"Thor God Of Thunder" by Jason Aaron Issues 1-5 (Ep.18)

Episode 18 is here! Ben and Antonio dive into Thor: God of Thunder by Jason Aaron, breaking down issues 1–5 of The God Butcher. This week we explore faith, worthiness, and what happens when Thor confronts a killer who believes all gods deserve to die.

Be part of the discussion on Instagram: @KickbackComics_Pod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey there everybody, how's it going? Welcome back to another episode of Kickback Comics. My name is Antonio. My name is Ben, and y'all are listening to a comic book podcast. Uh, fly around uh with a hammer, um, and maybe, maybe just like a little bit uh agree with the villain on this one. Maybe like a tiny bit. Yep. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

We're bringing the thunder and bringing the thunder and the lightning. Yep, here at Kickback Comics, we're doing a book club. Uh this week we read Thor God of Thunder.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

God of Thunder, Volume 1, The God Butcher. Yep, by Jason Aaron. Yes, indeed. This was I I really enjoyed this, honestly. I actually had a great time reading this one. Not that I don't with the other ones, but this was uh this was another one of those ones where, you know, I feel um, and and you and I actually talked a little bit about this, but I just feel like it was good. I feel there were moments with the writing where I was like, damn. There were moments with the art where I was like, damn, you know, and that's this uh so this was an enjoyable one, go pick it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

One of the things I was talking with Chad about like right before you got here is remembering seeing the uh like one of the most disappointing theater-going experiences for me was was uh the the m the MCU movie that adapted this comic run. Right. Um and the the main antagonist for this whole story is Gore the God Butcher, who's this like really uh amazing antagonist. Yeah, crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Also, I feel like has you know, like I said in our little intro here, like, you know, I I feel like I can see where he's coming from. Like any good, any good villain, right? You can kind of see where they're coming from. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

And he's also but yeah, you know, great story, amazing uh, you know, source material for them to draw from. And they then and the movie they made, uh Thor Love and Thunder, was just I remember my buddy Austin, shout out Austin Kenny. Shout out, um, you know, one of my best friends, big comic book nerd, one of the guys who got me into comics in the first place. Um we we saw a bunch of the MCU movies together over the years, but we we were so excited to go see uh Love and Thunder together, and like over the course of the whole movie, we just kept like looking over each other and realizing that's just how bad it was. Not what it needs to be. Yeah, it was tough. It was instead, I mean, and you know, Gore the God Butcher, like his whole like he's going across time and space, like slaughtering gods, and he's has this whole vendetta against pantheons of gods. And then the movie they made him, and it was Christian Bale. Yeah, it was like what like such an awesome actor. And they made it all just like he's like a goof, like goofy kidnaps a bunch of children. And I think especially like the adaptation just did not match the vibe, like what they were adapted, like this story, very serious, very violent, yeah, intense, very mythic and epic.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I think there's one goof in this whole thing, right? And we talk, we'll talk about it, but there's like one goof in this whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 2:47

It's not to say there is they can't be lighthearted at times, but the movie was just like it just was silly, goofy all the way through. Well, they took Thor and made him like a goofball, right? And then the end too, the end of the movie was like like Gore kidnapped some kids, which is like he would slaughter, like he should murder these kids, you know, whatever. But take an Anakin approach. Kidnap, right, kidnapped a bunch of kids, and the whole movie was like, Oh, we gotta go rescue these children. And at the end, Thor's just like, here you go, kids, here's my Thor power. And then clearly the directors are like, All right, children actors, just like go spin around in this green screen room. We're gonna add a bunch of corny lightning. I'm gonna have to look that up, obviously. Yeah, dude, it's on it's so bad. It's like, it's really um it's a tough watch. That's right. It's a tough hang. I feel it's very, it's very weird. Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. But we can get a lot more positive now, uh, because the source material, uh Thor God of Thunder, um, so good. So cool.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Really fun read. Like you said, we're gonna have a more positive spin here because the source material is fire.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yeah, this whole this whole story is amazing, and also um, there's a lot more for us to explore if we want to, because Jason Aaron sort of kicks off this whole uh Thor era. Yes. And there's a whole bunch of different sort of um spin-offs from here. There's a whole Jane Foster Thor, which is really checked out a little bit of, but that's when uh like um one of Thor's main love interests becomes another Thor for really dope. Um and uh then there's this whole War of the Realms that it leads into, which actually similarly, like we talked about in our previous episode with Venom, yeah, where Venom leads up into this uh King in Black arc that affects all of everything. All of everything. This run similarly does the same thing where it leads up into this War of the Realms thing where it's like all this Thor shenanigans ends up affecting everybody. That's super cool. And yeah, so there's a there's a lot of stuff for us to explore and a lot of a lot of further reading we can get into if we want. Um and yeah, let's uh let's get into it. Let's get into it. Alrighty. Let's uh let's journey to the dossier.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Let's journey, as it were. Let's journey across time, space, um, whatever third To Azgod. To Asgod, yes.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yes, indeed. Indeed. So Thor, little uh let's do some historical context on Thor. Um so obviously in Marvel, the character of Thor was created by Stan Lee, uh Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby. That's crazy, bro. Big theme. Jack Kirby and Stan Lee obviously got a lot under their belt. Icons, icons of comics and storytelling, American modern American storytelling in general. Um, and they adapted Thor in uh Journey into Mystery number 83, which was in 1962.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Shit.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Right. Um and part of Marvel's early uh era, you know, with Spider-Man, Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, Thor was one of the one of the OGs. Um however, very interestingly, right, Thor is, I mean, as a lot of us know, not just a Marvel character. Thor is like an actual deity for real Nordic, Icelandic humans, you know. Um he and uh part of the whole whole Norse uh pantheon of gods. And it's actually what what a cool idea um that you know Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had where they're like, let's just adapt some of this real world mythology, like super interesting, and uh and and bring it in. So yeah, Thor, the god of thunder, uh, you know, Odin, his his father, the the all father, the all father, um the all mother. Right, Loki, all these all these really iconic characters were uh it's pretty it's kind of cool to think about that they were, you know, really, really Vikings and and people in long ships. Or really, really like actually we'll talk about it in this in this story too, that were really rhyme for that shit for sure. Right. Um so it's very cool and it adds sort of like an interesting, I mean the the vibe that's one of my favorite things reading this, um, which actually like the only thing similar to it was when we read uh Wonder Woman, Absolute Wonder Woman, and the way that that draws on uh like Greek mythology, which is which is stuff I love.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Um but anyways, yeah, this is one thing I want to read is this I didn't I never knew this that um the early stories of Thor focused on Dr. Donald Blake, a disabled physician who transformed into Thor after scover discovering a magical cane that became um hold on, it's it's Mjolnir, right? Yeah, Mjolnir. Mjolnir, right. So later later comics retconned this heavily and established Thor as a true as guardian god. So that's that is kind of funny. I'm glad that they did that because I feel like that would have never made any sense or it just wouldn't have felt as good. But that's so interesting. I never knew that, which is which is crazy.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah, it's definitely something they they got rid of in the modern era. I've actually I've read some comic uh that brought that back up, that alternate persona that made it relevant again in kind of like an interesting interesting way. But yeah, kind of weird for us to think about. Yeah. Sort of like a like Shazam or I don't know, some of these other heroes that's like a guy, and then they just like snap their fingers and turn into a different guy. Right, right. Uh which I think was a big trope at the time. I think that makes sense. That makes sense. Um but yeah, you know, uh, so like major creative eras for this character. Um we had Lee and Kirby in the 1960s established Thor as a noble mythic hero dealing with gods, monsters, and cosmic threats. Uh-huh. Then uh, I guess Walt Simonson had a big run in the 80s, uh, one of the most beloved Thor runs ever. We're gonna have to go back and read it then. Yep, introduced beta Ray Bill. That's another one we gotta read. That's on my list. Beta Ray Bill is really interesting, where it's another, it's like this really freaky looking alien who's really uh like disfigured. He's got like this weird horse face, but he is like another, he can wield Mule Near. The whole thing with Mule Near, right, is like only you can only lift Mule Near if you're worthy. Right. And so that's a whole thing in the MCU, like um Captain America. Captain America in in end game. You're not worthy. Yeah, well, whatever. You know, so hey, you know.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I get you. Yeah. Which I think is actually just such a fun. Um I I mean that was a great moment actually, though, in those movies where like when uh when Captain America like you know, when Thor like realized that he could like slightly pick it up, and uh you know, they talk about that scene where like Captain America like chooses not to pick it up, not to upset Thor or whatever else, but um and then in the modern era, you know, the 2010s is that this Jason Aaron run was really successful, obviously focused on uh you know, um this arc, the God Butcher arc, and then also at like we mentioned earlier, Jane Foster Thor, The War of the Realms, which happened, uh MCU Thor was really popular.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

