Thor #303
The Miracle of Storms
Thor is on patrol in New York City, musing over the differences between Midgard and Asgard. That’s when he spots two men attacking someone on the street. He chases them away and discovers that the injured man is a priest and he is in bad shape due to the knife blade of his attacker breaking off in his wound. With no time to call an ambulance, Thor rushes the priest into the nearby church where he examines the wound and discovers that it is very serious. Since he needs the skills of a doctor, Thor changes back to his mortal form of Doctor Donald Blake.
Searching around the church, Don is able to find make shift tools to remove the knife blade, stop the bleeding, and stitch up the priest’s wounds. Drifting in and out of consciousness, the priest catches a glimpse of a statue of the Virgin Mary and wonders if this is a miracle. When he looks at Blake, he’s already blacking out and sees the he is being helped by a normal man instead.
When the priest wakes up again, Don has cooked him some soup to eat and tells him to take it easy. Learning that the priest’s name is Father Coza and that the attack on him wasn’t a mugging. When Don asks if they should go to the police, Coza explains that it would be useless because he has no evidence of what’s going on. He explains that started this church up a few years back but it is struggling to maintain worshipers and donations are running short because people in the neighborhood are poor and have little to give. Eventually, a land developer had been coming around and buying up all the property in the area for an expensive redevelopment project. Up until now Coza refused to give up his church and the developer has been using his mob ties to apply pressure. With this attempt on his life, Coza has lost all faith on God and wonders if he should just give up and let his church die telling Don that it would take a miracle to change his mind.
Thinking about his own godly abilities, Don tries to convince the priest that his being there to save Coza’s life must have been a miracle, suggesting that he may have been an instrument of god. This is not enough to convince Coza, so Blake decides to find out more about this crooked land developer and his mob connections. Coza doesn’t remember the name, but heard the rumors from one of his parishioners, Ed Czerniak. With this information, Blake tracks down Ed’s phone number and asks him about the man hassling Father Coza and his church. He learns that the developer in question is a mobster named Angelo Simoni who lives in a mansion out on Long Island. With this information, Blake decides to pay Simoni a visit as Thor. Easily dispatching Simoni’s men, the mobster surrenders and promises to stop terrorizing Coza. That’s when he remembers that he ordered his men to attack the church moments before Thor showed up.
At that moment, the two thugs who attacked Coza earlier are back and toss some Molotov cocktails into the church. Inside, the priest is counseling a young woman, Mrs. Sheehan who is pregnant and is afraid she cannot support a child due to the fact that she is living in poverty. Hearing a crash from outside his office, Father Coza tells Mrs. Sheehan to stay put and locks her inside the office. Entering the Nave of the church he discovers that it has been intentionally set on fire and races outside for safety. That’s when Thor arrives and quickly nabs the two arsonists responsible. Remember that he left Mrs. Sheehan inside, Father Coza fears that she will be burned alive since he has the key and she is locked in his office. Coza then begins praying to God for guidance and spots Thor standing on a nearby building, using Mjolnir to summon a storm to put out the flames.
This inspires Coza to race inside to rescue Mrs. Sheehan however when she sees how bad the fire is, she faints. Trying to carry the pregnant woman out of the burning church, Coza rips open the stitches on his wounded arm. Eventually the strain is so great he can’t carry her any farther. With the wall behind him collapsing, Coza is about to give up when Thor arrives and uses the church’s massive crucifix to brace the wall. Coza believes that this is the miracle he has been seeing and asks Thor if he has been worshiping the wrong gods. The thunder god explains that there are many gods that are worshiped by man and that they are given truth and strength by the faith of their believers, saying that all gods come from the same higher force and that his faith is not misplaced.[1] With Thor shoring up the wall, Father Coza is able to carry Mrs. Sheehan outside just as police, firefighters, and an ambulance arrive.
With the danger over, Thor changes back into Don Blake and finds Father Coza and asks if this experience has changed his mind and is pleased to hear that the Father’s found a renewed faith. In the coming days, Father Coza witnesses how strong his community actually is as his parishioners volunteer their time to help clean up and repair the damage done to the church. He is even more surprised when Angelo Simoni comes and donates a bag full of money and begs to be forgiven for his sins. Coza wonders what could have happened to make an evil man change his ways so suddenly. When he spots Thor looking down from the rooftop he believes that this is confirmation that his good fortune is a sign that God is watching over him.
Recurring Characters
Thor
Continuity Notes
What Thor is referring to is that all the pantheons of gods can trace their existence back to Gaea, the spirit of the Earth, who birthed them all. This is first explained in Thor Annual #10. Marvel tends not to depict the Christian God in their books at the time of this writing (October, 2021) Yahweh has (arguably) appeared in 10 comics spanning Marvel’s nearly 80 years of publication and almost half of them were comic book adaptations of Bible stories. Marvel probably doesn’t want any grief from the very vocal Christian minority that exists in America. That said, considering every Earthly pantheon was created in the same way there is no reason why Christianity in the Marvel Universe would be an exception to the rule. There is no evidence to the contrary, but given what the norm is, I think it’s unlikely that that pantheon would be different than the others and if you want to e-mail me to debate I am going to ignore you because arm-chair theologists who want to debate your religion’s depiction in a work for fiction are the worst and you waste everyone’s time with your dumb nonsense, so I am primitively telling you all to get the fuck out of my inbox.
Topical References
Don Blake is depicted using a payphone that has a rotary dial. This should be considered a topical reference because these kinds of phones are obsolete. Also, pay phones are becoming obsolete as well. Modern readers could assume that instead of using one of these archaic devices, Don Blake uses a cell phone after looking up Czerniak online or something. Use your imagination.
