The Twilight of Some Gods!

In order to learn secrets to his past, Thor has tracked down the severed eye of Odin, which had been terrorizing the dwarfish population of another dimension.[1] Trapping the sentient appendage in a vortex, Thor is told that it will only answer one of his questions. Given the choice of learning why his father bowed to the Celestials a millennia ago,[2] Thor instead opts to learn what his father meant when he claimed to have killed Thor in the past.[3] The eye warns Thor that to answer this question will fundamentally change the thunder god. Growing tired of the eye’s stonewalling, Thor threatens it with violence until it begins to talk.

In order to reveal its secrets, the eye begins walking Thor back through his past in reverse order. He takes Thor back to how he recently fought off the Midgard Serpent and staved off Ragnarok, which was triggered earlier when Balder was mortally wounded by the blind archer named Hodder, who shot him with an arrow made of mistletoe, the one thing that could harm the valiant warrior.[4] He takes Thor back further, to his battle against the Grey Gargoyle alongside Sif. Back further, another recent battle he had against the Rock Trolls, wherein he was aided by his mortal lover, Jane Foster.[5] Jane was different as, earlier, Sif merged her essence with Jane in order to save her life.[6] Earlier still, Sif fought alongside Thor to defend the Earth from the threat of Ego-Prime.[7] Thor continues moving backward in his memories, being reminded of battles past.[8] The eye lingers on how in recent times Thor was reunited with Sif and their love renewed. This happened after Jane Foster was given a chance to prove herself as a worthy wife to Thor by being given the gift of godhood. Jane Foster failed to prove herself worthy and was banished from Asgard.[9]

The eye then takes Thor back through his early career when he merely thought of himself as a super-hero and while he fought many Asgardian gods, he mostly defender the Earth from less divine threats.[10] This was because, at the time, Thor believed himself to be Donald Blake, a lame doctor who happened to find an enchanted walking stick that transformed him into Thor.[11] The eye reminds Thor that, for the longest time, Thor had no memory of his life prior to Don Blake going into med-school and that he was trapped in this mortal form by Odin in order to teach his son a lesson in humility.[12] Going further back, the eye then recounts the many fantastic battles Thor experienced on Asgard before this banishment to Earth.[13] Thor then witnesses his youth, wherein he had to prove himself worthy enough to life Mjolnir, his enchanted hammer.[14] Further back, Thor is then shown images of his birth, although the identity of his mother remains a mystery to him.[15]

Further back, where there should be no memory at all, Thor instead finds a massive locked door in his minds eye. The eye tells Thor to break the lock and force his way inside. When Thor shatters the lock, massive troll-like hands try to prevent him from opening the door but he forces his way inside. On the other side he is shocked to see images of Ragnarok — not the one that he fought him — but one that looks much older. He sees events playing out by gods with the same names but look nothing like the Asgardians he knows. The eye then rolls back time again and begins showing Thor these events in their proper order.

In an Asgard that looks more like the castles of ancient Earth, there were gods that called themselves the Aesir. Much like the near-Ragnarok he knew, Thor witnesses as a blonde haired Balder challenges his fellow gods to throw their weapons at him, confident that he is indestructible. Much like the legends, in this time Loki convinced Hoder to try striking down Balder. However, this version of events is different in that Hoder impaled Balder with a blunted staff made of mistletoe rather than an arrow. Thor is surprised to see that there is another Thor in this tale, one with red hair and a more primitive hammer. Soon, Loki would lead the forces of evil against Asgard. Odin and his Aesir then charged into battle. It is here that the eye points out that there are gods here that Thor have never heard of before, such as Vidar another son of Odin. In fact, when Odin is slain by the Fenris wolf, it is Vidar who avenges his father by slaying the giant wolf. Events continue to play out differently here, with Loki engaged in a final battle with Heimdall atop the Bifrost bridge, rather than with Thor.

Also in this version of events, the red-haired Thor battles Jormungand the Midgard Serpent. Although he slays the beast he is poisoned by the monster’s venom and dies shortly after. With everyone dead or dying, the fire demon Surtur then emerged and lays waste to the entire realm of Asgard, leaving nothing left by a dead asteroid in the sea of space. However, not all life has been extinguished as there are survivors of this Armageddon. Two of them are Balder and Hoder, who endured due to the fact that they were in the afterlife when Asgard was destroyed. They are joined by seven other survivors, namely Odin’s brothers Vili and Ve as well as his sons Vidar and Valie. Lastly, there are Magni and Modi, the surviving sons of the slain Thor. Tending to their wounded, the last of the Aesir look down and see that Midgard was spared in all the destruction.