That was one of the first MCU movies when we were younger, right? Chris Hemsworth, right, super dope actor, really cool, iconic, um you know, leading protagonist in the MCU, along with Tony Stark and Yeah, all those guys.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

You know, it's it's it's interesting. I actually I watched this uh this video. You and I I think had talked about this this guy on YouTube before, but um the Cosmonaut Variety Hour. I've watched his breakdown of like the Thor movies, right? And how he he was talking about how like you know, when uh adaptations happen, you can change the character, it just has to be fucking good. And he felt at the very least in the early Thor movies that like making Thor kind of like a goofball worked for those early movies. I think that what you're saying, maybe in like Love and Thunder, they kind of probably jumped a shark.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Yeah, it just got it just got away from him. I mean, so Taiko YTT, right? It really did. I mean, Taiko YTT uh really I mean a little bit of a controversial, uh controversial director or whatever, but he's uh you know, he's super awesome. Right. Um what we do in the sh uh what we do in the shadows, I'm pretty sure, is him. Like a it's like a vampire vampire comedy that they did originally a movie that spun off into a show. Um he also did that uh that um freaking Hitler movie, uh Jojo Rabbit, which was like a comedic Hitler thing, which sounds insane. But it's a crazy sentence. But he got given the reins for Thor Ragnarok, which was I believe the third Thor movie. And that one they really aced it. That one was super successful.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

I think I have seen that one, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah, that one that one was one of the ones where they they made those were Helga, isn't that right? Yeah, yeah, Hel Hella. Oh, Hella, yeah, Helga. Um but they did, yeah. So that one was super successful and and they leaned into the the comedic tone. Uh, and then I think uh Love and Thunder, they were like, Okay, cool, Tyka, here you go, like do your thing. And then I don't know, man. Uh I'm not trying to like shit shit on shit on Tyka, but I think they just they just got carried away and they're like, let's not even write a script. Let's you're right that it was just that it got away from him. Yeah, it escaped. Let's make it, yeah. So it just went from like, oh, how interesting making this really serious epic character have some goofiness. Instead, they like made goofy silly the the main feature, and then all of a sudden it just wasn't even cool. It wasn't even cool. Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

That's uh well, we learn we all learned something after seeing that movie, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So uh but anyways, regardless, so that's just you know, some so the general thing, Thor, he's the god of thunder, he's like braggadocious, boastful, flying out of the sky with his hammer. He can uh some things he can fly, some things he can just like throw his hammer so hard that it like just carries him, yeah, carries him around, pulls him off the ground, right? Which is another tyco they're like, the hammer pulled you off. Like, which is yeah, it's good. That was good. So um, you know, that's our guy. Uh and uh let's should we just jump in to talk about the the little summary for this first issue? Or yeah, or do you do you have any uh I mean I guess we've already been given a lot of our overall thoughts, but do you have any um anything you want to say before we before we get into the needy?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, I think I mean I really enjoyed this. I think that the art was pretty distinct from a lot of the stuff that we've read so far. I think it was its own unique style. And I was actually telling you before we um started doing this pod that like there there are some moments like not that I dislike any of the writing, I think that there's there are no moments in here that I felt kind of like weird about the writing, but there are absolutely moments that I was like, damn, I was like, I really love these quotes. I really love these moments. Like the writing, um, obviously combined with the art and everything that everybody's done here, um, has really made some some big moments. And actually, speaking of the art, one thing that we should do is go through the the creative team of uh of uh the folks who do this. Obviously, we talked about Jason Aaron as a writer, um, but the artist and pencler was Asad Rybic. Um, the color artist was uh I think it's Ive uh Sforcina, and the letter is Joe Sabino, the editor is Lauren Sankovich. Um so we've got a good collection of folks here. Jason Aaron, who you've you've kind of already talked about, has done a bunch of Thor stuff. Also did uh Wolverine and the X-Men, uh Ghostwriter, which is another thing that we should check out at some point. Um uh Isad Rybic um has done a bunch of different stuff. He's Croatian artist um who's done Silver Surf or Requiem. Is that the one that you were mentioning before? No, that that's it's a different one. Yeah, gotcha. Okay, okay. Um, but Secret Wars, obviously crazy.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

