proves himself a weirdly astute mediator, even if his tactics are unconventional.

Thor:  Look inside that gingerbread house and tell me what you see.

Waziria:  An unconscious giant and three inebriated lesser beings making wagers about bedding me.

Thor:  A wager?  I wasn't aware of any wager.  How much are they--

Waziria:  Get to the point, Sir Godling, or I'll find Malekith on my own.

Thor:  This is the first time since they met that our League hasn't been squabbling and threatening to kill one another.  Now perhaps once they sober up, they'll go back to the way the were.  Or maybe, just maybe... there'd be far fewer wars if we'd all just learn to drink with one another now and then.  (The Accursed: 80 [Thor: God of Thunder #15: 11])

Their forced companionship and their mutual loss forges age-old enemies into allies and, against all odds, friends.  It's a testament to Aaron's seemingly instinctual grasp of Thor's world that both their bitterness and their brotherhood are credible.  The death of Oggy the silent Mountain Giant at the hands of Malekith equally enrages the entire League.  He was as unlikely an ambassador as any, a giant defined by his heroic actions and whose final words...his only words...were equally ironic and tragic and beautiful:  "I wasn't...done listening yet" (87 [#15: 18]).  

Ultimately, Thor feels utterly defeated by politics, hamstrung and fettered by the sovereignty of warrior fools.  The resilience of the League, even after its supposed dissolution after Thor's "execution" of Ud the Troll, is an unexpected consequence of the hunt that even the Dark Elf could not have anticipated.  As Sir Ivory Honeyshot notes when he attempts to cheer the brooding god, "You forged a brotherhood between beings who were raised all their lives to despise one another.  Do not discount that.  If there is ever a lasting peace made between the realms, they may say that it began here, with us.  With you" (128 [#17: 17]).

The Accursed lacks much of the majesty of The God Butcher and Godbomb, but it's a rousing adventure that evokes medieval romance and twentieth-century fantasy in equal measure.  It also refuses the easiest solutions, defies the best plans and intentions of its protagonist even as it establishes an ending more satisfying than Thor could have designed, and maintains a consistent, eloquent storytelling voice.

Bookending the League's pursuit of Malekith are two stand-alone tales that tonally anchor the new arc in fine and sophisticated ways.  Following Godbomb, a profoundly epic vision of deity which pit Thor and all of the universe's gods against the deicidal nihilist Gorr, "Once Upon a Time in Midgard" evokes the compromises and common tragedies as well as the corresponding hope that come along with a god keeping company with humans, especially the inevitable asymmetry in the parts they play in each others' lives.  He is a transforming agent in their lives, a god who visits on occasion: he follows with them to their executions, brings exotic dragon roasts to starving children, drinks with veterans of war, causes welcome rainstorms in the desert, crashes a S.H.I.E.L.D. cadet ball, but most importantly visits his old flame, now suffering from cancer, Jane Foster.  "Once Upon a Time in Midgard" is deftly constructed to demonstrate the beneficence and limitations of Thor, even as a god.  He is generous and kind and entirely helpless when confronted by the mundane realities of Earth life.  He cannot—and should not̛—solve our problems.

The second is a painful fable of friends, defiant in their youth but dragged apart by the inevitable magnetism of their diverging destinies, "Days of Wine and Dragons."  This is Thor of the Viking Age, a boozing braggadocio with a generous heart and a growing sense of his responsibility in the world of men.  Not long after his time-traveling adventure against Gorr—not unlike Avengers-Thor in "Once Upon a Time in Midgard"—he is called upon to rescue a small village under siege.  It's a quest that brings him into an inebriated partnership with a young dragon.  But it is the second act of their friendship, when the dragon returns to the village an exile from his home having been banished by his intolerant father, that gives the collection such a sweetly melancholy denouement.

Collects Thor: God of Thunder #12-18:  "Once Upon a Time in Midgard," "The Great Niffleheim Escape, or The Svartalfheim Massacre," "The League of Realms," "Bury My Heart in Jotunheim," "I, Thor...Condemn Thee to Die," "The God Who Saved the Elves," and "Days of Wine and Dragons"

ISBN:  978-0785185550