THOR: GODSTORM #1

It ain't THE PROSE EDDA, but it's still pretty good

By Tony Whitt     October 09, 2001

In 912 AD, a Viking elder tells two young boys the story of the one storm that dared to rebel against the Thunder God. As he casts the runes, he sees into the past, when Thor was but a young god and still learning his powers, and into the future, when Thor has allied himself with mortals to combat those who would do wrong. Loki seeks out the most powerful of all storms and, to get revenge for being humiliated by Thor, he turns this mightiest of storms against the Thunderer. Thor thinks he's solved the problem, but as the story unfolds, the Viking elder teaches the children that even gods can make mistakes.

I usually have the same problems with THOR that other critics do: it takes a lot of patience to deal with all the thees, thys, and thous, and very few writers can pull it off successfully without sounding either stilted or pretentious. Busiek is one of those writers. He also has the frankly uncanny gift of mirroring the diction of previous comic book eras, such as the trademark hyperbole of Stan Lee. In GODSTORM, Busiek recreates both the epic style of Norse mythology and the equally bombastic style of early AVENGERS comics, and the shifts from past to "present" never strike a sour note.

Aiding him in this recreation of the past are artists Steve Rude and Mike Royer who, with very few missteps, do a flawless impersonation of Jack Kirby. (Seems like there's a lot of that going around these days.) This book looks more like a reprint from the early days of either the THOR or AVENGERS series than a modern book, with nothing to spoil the illusion. Even the villainous Weather-Maker fits perfectly into the '60s catalog of villainshe says "Bah!" a lot and has a costume that only Kirby could have designed (even though of course he didn't). It's almost a shame that the brevity of that part of the book means he gets taken care of so quickly, though it should be interesting to see what he becomes when the storm that defied Thor gets through enhancing him...

Now the question is, since this creative team has gone to such trouble to recreate the past, is the story worth the effort? It's still hard to say from this first issue, but the plot in both the past and "present" is certainly interesting enough to hold anyone's attention, especially if they like a look back at the past that isn't ruined by a jaded modern eye or by retroactive continuity. Is it the sort of plot that can fill out an entire miniseries? Possibly. I hope so, because I'm certainly going to keep reading and find out where Busiek and company are taking us.

THOR: GODSTORM

Grade: B

Issue: No. 1

Author(s): Kurt Busiek, Steve Rude, Mike Royer

Publisher:  Marvel Comics

Price: $3.50