Eternals that one's about to get adapted, Secret Wars.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Yeah, so there you go. Right. So um, but we've got a great creative team. But anyway, what did what did you think of this as your overall thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

I mean, really fun, very distinct uh from some of the other comic books that we've been reading because it's just it's it feels it really doesn't feel like a superhero story. You know, there's not really like oh he's saving people it's it's like we've been reading some street level stuff that's what we talked about before with uh Moon Knight, right? And this is the opposite.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

Where it's not complete opposite.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah, it's all outer space. Like we're you know, we we don't even see modern earth at all. We see um which one of the distinct things that I think is really cool about this is this book is the way in which and we'll we'll obviously like we always say, we'll get into it, um, but we'll get into it more specifically. But there we sort of this the story takes place over three different time periods. Yes. Uh we see like ancient times Thor when he's young, like booling around with some Vikings. We see mod like quote unquote modern era Thor, which is when he's in the Avengers, whatever, and then we get these glimpses into this future King Thor, where he's like this grizzled old man in the far future. Yeah, exactly. And uh and all three of those, all three of those uh storylines are all sort of taking place at once. And uh I think the that storytelling was um was done really well. I think another unique thing about this, uh, these chapters we read is how much it relies on exposition um instead of just like um dialogue and whatever. There's a lot of just like Thor an inner monologue where Thor is is um sort of telling the story to us directly almost. But that's like I feel like at times that could sometimes be be less engaging, but in this context, like Jason Aaron really killed that. Yeah, I think he did. The writing really, really came across well, some really cool, insightful lines. Yes. The prose uh is really fun. Um, and we'll we'll I think we'll probably read a lot of pages out loud.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

There's a couple of things that I specifically wrote down that I I gotta read. I gotta read all the way through so y'all y'all know what we're talking about for sure.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Another thing to check out, and we can try to articulate with this art, right? Going back to our sort of triangle of cartoon depictions from Scott McLeod. Shout out Scotty, the way they're doing the art for this one is sort of like one of the least cartoony looking comics we've read. It it's much more painterly, yeah, much more realistic depictions, and it uh, you know, it just feels the whole thing just feels um like you're reading like a a myth or a you know Yeah, that is an interesting point, actually.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

It it there there is a lot, I think, that does kind of feel that way uh in this. And I think that you're definitely right about where you've placed that. There's a lot of realism, and I think that that's actually used really, really well in some of these big moments that we'll talk about, um, where, for example, um, you know, one of the kind of first things that happens in these in these first couple of pages is that we see a a god who has been uh killed. And the facial expression, right, I feel like really comes across with the art style that they chose to do, right? If it was more cartoony, it may be a little bit difficult to kind of get that like horror that they're trying to invoke here. So I think it's super cool.

SPEAKER_01 16:18

Yep. Really uh really fun read overall. I uh you know, you guys, you listeners can tell that we are um you know genuinely excited about this one and engaged. And so let's get the let's get into it. Should we uh you wanna you wanna read um our summary for issue one?

SPEAKER_00 16:33

I would love nothing more. So issue number one is called A World Without Gods. Um in 1893 AD, young Thor finds the severed head of a murdered god after helping an Icelandic village, uh, which gives him his first hint that something is hunting gods. In the present, Thor answers the prayers of a girl in Indigar and discovers that her world's gods vanished long ago. When he finds their Sky Palace, he sees that they were slaughtered centuries earlier. Um, and then this issue ends by uh turning Thor's adventure into this kind of like, I don't know, cosmic murder mystery-esque type of situation, but uh way more serious than that. Um and I mean I I enjoyed this. I think that this was this was a great intro. Like I said, that you know, one of the things that stood out to me um really early on was um when he does find that dead god, and he he kind of like tries to uh temper it a little bit to the people until he tells them that um this this person was a god. But you know, we get kind of also I think like the two kind of sides of especially young Thor here, right? Where he's like, Yeah, he's a god, and sometimes he's gotta do his shit, but he's also like drinking and like hanging out with ladies and like showing up places and being like, I'm a god, and then just like experiencing the benefits of that.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Right. And also uh importantly, he doesn't have Mjolnir. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Because he's not, he's not yet where is he? This guy's got an axe. What a loser. Yeah. What a loser.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

I mean it's still there's a part where there's like we brought you your axe, it took three men to carry. So he's still really on some X Games mode. But um But he's still, you know, he's young, he's he's yet to learn his lessons. Um let me read this first page actually just to give us a give us some of these uh this tone here. So yeah, it says eight uh eight ninety-three AD, Earth, the western coast of Iceland. The frost giant had terrorized these people for weeks. It had eaten three goats, four dogs, and two children. The mothers in the village prayed for help from the gods, and help they did receive. I led a group of twenty men, tracking the giant to its den in the highlands. It battled us for hours, swinging trees, hurling and hurling boulders. Many Vikings found their way to Valhalla until my axe hacked its guts to bloody slush and lopped off its heads. There you go. That was four days ago. Since then, I've eaten more goats than the frost giant, drank enough mead to drown a dozen sailors, and made love to half the women in the village. That's crazy. I am Thor Odenson, God of Thunder, Prince of Asgard, heir to the throne of the realm eternal. Yes. I love my life.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

Yeah, dude. That is such I'm so glad that you read that. That is absolutely a great depiction.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

And that's a that's a great intro to all young Thor.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Right, and a great, I think also depiction of why that motherfucker not holding Mule near Mule near Mule near yet. That's what I would say.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

Yeah, he's got he's got some uh you know, he's got some lessons to learn.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

He's only 400 years old.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

How can we b begrudge him, you know, having some having some good times with his his loyal followers?

SPEAKER_00 19:21

His loyal followers, sure, sure. They're psyched.

