Thor Odinson, God of Thunder Appreciation 2019

[616MarvelYear is LeapYear]

Thor #350 Dec 1984
"Ragnarok & Roll!"
With all the warriors gathered at the Plain of Vigrid, Odin lays out the battle plan.
Odin and Heimdall will stay in Asgard, Balder is to seek the aid of Karnilla, and Frigga is to take all the children away to safety.
Everyone else is to go to Midgard to head off Surtur and the Sons of Muspel.

Thor flies ahead to alert the Avengers See: Avengers #249.
Meanwhile, the hordes begin attacking Manhattan.


Karnilla tells Balder that she will not help unless he swears allegiance to her alone.
The Asgardians arrive in battle while Amora goes to retrieve Lorelei, who refuses to help.
As the Sons of Muspel begin to set the city aflame, Thor causes a downpour to put out the fires.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what Surtur wanted.
With the stopping of the storm, Bifrost is revealed.
Just as Thor realizes that Surtur is gone, the Gjallerhorn is sounded.

Script and pencils by Walter Simonson, inks by Walter Simonson and Carey Rothman (inking assist)

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

Yep, I'm sticking to the classics.

He also used to make epic entrances in the Avengers series. Like against Count Nefaria.

A165_Thor.jpg

[The Cool Thatguy]

Yet House of M and Secret Invasion were great, and I personally enjoyed Siege, though not nearly as good as the former two.

Agreed to strong disagree

And agree to agree that you're wrong :P

[Intothevoid]

I thought Siege was dumb, but then again i never liked any of Bendis events. For the life of me i have no idea why they kept giving him to write high-profile events.

The guy excels at writing street-tier characters and personal stories. Giving him planetary to cosmic scale events just doesn't work.

[Frontier]

Agreed to strong disagree

And agree to agree that you're wrong :P

The only good Secret Invasion is the cartoon version (in which Thor had a pretty awesome moment).

I thought Siege was dumb, but then again i never liked any of Bendis events. For the life of me i have no idea why they kept giving him to write high-profile events.

The guy excels at writing street-tier characters and personal stories. Giving him planetary to cosmic scale events just doesn't work.

His DC event "Leviathan" also petered out pretty quick.

[Intothevoid]

His DC event "Leviathan" also petered out pretty quick.

Leviathan was one of the biggest non-events i have read in recent years. Nothing of significance happened, nothing really mattered.

There wasn't even any cool action to say "well at least we got some old fashioned brawl", i swear i read the event from start to finish and i already forgot most of it.

[Wall-Crawler]

What was so bad about Siege for you guys ? I'm not saying it's great or groundbreaking but it was a fun and entertaining read, I really don't see anything wrong with it, same for Secret Invasion.

House of M I can understand, Wanda is on my top 5 female characters and it was indeed a story that ruined her character for the time being, but ignoring that, the story itself and the conflict was very engaging, Wolverine turning the heroes one by one, etc....and now Wanda is as good as new, the damage done in House of M is forgotten now and she is back to the character she used to be.

Hmm, gives me hope that the same will happen with Thor and in a few years we'll look back and see the current butchery as just a bad era behind us.

[The Cool Thatguy]

What was so bad about Siege for you guys ? I'm not saying it's great or groundbreaking but it was a fun and entertaining read, I really don't see anything wrong with it, same for Secret Invasion.

House of M I can understand, Wanda is on my top 5 female characters and it was indeed a story that ruined her character for the time being, but ignoring that, the story itself and the conflict was very engaging, Wolverine turning the heroes one by one, etc....and now Wanda is as good as new, the damage done in House of M is forgotten now and she is back to the character she used to be.

Hmm, gives me hope that the same will happen with Thor and in a few years we'll look back and see the current butchery as just a bad era behind us.

Because it was just plain dumb.

The name doesn't really work, because there was no escalation to violence/action, not really.

As a climax to Norman's craziness, it's underwhelming because he gets undone by face paint (ugh), no cunning on the part of the heroes whatsoever (if one only counts Bendis' plotting. Since he never acknowledges anyone else, I think it fair).

It was nothing but a slug fest and dumb one at that. A poor excuse to cut through JMS' Thor and weak return to supposed norms.

[Cronus]

Because it was just plain dumb.

The name doesn't really work, because there was no escalation to violence/action, not really.

As a climax to Norman's craziness, it's underwhelming because he gets undone by face paint (ugh), no cunning on the part of the heroes whatsoever (if one only counts Bendis' plotting. Since he never acknowledges anyone else, I think it fair).