Seeing all this, Thor has no memory of this older version of Asgard and demands to know when this all could have happened. Rolling back the clock to the moment this old Asgard was destroyed, the eye shows Thor the vantage point from Earth. Asgard is seen as a brightly glowing star in the night sky which is illuminating a mangier in the town of Bethlehem. Witnessing the birth of Jesus Christ, Thor is shocked to realize that this happened about two thousand years ago.[16]

Recurring Characters

Thor, Odin’s eye, Odin, Loki, Balder, Hoder, Fenris, Vidar, Heimdall, Jormungand, Surtur, Ve, Vidar, Vali, Hoenir, Magni, Modi, Jesus of Nazarene, Joseph of Nazarene, Mary of Nazarene

Continuity Notes

1. Odin plucked this eye out and fed it to the flames of Mimir in Thor #274.

2. Thor learned of his father’s mysterious pact with the Celestials in Thor #288. It’s later revealed in issue #300 that he was promising not to interfere with the Celestial’s experiment on Earth. This was all party of a long con by Earth’s gods to prove humanity’s worth to the the Celestials.

3. Odin made this shocking revelation in issue #291. We will have to wait until issue #296 and a shit ton of exposition before we finally get the answer to this mystery.

4. The last Ragnarok cycle was triggered and prevented during the events of Thor #273-278.

5. Thor and Sif’s battle with the Grey Gargoyle was in Thor #259, while he was assisted against the Rock Trolls by Jane Foster in issue #238.

6. The duality of Sif and Jane Foster’s existence happened when they merged together in Thor #236 using the Possessor’s Rune Staff. While this story states that they have a shared existence and have swapped places in the past, this is not entirely true. Ultimately, Foster gets trapped within a dimension that exists within the Rune Staff. Thor, Sif, and Keith Kincaid will later rescue Jane in Thor #334-335.

7. Thor’s battle against Ego-Prime happened in Thor #202. Issue #300 reveals that this was all part of a grander scheme by Odin to create a new race of gods to prove huamnity’s potential to the Celestials.

8. Depicted here is a montage of a number of Thor’s foes during this period: Loki (pick any handful of issues), Firelord (Thor #225-226), Pluto (Thor #201), Mangog (Thor #197), Doctor Doom (Thor #182-183), Galactus (Thor #168-169), the Silver Surfer (Silver Surfer #4)

9. Jane Foster lost her test of godhood and Thor’s reunion with Sif happened in Thor #136.

10. Another montage of Thor’s early Marvel battles: Loki (Journey into Mystery #85), The Radioactive Man (#93), his membership with the Avengers (circa Avengers #4), Cobra (Journey into Mystery #98), Mister Hyde (issue #99), the Enchantress and the Executioner (#103), Grey Gargoyle (#107), Magneto (#109), Absorbing Man (#114), the Destroyer (#118), Hercules (Annual #1), the High Evolutionary (Thor #134)

11. This is a recounting of Thor’s origins as they were originally told in Journey into Mystery #83.

12. The revelation that Don Blake was a mortal guise created by Odin to teach Thor humility was first told in Thor #159.

13. Thor’s early Asgardian adventures on display include Thor’s battle with Queen Ulla from Journey into Mystery #117-128, and his clash with Mogul of Mystic Mountain in Thor #137-145.

14. Thor first lifted Mjolnir in Journey into Mystery #102. His trails to lift the hammer were first documented in issue #97.

15. The identity of Thor’s mother is not revealed here. It’s later revealed in issue #300 that he is the son of Gaea, the spirit mother of the Earth. It should be noted the Gaea is Thor’s mother of the current Ragnarok Cycle and he has been birthed through others in earlier cycles. For example, Avengers (vol. 8) #43, the Phoenix Force has claimed to be Thor’s original mother, giving birth to the first incarnation of Thor in Year One Million BC.

16. The eye’s story as told here has been thrown into question. In Thor #355, Thor meets Bor, Odin’s father who throws the revelations in here into question by stating the eye was telling falsehoods because it bore a grudge. However, Thor (vol. 2) #83 explains that Asgard goes through cycles of death and rebirth and that with each cycle the Asgardians return slightly different than the time before it. This concept is reinforced Thor: Age of Thunder #1, Thor: Trial of Thor #1, Thor: The Rage of Thor #1, Thor: Reign of Blood #1, and Thor: Man of War #1.

Topical References

• As this story was published in 1980 the statement that the birth of Jesus happened 2000 years prior should be considered a rough estimate rather than a literal measurement of time.