SPEAKER_01 19:22

They're like we get to party with a god, this is sick.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah, this is sick. You know, what's interesting is that they this is also um in the beginning of this where they kind of bring up this this concept. Obviously it makes sense that people are praying to gods, but I think that praying in this in particular actually plays a very, very large part in um the good and bad of what ends up happening in this story. Um and speaking of one of the moments that we talked about on this um this planet Indigar, right? What ends up happening is that there is this uh, I don't know if it's a little girl, but this girl that's praying um so that would they will be saved. They say it hasn't rained on the planet for many years, everything's died, um, all this kind of stuff. And so they're praying. Um, and Thor shows up and like, you know, he says he uh I crack the ground till water gushes forth, I carve rivers where once there was desert. Um and so he's actually responding to the prayers of and it's really interesting because he I would be surprised if he was their god.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Right, which which again he's not, right? And that's one of the things he he interrogates them. And he's like, Where are your where are your gods at? Right, he's like he's like, I came because of this little girl prayed to me. And what kind of you know, what type of god? This is again getting into the themes, right? Where's like what kind of god would I be if I didn't answer people calling for my my help?

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Agreed, brother.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

And um so he pulls up, but he's he asks them, like, why why didn't you guys pray to your gods? Like, why did you have to pray to me to come help you? Like you know, and they said, Oh, our gods are uh this is sort of what kicks off the mystery, right? They say, We don't know. We don't uh our gods we have stories of our gods, but they don't they don't answer us. We they haven't answered us for millennia. We don't know and so he's like, What? That doesn't make sense. Every world has its own pantheon and whatnot. And so also this Thor is a much more mature Thor, obviously. Um he's carrying Muelnir, he's got a red cape. Also, all his little internal monologue or or um you know narration for us readers has this nice little red border next to it, which lets us know that it's the current modern era Thor. Right. And then later, later when we do King Thor, he has these like silver circles on the side of it. So we always know um, you know, we that's one of the things we keep pointing out is these the word bubbles or whatever, like the text is one of the ways that they can make uh make very clear to us who's speaking. Yeah. Um and they do that in very subtle, very effective way. Yeah, I do kind of love that about these comics, man.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

It's always like one of those, you know, just it just it's it's like um what is the word that I'm looking for? I feel like it's it's like user experience type shit. If you're talking about like computers or else, but it's just like oh quality of life, bro. These are like there's such nice little like quality of life things that exist in comics that just make them a good read.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

But uh and again, you guys, you guys hopefully um you listeners can already hear just from these little couple stances we've read, just like how Good this writing is. You know, and and it's very the the prose are um it's all very clear. It is uh you know not exactly overly flowerly, flowery language, but it sort of has that old timey feel that makes it feel like uh you know mythological and um you know it's just great it's great storytelling.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

So it is great storytelling. And and speaking of great story, um Thor, after answering these prayers, we also actually get our first goof. I forgot about this one where he's like, I gotta leave, and they're like, Don't you want to drink some ale? And he's like, Did you say ale? Right? That feels like modern Thor. Um, but then he ends up basically going searching for their gods. He's like, It's weird that they're not here. I know that they exist. He goes searching for them, he finds their big um palace pantheon um up in and I actually kind of love how they're always like their heaven, right? It's like the every god in for each whatever world or people that believe in there is a heaven for that god, which I think is super interesting. But anyway, he goes up to um the palace where he should be finding these gods. He is looking around, he sees nothing, and he's about to leave, and then he breaks a chain off this big ass door where he's like, Hey, why is there a big chain over there? Opens the door, looks inside, and this is one of those things. I feel like this will definitely be on the uh uh on the Instagram, so you should go over there if you have somehow not read this already, which is okay. But go check that out over there. But there's this great image, uh, big splash page of these gigantic um uh kind of humanoid creatures, but um of this alien planet gods hung up on like meat hooks, right? And which again drives some of this like butcher type of um imagery that goes on here. But it's all it's this room full of dead gods, which is just unbelievable. And so this is where it really starts Thor being like, okay, some some shit's going down, and it's also where he kind of starts to acknowledge like it's weird that nobody gives a shit, uh at least if the gods so far.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Which is which is one of the main themes we're gonna keep returning to over and over again. But one of the one of the thing, main things here is like the apathy of the gods, and this is one of the things where Thor is going about trying to solve this sort of murder mystery, right? Of who's killing these gods. It turns out, you know, as he's going going through space and and trying to get to the bottom of this, so many different pantheons of gods have been going silent, yeah. Uh, you know, and and and no one's noticed. He'll be realizing like, we haven't heard from these guys in like 2,000 years. And nobody has gone like nobody's done anything, no one's gone and checked in on it. Um, and so that's one of the main things, right? Where uh that is sort of one of the points of of gore once we once we get more into his sort of thesis and everything. But it's like to what like what use what use or validity do gods have if they aren't answering anybody's prayers? Yeah, if they're not responding, if they're not taking care of the world for which they're responsible.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

For which that you know, these people uh pray to them, they worship them, right? What is you know, yeah, what's the point of all that? Random thought. I totally didn't even realize, bro, he was using his hammer as a light as he's walking around these areas. Mjolnir reduced to an iPhone flashlight for a couple of minutes here, which is pretty sick.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Um Another little hint here that's cool is these these black chains that he breaks. We see once he's broken them, they don't even notice that they melt away to good crazy. How did I not notice that? Which again is foreshadowing the link. Part of the reason we're reading this right now is because there's a cool, subtle, uh eventually not so subtle, but relatively subtle, link to Venom. Yes, which we which was our previous uh previous episode. What a good time. So we're getting some some some uh some throwbacks, some black, goopy, villainous monsters he's got to fight. Yeah, and so he ends up fighting them too. Yeah, in this narrative, he he's found these gods, he's like, no way. Let's see, he's he's shocked. He says, an entire pantheon of fearsome immortals, every man, woman, child, all butchered like animals in their own fortress, without any signs of invasion or warfare, without a sign of combat of any kind. No, to even call this butchery is an insult to honest butchers. This this was something else entirely. Yes, yep.

