Thor: Love and Thunder uses the best Thor villain in modern Marvel

I never expected Thor: Love and ThunderGorr the God butcher will be honored. It’s nothing personal — Gorr simply isn’t your average supervillain. He’s not a guy who shows up to crow at Thor about how It is nowHis plan to destroy the world is going to work. There’s one definitive Gorr story, an 11-issue hammer-drop of an epic that might also be the best Thor story of the last decade.

Also Thor: Love and Thunder hits Disney Plus this weekend, go ahead and watch it if you want to — or don’t watch it if you don’t. But, you can still enjoy the story of Gorr The God Butcher.

“Now we let the hammers talk,” says Thor standing dramatically on a ship next to the older King Thor, and the younger Unworthy Thor, in Thor: God of Thunder #8 (2013).

If I’m being honest, I wholeheartedly recommend reading Jason Aaron’s entire Thor run. However, this is not an easy ask for everyone unless you are already very serious about comics. This is what I did. can’tYou should ask for a Marvel Unlimited subscription. To suggest you google a reading list would seem unreasonable. And I definitely can’t tell you to settle in for over a hundred issues of pulp action, high emotion, and absolutely gorgeous art from the likes of Esad Ribić and Russell Dauterman. It would be foolish.

But it’s fine, because most of the themes of Aaron’s — again, quintessential and very fun — seven-year run on Thor exist in microcosm in its very first, completely stand-alone story, drawn (mostly) by Esad Ribić and colored (mostly) by Ive Svorcina: the saga of Gorr the God Butcher.

His sword through a young Thor’s chest and his hand around his throat as they plummet through the sky, Gorr the God Butcher talks of all the gods he’s killed and what they were gods of. “Tell me now, prince of Asgard,” he gloats, “before all you’re able to do is whimper and scream... what was Thor the god of before he died?” in Thor: God of Thunder #2 (2012).

You don’t have to watch much of Thor: Love and Thunder to get Gorr’s basic deal: The guy thinks all gods should die, and he’s got a plan to make that happen. The question of worthiness and how to obtain it is the throughline of Aaron’s Thor run, which saw the God of Thunder unable to lift his hammer after losing his faith in gods, a moment underscored with the phrase “Gorr was right.” Then a mortal took up Mjolnir, proved worthier than any of the gods, and died defeating a monster made out of their transgressions against mortals.

The message of Aaron’s run isn’t that all gods must die, but that all gods must change. That worthiness isn’t something you are, but something you work to do every day, and is closely tied to an acceptance of mortality, whether your own or that of your loved ones. Thor, in the God Butcher tale, only triumphs when he has to confront not only his past unworthy but the huge gulf that separates him from his future.

Which is to say, he teams up with his past self and his future self to kick Gorr’s butt across the cosmos in a battle that shakes the foundations of existence at the end of time. I mean, yeah, it’s a story about Thor’s evolution as a person, but it’s also got a “godbomb” that will reach across time to kill every god who ever lived at every moment of their lives simultaneously — and tons and tons of Ribić’s gorgeous art.

The heart of the reason the Marvel Cinematic Universe failed Gorr is because it lacks worthiness. That core element of Marvel Comics’ Thor stories hasn’t really been present in the MCU since the original Thor2011 In 2011, other strong themes replaced it, such as family ties or wrestling with your forefathers’ sins. Thor: Love and Thunder skimmed the top of Aaron’s Thor run for its coolest characters, Gorr and Jane Foster’s Mighty Thor, and spun a new story out of them.

But if you’re at all curious about the whole stein of ale, not just the foam, you owe it to yourself to read the best Gorr story: the first Gorr story.

Gorr the God Butcher, a sallow-skinned alien in a huge cloak, whose fist ends in a sword, battles Thor in midair on the cover of Thor: God of Thunder #11 (2013).

Thor: God of Thunder — God Butcher Omnibus

These prices were correct at the time of publication.

Thor is on an uneasy trail as the gods disappear, and his future, past, and present are at risk. Thor must solve the horrifying mystery surrounding the God Butcher in order to save the worlds. Collection of the popular series created by Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic and which saw Thor confronted with the God Butcher… Gorr! Collecting: Thor: Thunder of Thunder (2012) 1-11.

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