Thor's Inconvenient Truth

[proteus_lives]

Greetings True Believers!

Move over Al Gore, the Odinson has the floor.

Here are some scans from Thor: Heaven & Earth.

A super-villain is threatening a theater full people. He demands to see Thor.

Enjoy!



A villain named Fusion has taken a theater hostage and wired the whole place to blow. Then he wired himself to be the trigger.

Fusion used to be an ordinary guy until his son died imitating Spider-Man. Fusion went crazy and started blowing shit up.

He has one question for Thor.

"Will you bring him back."

This is why he asked for a god.

Thor says he cannot.

Fusion rages and says he will kill everyone. Thor asks him to stay his hand. Thor says what he asks will cause more harm then good.

Fusion: "You people can fly in and out of time. You can pull armies from the brink of destruction and still have time to start another war in the afternoon. And you can't return the life of one little boy?"

Thor: "No. But you must let me show you why."

Fusion doesn't want to know.

Thor: "There are two sides to everything. Good and bad, up and down, life and death. I am merely showing you both."













Fusion says that's not good enough. He wants to Thor to return his son or everyone dies.

Thor tries to explain to him.

Thor: "I only have one secret to tell: the secret of why we cannot interfere. If we save you from yourselves every time you stumble fall, ask yourself what you must inevitably become? Puppets."



Fusion screams for the hostages to leave.

He says Thor lied and asks if Thor will try and stop from pressing the trigger.

Thor: "You do not have to die."

Fusion: "Then your idea of free will is an illusion. You came here to prevent it, didn't you?"

Thor: "That is different."

Fusion: "Where is he? Where's my son?"

Thor: "Always on your mind. Alive in your heart."

Fusion: "Does he forgive me?"

Thor: "That will depend on you."

Fusion: "I can't forgive myself."

Thor: "No!"

Fusion clicks the trigger. Killing himself and bringing the building down. Leaving Thor standing in the rubble. The issue ends with a Bob Dylan lyric, "How many times can a man turn his head, pretending he just doesn't see? The answer my friend is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind."

Comments

[salinea]

This miniseries is ridiculously didactic.

[icon_uk]

This is why Ant-Man/Wasp are so handy to have around, whilst Thor gives his... to be honest, not terribly convincing, argument (This is a man grieving for his son, providing arguments about global warming is sort of missing the mark methinks), they could have been quietly defusing the bomb from the inside.

So when Fusion pushed the button and nothing happens he feels.

"You removed my choice. You, a god, removed my choice!"

And a small voice pipes up from beside him,

"No I, a woman, did that thank you very much, and it was MY choice to make too."

[leoboiko]

I like your story better.

[biod]

So Thor let Fusion (whom I loved in his Spider-Man debut) blow himself and who knows who else up to prove a, quite frankly pretty lame, point? It seems the Odindickery runs stronger in the family than even we suspected.

[biod]

Alright, so the point is not a bad one. It's just the wrong one.

[proteus_lives]

He didn't let him blow him up, he couldn't stop it.

[silicondream]

If Thor doesn't have the power to keep a dude from pressing a trigger, why are they even talking about whether he should resurrect dead kids and save mankind and stuff? Surely the conversation could be much shorter: "Sorry, I'm nowhere near omnipotent, and my dad could do all that but he's a dick so he won't."

[proteus_lives]

"why are they even talking about whether he should resurrect dead kids and save mankind and stuff?"

Because Thor is a god and Fusion thought he could force Thor to use his powers to bring his son back from the dead.

[silicondream]

Right, I'm just saying, "Nope, I don't have powers like that" would be a much quicker (and apparently more accurate) answer.

[fifthie]

Yeah, the venn diagram of like, "guys who can bring your son back from the dead", and "guys who are gonna break a sweat stopping you from blowing up a building" is generally gonna tend to have a really tiny overlap.

[silicondream]

Aesculapius, Kid Eternity, assorted mad scientists like Herbert West...that's about it really.

[fifthie]

Wow I just looked up the wiki page on Kid Eternity.

Jesus fucking Christ, Teen Titans.