SPEAKER_00 25:50

So that's and again, go look at this shit. It's pretty crazy. But after he says that, these um these creatures that will go on to uh call black berserkers jump out, and he basically says that this is kind of the guard dog of this situation. And I think that um Gore like leaves these kind of like everywhere that he has been. Um but so he fights against this thing, he does end up um defeating it, and then we get our first um time jump here. And I think it was actually I'll I'll take a little bit of a sidebar here to talk about the time jumps just real quick in this. So, this one we're jumping from um modern day to uh many millennia from now in the great hall of Asgard, um, where Thor is this old, almost Odin-looking version of himself. And the interesting thing I was gonna say about the time stuff is that there are moments where we get these uh, you know, many millennia ago and they kind of describe what the time change is and whichever else, right? But there are also these really, really short moments where they jump around really quickly and they don't do that. And I so I I just think it's interesting to have to go through the thought process of making that choice, right? So when they're when they're designing these comics, they have to choose, you know, are we gonna say you know, back and forth every time? Are we gonna just let them choose it? You know, which moments are we going to say that we're going back in time? I guess it's probably for an extended period versus you know a short kind of moment or whatever else. But it was just interesting to see see the way that they played with time here in comparison to some of the stuff that we've seen before.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah, no, I agree. Uh it is done well. I mean, we've talked before about uh in in different different stories jumping, jumping uh in different time in the narrative. And sometimes that can be really confusing. Sometimes uh it could be overdone or whatever. I found this to be it, it all I was always able to track what when we jumped, when we were jumping. And I think part of that is how distinct these three different Thors are, both in the way they speak, in the way their text bubbles look, and also just how they're depicted, right? Like young Thor is all like muscly, he just looks younger, he doesn't have the hands.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

Boisterous, you know, long hair. I mean, he still has long hair, but like you know, it's a lot of things. Super like flowing lock like Fabio type of thing.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

Yeah, modern Thor has like the cape, he's got his helmet, he's got Mjolnir, he looks the way he looks in the MCU movies, you know, he's like like the costume we can say for Thor. And then this King Thor that we see, this future Thor, is like old, grizzled, long hair, long beard, he's got an eye patch. It looks like one of his arms is missing. He's got this arm is missing. He's got this really cool like metal arm, he's dual-wielding Mjolnir and some crazy sword, and we see him facing down. Like we just in uh in our current era saw Thor fighting one of these mysterious black goopy creatures. Now we see in the far future the the final page of this issue is Thor with all this lightning around him charging to fight like thousands of them. It's a whole army. It's a whole army.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

This time and one of the things that he points out as well is that he this is he's completely alone um in this in this version of of Asgard. He says, you know, damn this quiet. If I'm to die, it will be with a weapon in my hand and a roar in my throat. Bring me my arm, uh, he yells out, and then it says, No answer. I'm so damn old, I keep forgetting there's no one left, no one but me. I am Thor Odin's son, king of uh a broken Asgard, last of all the gods. And today uh I try to see, I try yet again to see Valhalla, right? So he is alone in this whole um, and we'll see more of this later, but it's like this version of Asgard is totally broken down and just destroyed. So crazy.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

And that is the end of issue one.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

End of the issue number one.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

Which is a great little intro. Yeah, it shows us our past, present, future Thor. It gives us the the um stakes. Yeah, so we see Thor booling out in his like frat bro era with the Vikings. We see a more responsible modern era Thor interacting with uh these like innocent people of this planet. He's trying to help them out, right? And then we see the beginning of this murder mystery of oh man, something's butchering these gods. I've never seen anything like that. Let's get to the bottom of it. And then we get this really ominous ending where we see all the gods are dead. Oh man, eventually Thor is the only one left, and instead of fighting one of these guys, it's like a whole army and it's a 1v a million.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

I mean, shit, man. He lost. It's over.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Right.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

It's over, but we'll see. So that's that's issue number one. And so we'll dive into we'll dive into issue number two here, and I'll do this little our little summary here. So young Thor sails with Vikings and encounters the God Butcher directly after finding signs that Slavic gods have been murdered. Um the fight reveals how dangerous Gore is, and that's the God Butcher, especially with his living darkness and god-killing weapon. And we'll talk about the weapon in particular. I'm gonna let Ben do it because he's gonna remember it better than me, but we're gonna talk about it. Um, in the present, though, Thor destroys one of Gore's dark creatures, and Indigar, as we talked about, realize that the butcher has grown far stronger since their first meeting. And that's one of the other things that we learn, right? Is that they've met before, um, and he continues to hunt through the world, uh, through the wider world of gods to see what's going on. So yeah, so diving into this one, um, this is actually kind of funny enough. Another one of our this is another goof I forgot. Okay, there's at least like three or four goofs. Yeah, there's funny. I mean, it's great. It's good that there's funny moments.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

But it's good levels of goof. Right, and it's also good writing, right? It's it's not to say Thor isn't allowed to be funny. It's great that he's funny. It just shouldn't be he's not the god of goof, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

He's God of Thunder. Come on now. Yeah, so but so in this moment we actually see him uh this is long before he got, um, or maybe at least before he got Mujolnir. Um, and he says, you know, I've wrestled dragon with dragons with my bare hands, slain wolves the size of longboats. I don't know where those wolves are at, but I have fought in more battles than most gods twice my age. So tell me, how much more worthy must I be? You know, move you blasted uh chunk of metal, and it's him like using all of his strength to try and uh pull Mujulnir off the off the stone that it's on. Um and he says, you know, someday you'll be mine. Uh and uh so that's kind of our our first funny little goof. And then we actually get um one of our first kind of like quick time travel moments where we see young Thor obviously dealing with Mujulnir, we see uh current Thor fighting against um uh uh some of the enemies on that that I think it's on the planet that he was on, maybe originally, but um, and then we see we see old um old Cranky Thor as well. Right as well. All three of them in one page. Yeah, in one page, which is pretty wild. And then we get back to um, you know, this is actually a really great page for me, too, to kind of indicate what young Thor's like because he's like he just seems like he's really one of the Vikings, where he's like, faster you dogs, there'll be nothing left worth pillaging by the time that we get there. I'm like, damn, bro, you were out here pillaging it, and you're asking why you're not getting Mjolnir. I don't know, bro. I think it's I don't know, I think the calls are coming from inside the house. But we're back in 893 AD in the Baltic Sea, um, and this is one of the moments where also Thor um somebody calls out there being something in the mist, and Thor has this kind of uh memory of seeing that one god that was um uh I guess the first butchered god that he ended up running into. Um, and he's like, Hey, don't worry about it, we're all good, and then he's looking off into the mist, and I don't think that he maybe ends up seeing something, but we, as the readers, end up seeing something, and we get this probably the some of the creepiest first dialogue where he says, uh he says, I smell god flesh. Lead away, little godling, lead lead me to your kin. Um and it's some creepy guy in the mist, and uh we're just gonna have to learn who that is, like we don't already know.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Right. So, yeah, some some let's let's jump into some of the highlights from here, right? So basically it seems like Thor is is traveling with these Vikings, they're trying to find these other gods that are these like Slavic Balkan gods, right? Which uh it says they're in what's uh will someday be called Russia.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

And some of these guys that are shouted out are people that um are I know from uh some other god stories, right? This guy Chernobog the Black, uh that's a that's a character, like a hammer-wielding character in like Russia world, another guy kind of similar to Thor in certain ways, you know. Um and so they're trying to find these guys, uh Riverman.

