Marvel Now! Review: Thor: God of Thunder #1 by Jason Aaron & Esad Ribic

Reviews, Top Story

Thor: God of Thunder #1
The God Butcher Part 1: A World Without Gods

Written by: Jason Aaron
Artist by: Esad Ribic
Coloring by Dean White
Lettering by: VC’s Joe Sabino
Published by: Marvel
Cover Price: $3.99

Note: This review is for the digital version of the comic available from Marvel Comics on Comixology

Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!

Full disclosure before I write this review, I have never been much of a Thor fan. I liked the movie quite a bit, but in my twenty years of comic reading, I’ve never been all that into Thor’s comics. I do like him as part of a team, but in solo action, for the most part, I tend to find him boring. That said, I did enjoy this comic, but take this review from the perspective of someone who hasn’t read or liked a lot of Thor comics.

Summary (contains spoilers):

Past – 893 A.D.

This comic starts with Thor in the 9th century, celebrating a victory in Iceland over invading Frost Giants. A body washes up on the shores, and when Thor goes to check it out, he discovers it is a murdered god.

Present Day

The action switches to modern day. A young child’s prayers on the planet Indigarr have brought Thor to help bring rain to this parched world. Thor asks the child why he prayed to Thor and not gods of his own.  The child says that it is because Indigarr has no gods.

Thor finds this surprising and goes to investigate. He quickly discovers that Indigarr did have gods once, but they had been murdered. Whoever did this seemed to be some kind of Butcher of the gods. While the Butcher is long gone, he left behind a guard dog, who attacks Thor. Thor suggests he has encountered this dog and his master, Gorr the God Butcher in the past, and fears that this is a sign that more gods will be killed.

Future – Many Millennia later

An older Thor with one eye and one arm sits on the throne of Asgard. Asgard seems to be pretty much a dead world, and Thor mourns how quiet it is. The issue ends with Thor once again being attacked by Gorr’s guard dog, this time in his home.

Review: One thing I have to say upfront is that I didn’t like the cover of this book. Can’t really put my finger on why, but Thor looks really odd. Like his helmet doesn’t fit right or something. I was kind of worried that the interiors would be the same since Esad Ribic did the cover and interiors, but I actually thought the art on this comic was great other than that. The action takes place on three different worlds in three different time periods, and each is given a very distinctive style. I especially liked how different the three “Thors” looked. Past, present, and future Thors all were the same character, but have enough obvious differences to make them stand out.

The Past, Present, and Future structure of this book was the best part for me. Jason Aaron presents a terrific parallel between Thor’s three encounters with a “God Butcher” over the course of several millennia, and I was definitely curious on how all three stories continue. The next issue box suggests that all three stories will continue at least into next issue, so that is a big selling point to me.

I also thought this was a much better first issue than the other Marvel Now books I have read. Who Thor is, how he sees the world, and how that has changed over the years is shown clearly through this issue. Even without having read much Thor, I immediately felt very comfortable with the character in this issue. I don’t mind a new issue 1 when it feels like a good jumping on point, and this comic does that perfectly.

I also loved Thor answering the prayers of an alien child in the middle section of the book. It was a real cool take on him being a god, and one I hadn’t considered before. Actually, this comic does a great job throughout talking about the roles of gods, and how they work in the Marvel universe. My favorite moment of this comic is when Thor asks an old women who she is praying to after they find a dead god:

That said, once again, I have to express my annoyance at Marvel charging 4 bucks for this book…including the digital version. Not sure how Marvel can justify charging 4 bucks for this comic…is it just because Thor was in two movies? Thor has never really been a huge seller.

Since Marvel doesn’t price drop their digital comics in any kind of logical fashion, there really is no way I can keep buying this book. A friend was cool enough to give me his digital code for this issue so I could review it, but for 4 bucks an issue, it is very unlikely I will continue buying this very good comic. For the price of this, I can buy four digital issues of Cerebus with tons of bonus content…that really doesn’t make sense to me economically.

Final Score: 9.0 – A very good first issue, and the most I have ever enjoyed an issue of a Thor comic. But the four buck price tag is a huge turn off for me.

Mike Maillaro is a lifelong Jersey Boy and geek. Mike has been a comic fan for about 30 years from when his mom used to buy him Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Adventures at our local newsstand. Thanks, Mom!! Mike's goal is to bring more positivity to the discussion of comics and pop culture.