[silicondream]

I bet Thor uses that "I know only of storms" line all the time.

"Hey Thor, you know anything about all this porn on the Avengers computer?"

"I know only of storms. Naughty nurses with enema kits are for, um, Captain Marvel. Or possibly my half-brother. Let's go with my half-brother."

Also, how come future Thor was forced to cleanse the air with a storm that killed hundreds of thousands of people, instead of teleporting all the excess carbon dioxide to Venus or something?

Superheroes don't really help with theodicy, although they do make it funnier sometimes.

[proteus_lives]

"Also, how come future Thor was forced to cleanse the air with a storm that killed hundreds of thousands of people"

Except that's not what happened.

[icon_uk]

That's not made terribly clear though, as Thor actually DOES say;

"You predicted the storm I must inevitably bring to cleanse the air. Yet when it came you let four hundred thousand people drown in it's flood"

If Thor DIDN'T inevitably bring it why phrase it like that?

[proteus_lives]

A good point.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Also, how come future Thor was forced to cleanse the air with a storm that killed hundreds of thousands of people, instead of teleporting all the excess carbon dioxide to Venus or something?

I'd guess because a storm would be the universe correcting itself naturally and teleporting the excess carbon dioxide would be "it's magic. We don't have to explain it." Or, he's the god of thunder, not the god of ex machina.

Besides, maybe he knows something we don't and there's a developing life form on Venus that would be killed by all that carbon dioxide.

Or it's a "if I keep cleaning up your messes so no one gets hurt, how will you ever learn" kind of thing.

[silicondream]

But he is the god of ex machina. I mean, Thor teleports and turns back time and transmutes elements and flies around the universe blowing up planets and whatnot. Guy's got as many powers as a Green Lantern, and violating the laws of nature to help mortals is basically what he does. Heck, in this story he's got the power of crosstime astral projection. That's a new one one me.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that Thor once did generate a--totally nonlethal--global storm to purify the atmosphere, after Dr. Octopus or somebody released an ozone-destroying chemical. He's interfered with interstellar wars and things too, so it's not like he believes in letting mortal races make all the horrible mistakes they want.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the fact that Thor doesn't solve real-world problems. That's an unavoidable convention if you're a Big Two superhero living on present-day Earth. I just think that having Thor try to explain why he doesn't is about as effective as having DC characters try to explain why the Joker's still alive.

[silverzeo]

Well... that's an odd way to end a PSA story...

Also, I thought it was officially stated that the earth was really freezing rather than warming up. The two thing I hate about these stories are always mostly one sided, basically saying if you don't do this, you're EVIL and killing the planet. That, and due the political connections, you never really know the truth. How to solve the debt? Spend less money for things you can only need as prices continue to climb, or spend more to get money flowing and help deflate the dollar's vaule....

[stolisomancer]

The truth is that scientists are all quite sure that dumping massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere is having a wide variety of negative effects year by year, but weather is a dynamic and vast system and there can sometimes be unanticipated kinds and levels of feedback. Right now, the polar ice is still dangerously low, and oceanic acidification is a serious problem.

The trick is to ignore the talking heads and the politicians who are playing on fear, trying to maintain power and authority by telling everyone that it will all be all right; that you don't have to change anything about your life. Those people are at best deluded. Read the scientific journals and make up your own mind.

[silverzeo]

I wonder if writers actually like writing stories like these...

[silicondream]

Well... that's an odd way to end a PSA story...

I dunno, they might all be improved by doing that. "What's that, Billy? You can prevent the spread of seasonal flu by washing your hands and sneezing into your elbow? That's fascinating! But you can't bring my wife back, so let me just slip into this noose here...."

Also, I thought it was officially stated that the earth was really freezing rather than warming up.

Oh gosh no. Back in the 70's, when climatology was a much younger science and we had 40 fewer years of data to go by, a minority of scientists suggested that manmade aerosols and orbital forcing might cause the Earth to cool. But by the 80's it was pretty clear that the greenhouse effect was going to massively outweigh those factors for the near future, and that the Earth was going to warm significantly. That's remained the scientific consensus up to the present time.