SPEAKER_00 33:26

They want to do a whole big fight. Thor's gonna fight the gods, his Viking guys are gonna fight the other normal guys, and it's just gonna be a whole big thing.

SPEAKER_01 33:33

We got like the Icelandic guys versus the Russian guys and and uh sick. Um here we go. This so this this Pegasus comes flying out of the sky, right? And one of these guys is like, behold, the the bloody horse of doom, defender of the Slavs, and then we see there's no rider on it, and it's covered in blood. So that's obviously um troubles brewing. Troubling, yeah. Yeah, so so Thor's like, what the hell? Jumps on this horse, um, and he's like Rides in the sky. Yeah, rides in the sky, the clouds are dripping blood, god blood, which is crazy. Uh it's like some something's killing him in the air. Um, and then he sees this black horse that he another black Pegasus, which he assumes is uh the the horse of Chernobyl, but you see that horse has a headless corpse riding on it. Yeah, damn. And uh and then we get um behind, we see this really crazy menacing figure with these black tendrils coming off of his hand and forming into this crazy sword and just comes out of nowhere and slashes the whole head of this Pegasus that Thor is riding on, just completely off out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

It's fucked up, man. Leave a Pegasus alone. Let's see how it's not even is it is is the Pegasus a god?

SPEAKER_01 34:41

Uh maybe. I mean I I'm not sure. But yeah, whatever.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Godbusher's got a he's got a narrow. He's really gone.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

But regardless, so you see, uh uh the gods of the Slavs could have um the gods of the Slavs could have done this to themselves, I suppose, fought each other over Odin knows what. I once saw two gods slay one another in an argument over the day of the week. But that uh which is you know what's interesting? Day of the week? That's our days of the week are from Norse mythology. Right. So like Thursday is Thor's Day. Thursday. Yeah. Wednesday, Wednesday is Odin's Day. Interesting. Um Friday is for Frigga. Like all of the yeah. So there's a bunch of bunch of that's a that's a little uh um but that would not explain the nagging feeling in the back of my skull, the one that I've had since seeing the dead god's face in the waters of Iceland. I imagined it's the same feeling that a boar gets when this great horn sounds and the warriors rush into the trees the moment right before the spears go flying, when the beast first realizes it's being hunted. Um and there we go. And then now we see this whole showdown with gore, and he is a terrifying looking guy. He's a freaky looking guy. He's sort of sort of naked looking, honestly. He's like this weird, uh pale, he kind of looks uh kind of looks like Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies. Like he doesn't have a nose, uh, he's got like very pale skin, and he's sort of like he has all this dripping black, um, as we as we learn later, is symbiote-related black goo. But um he has this cool menacing cloak and cowl and black sword.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

And they go through a crazy fight in the air. It's it's pretty wild. I mean, we we get some, and this is actually another moment where really great moments for realism in the way that all the faces look in these moments, right? Seeing uh Gore going after Thor with this just like insanely menacing face, seeing Thor's reactions to getting hit, to being grabbed, to being in a position that he has not and actually Gore ends up mentioning this later on, but basically saying, like, you know, this is this is Thor's kind of first real encounter with somebody who like actually um could defeat him, and and there's a big difference there, right? But so they're fighting up in the air, and um Gore ends up they basically end up getting separated from each other while flying in the air. Thor is originally on this Pegasus, and then he's basically gets knocked on he's falling towards the ground, not like that really matters to him, but um there's just the crazy moment that that leads up to that oh yeah, please but just for them falling, right?

SPEAKER_01 37:03

Where Gore Gore is uh Gore says, I cannot help but wonder, little god, the poor damned fools below who worship you. What are you the god of? Axes, drunkenness, vanity, or war perhaps? I've killed so very many gods of war. Yes. And gods of fear, gods of chaos, gods of blood and wrath and jealousy and lies, of plagues and earthquakes, genocide and revenge, of uh degradation, of death. Very few gods of poetry and flowers, though. I killed them just the same. Tell me now, Prince of Asgard, before all you're able to do is whimper and scream, what was Thor the god of before he died? Yeah, like come on, man. And Thor is like almost dead, and he just says, Thunder. And the next page is huge thunderstrike that smacks both of them, and they both go falling out of the sky, right? So very cool dramatic moment, um, cool setup where we get surprised when we turn the page, you know, this cool dramatic. Yeah, that one's a banger. That was a banger moment right there. Thank you for bringing that up. Holy moly. But yeah, anyway, so then they've they've then fallen out of the sky and that um and now jump to what you were just saying. That's my bad.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

No, you're totally good. I'm so happy that you brought that up. But so they go fallen out of the sky, um, and uh we I think that we do like maybe a little um jump around here, right? Because this is young Thor. Now we start jumping around to present day um in deep deep space with the world of the gods, and this is again just kind of a jump back to Thor. We get also old Thor for a second there, too. Um, but um what we end up we get this great little dialogue here where it says, you know, it takes hours, but the servant of the god butcher finally falls. Um to make constructs such as this. This is um modern day Thor, right? So he's talking about the little kind of uh watchdog thing that he describes. Um to make constructs such as this, his power must have grown considerably in the time since we last fought. So we're also getting a little bit of tidbits here where, again, a reminder that they fought before, and there's actually some other shit that's going on too. Um, but he says, But I expect he will still be easy enough to find. I simply will follow the trail of dead gods, no matter how long it takes. And the great moment about that saying, no matter how long it takes, is that it shows him as uh, you know, his old man self. And so we learn that uh this is definitely gonna take a minute, at the very least, in the uh in the world that we're in right now. Um and uh, you know, the more, what does it say, the more gods will suffer, right? So this is uh we end up learning that there's some more shit that's gonna go down. And I think that there, I mean, there's so much that we like do not see just from being in um the moments that we are, right? Obviously, we're only reading the first kind of like five issues, but there's just so much to the story, and I think that um I I was like, I was telling Ben actually this before this, I was like so worried that we weren't gonna get kind of like enough context for each of these individual storylines.

