Comic Picks By The Glick

The “Thor” section of my library is a fairly small one.  Though I have the omnibus of Walt Simonson’s definitive run on the character, the only run I’ve collected is J. Michael Straczynski’s.  That one started off well, yet ended so abruptly with the writer’s departure to DC that Kieron Gillen had to come in and give it some proper closure while filling time (quite well I might add) before Matt Fraction took over.  What I read of Fraction’s run was… not inspiring.  Now Jason Aaron takes on the character and he comes to us with a mixed record for playing superhero titles straight.  I liked his “Wolverine Goes to Hell” arc, but “Thanos Rising” failed to impress.

After all this, I could equivocate some more to spike drama about my thoughts on this volume’s quality.  That strikes me as a dick move so I’ll come out and say that I was entertained by Aaron’s take on the God of Thunder and will definitely be back for the next volume.

“The God Butcher” is a story that begins in three places.  The first is in 893 A.D. on the western coast of Ireland where a young Thor relishes his victory in killing a frost giant only to have it interrupted by the body of a dead god washing up on the beach.  Next, we find Thor in the present day answering the prayer of a young girl on a planet in deep space with no gods of its own.  Finally, Thor at the end of days finds himself besieged by the onslaught of an implacable foe who will not even allow him to die in glorious battle.  What connects these three times?  Gorr, the butcher of gods and a being of immense power out to cleanse the galaxy of these divine beings.

As far as stories about galactic serial killers go, this is head and shoulders above Aaron’s work on “Thanos Rising.”  Telling a story that takes place concurrently over three eras might sound like something that’s hard to follow, yet the approach works.  We’re not randomly jumping between eras as the scenes in each timeline work together to give the narrative real momentum.  Aaron also does a good job of writing Thor at each point in time.  His younger, cockier self gets what is probably the most complete arc of the bunch as we see how he learns fear at Gorr’s hands.  This carries over to his present day self, who is a more capable fighter and knows when to draw on the aid of others and use his head for greater strength.  Old Thor doesn’t get a whole lot of development here beyond demonstrating the fact that he’s as tough as they come and has basically turned into his father.  The volume does end with a development that looks to make this particular storyline more interesting in the future, though.

There were also a couple things about this volume that drew me in more than the multifaceted narrative.  Seeing Thor answer the alien girl’s prayer for rain for one, and accompanying the vikings to fight against their opponents in battle was another.  Both are god-like things that you don’t see the character doing a whole lot in his comics.  A lot of time this aspect of the character is neglected as he engages in more superhero-esque pursuits and it was nice to see that aspect addressed here.  Not only because it reinforces the fact that the character is actually a God, but that it’s central to the story as well.  Which is handy.

The other thing was a specific moment while Young Thor and Gorr were duking it out in the skies above Russia.  While the fighting is fierce, the narration that goes on in the caption boxes around it actually manages to be more engrossing.  There, Thor tells of the time he learned the difference between war and murder after a mad god named Dagr went on a rampage throughout the Nine Realms and he heard the story firsthand from the killer’s mouth.  Sometimes the amount of text put onto a comics page can be off-putting and an ordeal to read.  Not this time.  I was so absorbed by this tale, and with picturing how it went in my head, that by the time I reached the end of it I realized that I had forgotten to look at the art on those pages.  Can I remember the last time that happened to me when I read a comic?  No I cannot, and that makes this something special.

Then we come to Gorr himself and he’s the weak link in this story at the moment -- and not just because he’s a character named Gorr who butchers gods.  Having a pun name does not the best way for any villain to start off their career.  However, Aaron manages to overcome this to an extent and builds the character up as a proper antagonist to Thor.  We see how he taught Thor’s younger self fear, and it’s impressive, as is his torment of Old Thor as well.  That thing he does with the Elder God also lets you know that he’s not to be trifled with as well.  Yet the character remains a stubborn void of personality throughout this volume.  He tells us of his frustration with Gods and their inaction and how he wants to murder them all, but that’s all there is to it at this point.  We’re promised “The Origin of Gorr” at the end of the volume, so I’m hoping that we’ll finally see that there’s more than one dimension to this character.

Esad Ribic provides the art for the five issues collected here, and the good that he does more than outweighs the annoyances I still have with certain aspects of his style.  As mentioned above, the fight scenes are intense, with lots of variety between them throughout the story.  Yet that’s not all there is to Ribic’s work as he also has to draw not just three different eras, but a vast array of interplanetary scenes in the present day.  The man handles the fantasy/science-fiction parts of this story equally well and has no problem giving us a gigantic dead god on a beach and an intimate, tense conversation between Thor and Gorr in a dark cavern.

So great is Ribic’s range that it still bothers me whenever I see his characters’ eyes bug out in surprise with their mouths in an “O”-face as well.  This is something that I’ve seen for a while in the comics he draws and the unnatural way the characters look in these scenes does a great job of breaking your immersion in them.  It seems like such a minor thing, but it’s distracting every time I see it which is quite often here.

I’m willing to put up with that issue because the rest of Ribic’s work is so great and the story here is involving enough to pull me right back in after I get yanked out.  Probably the best way to state my praise for this book is that it makes me look at the hardcover edition of vol. 2 on Amazon and consider getting it right now.  I have more willpower than that, but what I’ve read here certainly makes it a challenge.