[glprime]

Wooo! The Fail Whale is thrashing all over this! No Endangered Species list for it.

Firstly, I like how the villain has the time, money and concern to get himself a costume for this. And just happens to get a couple big crates labeled EXPLOSIVE? (I hated a supposedly "normal man" going psychotically violent on Grey's Anatomy, I hate it here; this isn't even just shooting wildly with a gun, it's meticulous and meditated).

Secondly, dear gods yes, talking to a grieving parent with a point about global warming? Serious missing the point, writer. How 'bout instead: "Yes, I have lost many friends in ways I felt could have been prevented, but mourning and remembering them has always been the right choice, rather than raging and trying to cast blame. Even when they return, even when I have sought to return them to the mortal plane, they might be taken from me again, and I would mourn again. There is no true immortality when I must face that."

Thirdly, after passing by the inevitable speechifying of "Apathy Ego Greed Bad Mankind Bad," I can hear again the arguments for improving things (which are interesting), but come on, Thor, you claim all those levees and everything would be so expensive, you think all the ecosystem overhauling wouldn't be ridiculously costly? We're already dealing with our financial mistakes of the last several decades, we don't have the money nearly ANYTHING (at which point people start asking for Asgardian gold). Also, not all "The Poorest Countries (TM)" are coastal by any stretch of the imagination, and the same issue with digging canals to them occurs with building decent road/utility infrastructures. Geopolitics are hard when we're not all under a theocratic monarchy, big guy.

[stolisomancer]

Fusion is actually an obscure old supervillain from a nineties issue of Web of Spider-Man, so I think he may have had the costume already.

[fifthie]

we don't have the money nearly ANYTHING (at which point people start asking for Asgardian gold)

Inasmuch as "we" includes wealthy people and corporations, we actually have huge, mindblowingly unbelievable amounts of money. Or inasmuch as "we" means say, the government, we actually have the aforementioned wealthy people and corporations offering to let us borrow as much of it as we want at an effective interest rate of < 0%, because they have so little idea of what else to do with all of that money they have.

[zenbro]

I sort of get it, even if it seems Fusion's intended action and the larger environmental issue seems unrelated. It reminds me of the Balder miniseries where Balder questions the Norns about fate, except in this case Thor = Norns and Fusion = Balder.

Basically, I think Thor is saying, "Sure, I can stick my hand in the web that the Fates are weaving. The problem is, as gods we have really big hands and are more likely to screw things up for more people, whereas you as a human with smaller hands have the ability to make more refined and specific changes."

[zenbro]

As a bonus, I learned about the importance of halophytes like salicornia and mangroves. Thanks, Thor!

*watches The More You Know! star sail past*

[lissa_quon]

Hunh you know, when a god is all like "no I can't bring back the dead guy, let me show you why" I expect to get like a tour of the Underworld or something...something that isn't some global warming PSA, with the solution to not drowning is...to make ocean water go inland and grow special magic plants.

[baihu]

Preachy. All I can say.

I was expecting the Fusion guy to go TL;DR at some point...

[richardak]

''Massive channels drilled into the coastal landscapes of the world's poorest countries [to] bring billions of tons of seawater to man-made lakes"? What? What? That would be an environmental and ecological cataclysm of what I can only call Biblical proportions. This is why a (very, in this case) little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

[filthysize]

BECAUSE HE'S A GOD. GET IT?

[schala_kid]

Didn't like this one, the one after this issue was much better IMO. A Catholic Father having a crisis of faith and demanding Thor to tell him why he exists and Thor being at a loss and unable to explain his own existence to the Father. I dunno it kind of showed to me that Thor, despite being the God of Thunder was just as confuse and clueless about the meaning of life and how we came to be.

[proteus_lives]

Yeah, that one was better. I liked how they did Thor in that one. I shall post of it next week.

[schala_kid]

Please do, also if you can post the last page please do. I just loved that part.

[baihu]

Thor: "I'm an alien...that met some norsemen...and I turned into this?"

Better to say he doesn't know than the truth IMO, it sounds less like he's part of the Raelians!

[blackruzsa]

Whoa, Thor actually acting like a god....