SPEAKER_01 39:44

Like there's gonna be too many cliffhangers or right, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

But that is absolutely not what happened. So this was uh this was great. But so that's what ends this this second issue where Thor is uh Thor, young Thor, is in the ground after being blasted of the sky by his own uh Thunderbolt with uh with Gore. Um and yeah, this is the first time that we see Thor really knocked down uh and out for the count. Pretty crazy.

SPEAKER_01 40:07

Alright, so then issue three, we're getting he's uh Thor is gonna continue on trying to solve this mystery he's gonna issue three, the Hall of the Lost. He goes to this library. Yeah, sure. Um I'll run that. Alright, Thor, God of Thunder, number three. Present day Thor travels to Omnipotence City and learns that countless gods have gone missing, while the rest of the divine world mostly ignored it. His search leads him to more murdered gods, including Falagar, whose death hits Thor personally. Um in the past, young Thor follows Gore into the cave uh where he almost gets killed. Uh and then in the present, Thor returns to that same cave and meets this new character, uh Shadrach, who reveals the killer's true name, Gore.

SPEAKER_00 40:54

Yeah, Gore the first time. I remember when I I read that shit the first time, I was like, oh damn, we're getting the name, we're moving forward. Um this one was super interesting. This omnipotence uh city, right? Uh uh, you know, it gets described pretty crazily in the beginning here. It's like it was built 12 billion years ago after the first great war of the gods, right? And this is like supposed to be a place where all the gods, um, no matter where you're from, can kind of come all together. Um, and what we end up seeing here is that this, at least the place that Thor ends up going, is this gigantic library. Um, and one of the really interesting kind of pieces of this here is that he ends up meeting with the the librarian who's there. Um, and the librarian honestly like does not fuck with him a lot. Like, I feel like that's totally the vibe that I'm getting. And yeah, he ends up this is kind of fine.

SPEAKER_01 41:38

He's definitely not taking him seriously.

SPEAKER_00 41:39

He's not taking him seriously, but he also just like shits on like his whole family. He's like, um you know, this I'll read a little bit of this of this actually, maybe actually a little bit more than a little, but he says, you know, you were just a boy on your last visit to the halls of all knowing, brought here by your father to study the old gods along with that equally charming brother of yours. I must say, you never struck me as someone with a great deal of reading in his future. Um though you did strike me in other ways several times about the legs and hindquarters, from what I remember. And then Thor's like, My lord, I do apologize for the folly of my youth, but please I come now seeking knowledge. And he says, Knowledge? Oh my, how exciting! And what knowledge do we have in the dusty old halls that could possibly be of interest to the great Thor of Asgard? We have no hall of blunt instruments, I'm afraid, nor Hall of Thunder, unless you count the lavatory when there are troll gods about. Perhaps the Hall of War. There are several mentions of your father there. Uh, after all, uh, there are several measures mentions of your father there after all, though most are not exactly of the flattering variety, right? Um, so I I just thought it was kind of funny that we get this like, yeah, there is this idea, and even in the hall of gods, like other gods, I don't know if this guy's exactly a god or whatever else. I assume he has to be. Yeah, god of the library or something like that. God of the library, the god of the hall of the lost. Um, but there is just like a lot of this, like, um, yeah, he talks about, oh, you know, there's gods that got murdered. Thor's trying to figure out, you know, gods that have gone missing, right? And um uh he says, you know, these gods did not simply fade away, they were murdered. And then the guy says, uh, if it's the hall of murder you're looking for, it's down the other way, you'll love it. There's an entire wing devoted to your family, right?

SPEAKER_01 43:03

Which is which is shouting out again the the the pantheon of Norse gods, obviously, for the most part. Pretty, you know, the Vikings, in you know, in some some part, pretty violent people. They did do a lot of raiding and pillaging.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

Yeah, raiding and pillaging, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

Um, but some things with these shots too, what like you were talking about how I think it's really cool that you're highlighting the facial expressions because it's true, like Thor is like looking spooked and shocked and everything. Um and again, it's very interesting. Like the this librarian is not taking Thor very seriously, which makes sense because again, we're it's about Thor's like character progression. When he was young, he's like brash and goofy and whatever. But Thor is like, What? The Hall of the Lost? Do you mean to tell me each of these books and scrolls represents a god missing? So many. Right. And Thor's like, these gods did not simply fade away, they were murdered. Um, so Thor is like, something needs to be done about this. Like, why are why is no one paying attention to this? Uh All these gods are just getting killed. Right. Um, and like we talked about with these other other people who were uh, you know, they needed water, they were all gonna die from dehydration before Thor pulled up and brought the brought the rain. Yeah. Um so like they it's not like nobody has noticed that these gods are sort of going silent. There's a whole hall in the library devoted to all these. Like, here's where we wrote down that all these thousands of gods haven't we haven't heard from them in a couple hundred years. Yep. And Thor's like, hey yo, let me go check on these guys. So throughout this issue, we see him kind of going one by one to all these different worlds and discovering Gore has been killing him.

SPEAKER_00 44:41

And these, yeah, so these are all gods that he they thought were just missing, right? That's like and which is crazy. I don't even know. Is that like a thing that gods can go missing? I don't know. But all these missing gods, and he's going, like Ben said, to all these different worlds and just finding that all of these gods have been murdered very brutally, right? Like the first one we see are these like I feel like they're like they're like tree nymphs or something like that. They're yeah, the gods of the cosmic seasons, lords of a forested heaven. No one has seen them for 2,000 years. And um Thor shows up and they're um, yeah, I find them in the embrace of the forest they love. I find them nailed to their trees, right? Um, and it's like you look at this and they're obviously all bleeding. One of the guys has his uh um, or at least the guy in the situation, he has his leg cut off, right? Like this is very brutal shit that's going on. And again, they're just in the hall of the lost, right? They're just hey, we just don't know what's going on. And nobody, again, as we see, nobody at all. When again, Thor is also traveling to all these places, it didn't take too long for them to get there, but nobody has gone checking up on these gods um until Thor now.

