Thor: God of Thunder, Volume 2

Godbomb
written by Jason Aaron
art by Esad Ribic (#7-11), pencils by Butch Guice and inks by Tom Palmer (#6)

This is how Gorr learned atheism.  And then heresy.  His is a world of suffering and misery, a world with little to eat, to drink or to shade them from the seemingly perpetual day, a world that took his family brutality, one at a time, and left him alone and grieving.  And all this suffering only made his people more devout, more faithful, and more intolerant of his despair in their absent gods.  Gorr did not believe, thinking themselves alone in the universe to suffer their lives as they are.  When two battling gods crash to his unnamed world, in his frustration and hatred Gorr kills them with a dark weapon that fell with them.  The God Butcher was born.

Aaron's universe is the world of gods.  They are not always beneficent or generous or even all that interested in those who worship them, but they are magnificent and awesome and dreadful.  They inspire worship because they inspire wonder and fear.  But it is also the world of mortals, those subject to the violent whims and mercy of these wild, awful beings, and Gorr is a casualty of their neglect and indifference who stumbles across a way to carve his own revenge and liberate their worlds from their mercurial sway.

But just as this is a story of what Thor is becoming, what he could be and is at different times of his own life, it is also a story of what Gorr is becoming.  Volstagg, normally renowned more for his enormous appetite than his astute intuition, sees the seeds of Gorr's mission as something more than just his great misfortune.  A powerful weapon of unknown origin that is itself transforming the god-killer into a god himself, and though Gorr vehemently denies his observation, his crucifixion of the Asgardian suggests he may yet feel the truth in it.  A truth that ultimately betrays him.

The substance of the story, nothing short of mortals' existential struggle and heroic self-discovery wrapped in adventure and lore, may give the series its gravitas, but the joy comes in the details.  Aaron's Thor: God of Thunder is liberally peppered with rich flights of storytelling fancy:  a school of starsharks feeding on the god-chum in orbit around Gorr's black world, young Thor's weapon of opportunity against the Avenger Thor and his steed against Gorr; a room in Asgard reserved for the All-Father alone and dedicated to fine, godly ale; and a bomb fueled by a god heart and time itself.  And he tells it with such a fine sense of folklore and epic that it drips like honey on the pages.

"On the world of Gorr, thunder is heard.  And then it began to rain.  It rained blood.  Godblood.  Then it rained hammers.  And Thors.  And despair."  (Godbomb: 85-86 [Thor: God of Thunder #9:19-20])

In a turn presaged by the ambiguous form of the titular compound—Godbomb, both a bomb to destroy gods and a bomb that is a god—Thor emerges from the weapon as the weapon.  On a planet made of the darkness—All-Black the Necrosword—he absorbs it into himself.  He may never remember it, and his future self (though the All-Father he fights alongside may not be the god he becomes) still feels his failure as a son, but he for this one moment at least is precisely the son his father Odin wants, the son indeed he prays to.  In his doubt, Thor still fights, for himself, yes, but more for others.  As a god, he is more human than any other.  Godbomb is a paean to the endurance of gods, of awe, and of the wonder of feeling both small and important in the light of the vastness and power of the universe.  In the end, the era of man, which Gorr so desperately desires and which sparks Thor the Avenger's selfless doubt, is the era of the gods.

Collects Thor: God of Thunder #6-11:  "What the Gods Have Wrought," "Godbomb Part One: Where Gods Go to Die," "Godbomb Part Two: God in Chains," "Godbomb Part Three: Thunder in the Blood," "Godbomb Part Four: To the Last God," "Godbomb Part Five: The Last Prayer"

ISBN:  978-0785168430

Thor: God of Thunder, Volume 1

The God Butcher
written by Jason Aaron
art by Esad Ribic

Gods are disappearing.  Faith has fallen into disbelief.  The truth of the gods is now little more than stories for children in the minds of their once loyal peoples.  It may be as the librarian of Omnipotence City explains to the unexpected researcher Thor, "Gods come and go, Son of Odin.  Such is the way of things and one group never much cares what has become of the other.  Why someday even the great Thor himself may be forgotten.  Let us hope so at least" (The God Butcher: 48 [Thor: God of Thunder #3: 3]).  But something more sinister than the slow devolution of faith is threatening the universe's pantheons, a killer of gods with unbridled sadism, no remorse, and a legion of eyeless, supernatural beasts left to guard the corpses.

Aaron's finest idea in a story brimming with them is the juxtaposition of the three Thors:  the young, boozing, womanizing warrior of the ninth century, whose early run-in with the titular "god butcher" alters the trajectory of his deicidal mission; the current-day Thor, Avenger, defender, superhero; and the old Thor of the distant future, last of the gods, fighting the unceasing forces of their killer in Asgard, transformed so much into his father Odin—bearded, one-eyed, and sitting on the throne—that his own inability to recognize himself is easily understood.  They are, in many ways, quite different men, full of folly, responsibility, and regret.

The God Butcher is, foremost, a mystery.  It is by happenstance—or perhaps fate, though I suspect neither Thor nor Aaron would agree—that Thor discovers the existence of this murderer of gods.  A head washes up on the shores of Iceland, what remains of an American Indian god.  Much later, believing himself to have killed the culprit and shamed by his experience in the cave, Thor never speaks of it until he again discovers a chamber of dead gods in a far away world.  Slowly and deliberately we discover their past, the god and his would-be killer Gorr, as we follow his investigation into the further disappearance of the gods.  We may, by virtue of the three-fold chronological structure Aaron has established, know exactly where events are headed—to a last stand in the halls of Asgard—but it in no way diminishes the pleasure and surprises along the way.

It is, however, equally an intimate character portrait, no matter how great the scope of the story.  Never particularly shy, ever with the perpetual residue of the young braggadocio of myth, Thor shows an unexpected vulnerability here, one which the reader feels strangely privileged to witness, as though a keeper of Thor's own secrets.  Meeting himself, he must account for himself and his actions to none other than himself, but the honesty in that confrontation is quite raw.

Esad Ribic brings Thor's epic quest to life, capturing the prodigious scope and gravity of the story.  His characterizations of Thor are subtle and clever, but he truly excels in the series' most epic moments.  Thor's discoveries of the slaughtered gods are each breathtaking and poignant.  They are awesome and fearful creatures, even when they lack mercy and kindness, and their humiliation in death is not without commensurate tragedy, none more so than the mountainous corpse of Falligar the Behemoth.

"I knew this god.  Falligar the Behemoth.  A patron god of the galactic frontier.  Champion of the Tournament of Immortals for five centuries straight.  They say he wrestled black holes just for fun.  I last saw him barely a hundred years ago.  We passed one another in the spaceways and waved." (52-53 [3: 7-8])

However spectacular Aaron's story, one of the finest currently being published, Marvel's packaging continues to underwhelm.  The structural quality of the book is admirable, and the paper very fine with a glossy finish, which gives the color a lot of pop.  But the tight binding forces some of Ribic's excellent artwork into the gutter, and the slight velvety texture of the hardcover and the poor design aesthetics of Marvel's trades make it look more like a utilitarian than a collectible edition.  The inclusion of a digital copy with the purchase of the book is welcome, but the "Augmented Reality" features, though they include some interesting notes on the production of the series, is more distracting than enhancing, when the AR app works at all.

Collects Thor: God of Thunder #1-5:  "A World Without Gods," "Blood in the Clouds," "The Hall of the Lost," "The Last God in Asgard," and "Dream of a Godless Age"

ISBN:  978-0785168423