It was nothing but a slug fest and dumb one at that. A poor excuse to cut through JMS' Thor and weak return to supposed norms.

Can you imagine how awesome Thor would be now if Stracynski had never left? Instead we got baloney from Aaron.

*sigh*

[Frontier]

Because it was just plain dumb.

The name doesn't really work, because there was no escalation to violence/action, not really.

As a climax to Norman's craziness, it's underwhelming because he gets undone by face paint (ugh), no cunning on the part of the heroes whatsoever (if one only counts Bendis' plotting. Since he never acknowledges anyone else, I think it fair).

It was nothing but a slug fest and dumb one at that. A poor excuse to cut through JMS' Thor and weak return to supposed norms.

And the final fight with The Void was finished pretty anti-climactically.

Oh, but Spider-Man punched out Osborn, so...I guess I should be satisfied?

Can you imagine how awesome Thor would be now if Stracynski had never left? Instead we got baloney from Aaron.

*sigh*

Well, we had Fraction in-between Stracynzki and Aaron, which wasn't much better (from what I've heard).

[Cronus]

Well, we had Fraction in-between Stracynzki and Aaron, which wasn't much better (from what I've heard).

I think Fraction's heart was in the right place with Thor, but the characterization of Thor and Odin's relationship was off I thought. But I can say Thor's level of power under Fraction wasnt a problem.

[MaximoffTrash]

What was so bad about Siege for you guys ? I'm not saying it's great or groundbreaking but it was a fun and entertaining read, I really don't see anything wrong with it, same for Secret Invasion.

House of M I can understand, Wanda is on my top 5 female characters and it was indeed a story that ruined her character for the time being, but ignoring that, the story itself and the conflict was very engaging, Wolverine turning the heroes one by one, etc....and now Wanda is as good as new, the damage done in House of M is forgotten now and she is back to the character she used to be.

Hmm, gives me hope that the same will happen with Thor and in a few years we'll look back and see the current butchery as just a bad era behind us.

Yeah, after 7 years of absence and some juice from a billion-dollar movie franchise, she is able to walk on her two legs again... If anything it only proves time and adaptions add to a character's survival, but that the event itself isn't damaging.
She is the way she used to be except for getting bunch of pointless retcons yet again and struggle to get into an Avengers book that doesn't start with "No".
And while Thor also got treated badly, it's not like he got a long sentence into comic limbo and become a hate target for another giant fandom.
I do hope things get better with Cates though.

As for Siege, should I just even for a dumb fun clash of heroes event, it's kinda poorly thought out?
Get here Ares!We need to show how powerful Sentry is!
Get here Helicarrier! Now we need the only logical solution to weaken the freaking Void...the same Void that would consume the entire universe in a What If!
Also Solar-Kun is also the only logical place to dump your trash.
Oh, we also act like Sentry is totally our Superman and we gather bunch of people to mourn his death like he is the brightest star of a hero ever to exist. Not that I dislike Sentry, but again Bendis act like it's someone with that much historical weight?
It's action-packed enough to be entertaining though, then again you remember it's your street level writer trying to depict what is so cool in a clash of gods and super humans.

[Ichijinijisanji]

IIRC, Thor was stricken ill during Al Milgrom's Fear-Eater Saga from Marvel Comics Presents (1988).
t.

Ill try to find the run but was there some explanation that weakened him or was it just some ultra powerful contagion?

[Brice]

I think Fraction's heart was in the right place with Thor, but the characterization of Thor and Odin's relationship was off I thought. But I can say Thor's level of power under Fraction wasnt a problem.

Fraction's writing had a lot of holes but ooh boy, he wrote a powerful, badass Thor. The Thor I would want to see imho. I take issues with the way he wrote Odin, but it is still infinitely better than the drunken, impotent and possibly senile strawman patriarch crap we get from Aaron.

I'd welcome a writer like him with open arms at this point.

[JKtheMac]

Fraction's writing had a lot of holes but ooh boy, he wrote a powerful, badass Thor. The Thor I would want to see imho. I take issues with the way he wrote Odin, but it is still infinitely better than the drunken, impotent and possibly senile strawman patriarch crap we get from Aaron.

I'd welcome a writer like him with open arms at this point.

Sure, that makes perfect sense. Welcome back the writer who not only told everyone openly he didn’t really care about Thor, but the one who took the job on short notice and completely threw away all the great work JMS did. Heaven forbid! Luckily Fraction seemes to have totally burnt his bridges with Marvel.