THOR #374: Cool but troubling Thor moment

[starwolf_oakley]

THOR #374 has a Thor moment that might not be awesome or whatever, but I still think it pretty cool. Mainly because how Thor reacts to some very bad news. Guest-starring Angel, Cyclops and Marvel Girl!



Thor has saved Angel from the Marauders in the Morlock Tunnels. But Blockbuster broke Thor's arm in the process.





It took a while to reveal the motives for the Mutant Massacre. It was revealed after "Age of Apocalypse" that the Dark Beast from the AoA timeline created the Morlocks. (How?) The experimentation was recognized by Mister Sinister as an "unauthorized use" of his own theories, leading him to order the elimination of the Morlocks.

As Rachel and Miles (of "Rachel and Miles Explain the X-Men") said, the Mutant Massacre was all about intellectual property rights.

Anyway, here comes the cool but troubling part.









And Thor knows that threats to Earth and Asgard aren't going to stop just because of this curse.

A great look at Thor's power, the burning of the dead Morlocks, and the unsettling revelations of Hela's curse.

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

This is why Simonson is still one of the all-time great Thor writers.

[damar148]

I really can't imagine one of the Marauders being powerful enough to break Thor's arm.

[magus_69]

It was Hela's curse, artificially weakening Thor's bones.

[icon_uk]

Specifically Hela gave him the frailty of a mortal, but would refuse to claim him, no matter how injured he was, so eventually, as his wounds accumulated, he'd end up being a sort of pile of Thor-goo with pulverised bones and no skeleton left to support him.

Do NOT piss Hela off, death gods can be a particulatrly creative in their punishments.

[magus_69]

There's another troubling angle to what happened. Thor doesn't know it, but he almost killed the X-Men. The New Mutants had gone into the tunnels, and the X-Men went after them. They were within a few feet of the tunnels when the energy blast was released. The NM were fine, as Illyana teleported them out because Warlock was freaking out over sensing his father's presence.

Thinking about the MM really makes me wish that more big crossovers were handled like it was. There were big developments in the main books (the X-Men were completely restructured, Wolverine got his first hint that Jean was alive, and Angel lost his wings thus setting him on the path to Archangel), and the tie-ins both impacted the story without overshadowing the major players (though it probably helps that the tie-ins were done by people working on the key books, ie. the Simonsons).

[crinos]

Isn't MM also the story that established Wolverine's rivalry with Sabertooth?

[icon_uk]

Yes it is, it's his first appearance in the X-verse (Though many years before, in two consecutive issues of Iron Fist, Danny fought first Sabretooth, and then Wolverine, and noted to himself that Wolverine's fighting style was very similar to Sabretooth's.

[icon_uk]

As mentioned in the Rachel and Mile's episodes, the Mutant Massacre was pretty much unique inasmuch it was a story idea Claremont had, which Louise Simonson and he decided was a big enough idea that they could be spread through the other titles and thus the story expanded more or less organically (And to differing extents, there's only one New Mutants issue involving the MM for example) to become an event.

Every other instance was trying to CREATE an event out of whatever story idea came to mind, and was a lot more marketing driven.

[starwolf_oakley]

Also, it was originally going to be Nimrod killing the Morlocks. It was changed to the Marauders for reasons. (Maybe Claremont wanted to use Vertigo and Sabretooth again.)

But we didn't learn the reasons behind the Mutant Massacre and why Mr. Sinister wanted the Morlocks dead until after the Age of Apocalypse was over in 1995.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I remember reading the comics way back, when Thor dealt with the bodies.

What annoys me now is that the X-books never explained what happened. So if you were only reading the X books, you wouldn't get an answer as to what wiped out all the bodies (though Claremont hinted that it was Storm's power returning, because...?).

[icon_uk]

There had been several instances where there was a hint of Storm's powers returning, or at least the ambient weather going a little strange for not apparent reason.

[md84]

Funny thing is, this curse ends up saving Thor the next time he and Jormungandr threw down. Normally they died in a mutual kill as part of the Ragnarok Cycle. This time, Thor couldn't die. Granted, the curse also making his skeleton super brittle combined with the injuries a planet-sized snake is able to inflict left him in a body cast.

[icon_uk]

My issue with this scene remains "How the hell did Thor know that EVERYONE in the entire miles of tunnels that the Morlocks lived in was dead?"

There might have been some poor bugger emerging from the pile of bodies that had shielded them from Scalphunters bullets and was just thinking “I’m alive? I’m alive! I’M ALIVE, I MADE IT… Hang on, what’s that crackly burning sound that seems to be headed this wa—-“

[cricharddavies]

The page that starts with "And shortly" has an explanation. He made as sure as he could be.

[icon_uk]

Nope, sorry, not buying it. In a case like this you don't have one, injured, guy doing triage to check of life signs on the multiple hundred Morlocks who had just been shot, buried etc in the tunnels.

You get on your Avengers communicator and call the emergency services down there to check for life signs properly, just like you would for any other disaster. In fact, as an Avenger, you publicise the living crud out of this despicable mass murder of innocent mutants. You get the police on to this whether they want to be or not.

You do not do a cursory check and presume that everyone is dead and then incinerate all evidence of them ever existing, so even if the Marauders were ever brought to justice (hint, they never were) there's no evidence to prosecute them with.

THAT would have been an interesting outcome of the Mutant Massacre to me, but as it is, as I've said before, we got nothing except a lot of dead background characters and extra angst for the X-Men.

The story inflated the number of Morlocks to way beyond anything we'd ever even had it hinted was their population, and then killed them all off for shock value (and apparently none of them could put up a fight as not a single Marauder was injured) and yet left every single Morlock who we'd ever met before this story was still alive at the end (With the exception of Annalee, Leech's adoptive mother).

Sorry, not meaning to take that out on you, it's just that "The Great Mutant Massacre" never impressed me then the way it clearly wanted me to be impressed, then or now.

[starwolf_oakley]

Indeed. Claremont and other creators made it important, giving it as a reason Magneto went "bad" again. Also, the Morlock time-travelling descendants Gene Nation (Marrow and Co.) wanted to blame Storm and the X-Men for the massacre instead of the Marauders themselves.

[cricharddavies]

You get on your Avengers communicator and call the emergency services down there to check for life signs properly, just like you would for any other disaster. In fact, as an Avenger, you publicise the living crud out of this despicable mass murder of innocent mutants. You get the police on to this whether they want to be or not.

You do not do a cursory check and presume that everyone is dead and then incinerate all evidence of them ever existing, so even if the Marauders were ever brought to justice (hint, they never were) there's no evidence to prosecute them with.

... on the other hand, it's Thor. He has a well-documented tendency to act as he sees fit without necessarily considering the requirements of his allies (c.f. kidnapping the Enchantress out of custody during MSH Secret Wars) and he'd made a promise to give the Morlocks a viking funeral.

I don't disagree that it's not well-handled. I only disagree that it's not handled at all.