By Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic, Butch Guice & Tom Palmer (Marvel Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-551-2
In the wake of the epochal Avengers versus X-Men publishing event, the company’s entire continuity was reconfigured. From that point on the banner MarvelNOW! indicated a radical repositioning and recasting of all the characters in an undertaking designed to keep the more than 50-year-old universe interesting to readers old and new alike.
This involved a varying degree of drastic rethink for beloved icons, concepts and brands, always, of course, with one wary eye on how the material would look on a movie screen…
Collecting Thor, God of Thunder #6-11 (cover-dated May-October 2013) and scripted throughout by Jason Aaron, this blistering cosmic chronicle again encompasses a multitude of eras as the Lord of Lightning ends an epic war to save all deities throughout Creation from the sadistic depredations of Gorr, the God-Butcher…
It all began when the present-day Thor heard a prayer from another planet and voyaged to the arid planet Indigarr where a devout girl called out to alien gods because her own had been murdered.
The Thunderer’s intervention and investigations took him to the pan-cosmic metropolis Omnipotence City, where divinities from every world and time had gathered since the universe began. He found there that pantheons across the universe had been mysteriously disappearing or dying for millennia…
Moreover, as he was constantly intercepted and ambushed by monstrous black beasts he remembered a ghastly time when he was young and boisterous in Iceland and Russia and an alien foe had slaughtered his followers before capturing and torturing him. Although he had eventually overcome the insane god-hating Gorr, the present crisis had much in common with that awful, humiliating occasion…
Meanwhile, at the end of time in a universe with no gods left, an aged, one-eyed, one-armed Thor was the Last King of Asgard, unceasingly defending his Great Hall from an unending horde of savage black beasts that hungered for his doom…
Thanks to perseverance, the ramblings of broken alien minor deity Shadrak and the benisons of the enigmatic Time Gods, the contemporary Storm Lord at last learned the impossibly cruel, history-shredding scheme of the God Butcher: to invade the time-stream, unmake history and achieve a utopian “Godless Ageâ€â€¦
The Celestial Slaughterman was over the moon when his 21st century nemesis arrived in Asgard at the end of eternity. Now the temporal terror had two Thors to torment as he completed his awful agenda…
The saga resumes in this volume with a slight digression as ‘What the Gods Have Wrought’ (illustrated by Butch Guice & Tom Palmer) reveals the brutal ancient origins of the primitive Gorr on a hellish world where all his children died long slow deaths. Discarding the gods who had abandoned him, the enraged apostate then stumbles into a duel between two cosmic beings and kills them both after the battle leaves them spent and helpless.
One of the celestial beings had employed a black energy force, and that eerie weapon then transferred its power and allegiance to Gorr. Revelling in revenge achieved, the barbarian reshaped the dark force into armour before flying into space seeking more gods to kill…
By time’s end he had eradicated almost all of them – apart from a captive population he kept to torture and fuel his ultimate weapon…
The 5-part ‘Godbomb’ – illustrated by Esad Ribic – then opens with ‘Where Gods Go to Die’. In the final future the mature and ancient Thors gird themselves for battle as, in 893AD, young Thor is attacked by Gorr’s minions and becomes the latest captive of the God Butcher’s slaughter camp…
In the now at the Library of Omnipotence City, Shadrak reveals his hidden nature and what Gorr made him build. The Librarian is appalled at what the “God of Bombs and Explosions†has wrought…
Brought to be broken at the end of eternity, the juvenile Storm Lord meets the last deities in creation – including his own eventual granddaughters Atli, Ellisiv and Frigg – before learning the meaning of sacrifice and humility as a ‘God in Chains’. His unending torment is only leavened by his meeting the son of Gorr – a kind and decent boy who worships his own red-handed sire as a god…
The ultimate bomb is fed by the deaths of gods and when ready it will explode, sending killing energies through time to destroy all gods everywhere. The captive deities are intent on sabotaging it, but before they can find a volunteer Atli realises her boy-grandfather has already gone…
The attempt fails completely leaving the Godbomb utterly unscathed. There is no sign of young Thor. Unknown to all, the boy has been blasted into space to be fortuitously rescued by a flying dragon boat carrying two older versions of himself. Set on war, ready to die and uniquely sharing ‘Thunder in the Blood’, the Boy, Man and Dotard turn towards what will be a fateful Final Battle…
From here on the story becomes a magnificent spectacle of heroic sacrifice and glorious action as the trinity of Thors defeats the ultimate enemy and sets Reality to rights in a tale of blistering action and exultant adventure, cleverly capitalising on the Thunder God’s key conceptual strengths, producing a saga to shake the heavens and delight fans of both the comics and the movies.
Also included herein are swathes of extra content for tech-savvy consumers via the AR icon option (described as code for a free digital copy on the Marvel Comics app for iPhone®, iPad®, iPad Touch® & Android devices and Marvel Digital Comics Shop: a special augmented reality content available exclusive through the Marvel AR app – including cover recaps, behind the scenes features and more) as well as a cover-and-variants gallery by Ribic, Gabriele Dell’Otto and Julian Totino Tedesco.
™ & © 2013 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.