SPEAKER_01 45:40

There's like this this uh this critique uh the apathy of the gods.

SPEAKER_00 45:44

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the one of the other interesting things here um is that uh you know, he says there's no pattern to the spree. For 2,000 years, he simply crisscrossed um creation, killing anything mortal he finds, which I or anything immortal he finds, which I also think is just such a fun sentence, just in general, killing all the immortals.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

Killing the immortal, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Um but he says, what does it say about the gods in this universe that no one has ever oh this is this I'm so glad I almost forgot about reading this. What does it say about the gods in this universe that no one has ever noted uh ever even noticed or cared? What does it say about me, right? I love, I love that shit where I was like, what the fuck does it say about you, bro? Yeah, let's let's think on that for a minute. Um but anyway, just banger writing, those are one of the moments that I love. Um, and then one of the places that he's traveling to has this gigantic god, which we kind of mentioned before, where um it's Falagar, right, the the behemoth. Um, and this is actually a great, this is another great art page to just show the kind of scale of what's going on here. And one of the things that ends up being said about um Falagar the Behemoth, um, uh Thor describes him uh one as a god that he knew. It says a patron god of the galactic frontier, champion of the tournament of immortals for five centuries straight. They say he wrestled black holes just for fun. I just I last saw him barely a hundred years ago. We passed one another in the spaceways and waved. So this is again setting the stakes, not only a gigantic creature, right? But the concept of wrestling black holes for fun is just so unbelievably like power scaly to indicate how unbelievably strong uh gore is at this point uh in the story.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

And also sad. I mean, it's it's like Thor, you know, this is like a homie. Yeah, it's like, yeah, we s we literally just pass by and waved at each other. Yeah, you know. Right. And a hundred years ago, them to them is like that was like last week, brother. And another thing that as this is going on, right, throughout this chapter, is we see him each page basically is him visiting another world and discovering more corpses. And each of these places, one of these uh black goopy uh creatures appears and attacks him, like these guard dogs, right? So again, each time he's getting confirmation uh that this was you know, it's gore's work, and all of them seem to be uh, you know, like Antonio said, brutally tortured in some way. It's not like he's just just killing them. He's uh he's hanging them from hooks and he's cutting them up and um trailing them to trees, cutting off limbs, all this different kind of shit like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:08

I I don't, I mean, you'd have to teach me how he got Phalagar, even after reading this whole thing. I I still don't believe he did that. But um, but yeah, so he's fighting against all these creatures that come out, getting that confirmation, and then we get a little bit of a jump around too. Um, and I kind of love that they do this actually with his inner monologue, but it says, you know, um uh whatever, you know, wherever you are, in whatever distant shadow you cower and hide, I hope you feel this butcher of gods. I hope these things are a part of you and that you feel every second of me beating them up to a blackened pulp. I hope you feel it and know deep down in your bones, your wretched in your wretched yellow bones. I don't know how he got he got yellow out of that, but it says this is that your end is near, right? And this so this is when they use like really fun time transitions where it says, your end is near, right? And it goes from nowaday Thor to Thor in the distant future, right? Still fighting against these things. So the concept of the end being near is just not even remotely the case. Um and I think that that's a really fun way of using time to express that that's the case and um the lettering and and putting the actual words kind of this is again like a panel thing, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:09

And it's so elegant, and again, we always are trying to call out any time there's some kind of storytelling thing that is like unique to the medium of comics, right? Like in if we're reading this in a book, you know, they're gonna need to use uh a whole nother stanza, a whole nother paragraph or something to imply to us that the end isn't near, right? Here they're able to have this text saying your end is near, while at the same time just having that text over a panel, which is very clearly showing us, uh-uh, it's not even close to being near. Not even close. Um, and again, and that's just you know, again, like we keep we're trying to celebrate and we're trying to appreciate ourselves, right? Like just how good this storytelling is. Yeah, yeah, such a fun time.

SPEAKER_00 49:48

And so we jump around now after him finding all these gods to early Thor, right? And so this again, again, also fun with the transition. Sometimes they don't tell you what time it is. I mean, you kind of pick it up, but they don't tell you what time it is in the first panel of what you're reading here, right? They give it to you slightly later. But Thor wakes up um realizing that he's like, you know, again, waking up out of a coma and he's like, Did I kill him? And they're like, you know, sorry, um, you didn't. We just found you lying in the snow, it was you alone. Um, and so Thor basically is like, you know, bring me all my shit. I'm going out there, I'm looking for him, um, which is crazy because he's also still totally kind of beat up. But he walks through the snow and ends up finding um another god who calls out to him. And so this is um uh Hinkan or Hinkan, Siberian god of the hunt, um, and uh he is completely like missing a leg, stabbed through the chest with one of these um kind of like black spears that Gore has. And uh he says that the the the the god butcher, the black butcher, he said to you to tell you he waits for you in his cave along the lake, just follow the screams. Um and I think Thor actually also has to kind of dispose of this god. He kind of like asks him, he says, you know, please Thor before you go, and he says, Yes, of course, be at peace. Now um uh the hunt for you has ended. And so I think he actually has to end this god, which is kind of crazy, right? Put him out of his misery.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Um and then one of the other cool uh just I want to please it's not really um that important, but it's a fun. I love how the back in the Norse era, right? What how these the all there's a lot of humans, like the human companions that Thor is booling around with, right? And they it's so fun the characterization of them and how how much they look up to him, you know, and are really celebrating him. So they're saying, You've been asleep for seven days. We dared not move you far from where you fell. Um, not that we could have, even if we wanted to. It took four of us just to lift your axe. Right, right. We've prayed every night for your father's aid and guidance, but as of yet, the all-father hasn't uh hasn't seen fit to hear us. And then we see this guy's like as Thor is walking off into the snow, he's like, Whoever dared attack you knows not what manner of God they trifle with. Do they, my lord? I cannot wait to see you call down the rage of your father and all of your wondrous friends upon them. The armies of Asgard will march this day. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

They're really they're like lit. It's boys, bro. They I mean they ride for him like fucking crazy. We'll get into this later on, bro. I would have never expected the shit that they did, but they really ride for that dude.

SPEAKER_01 52:06

Which is again cool, which it again is showing us like uh, I think tying back to part of the themes with these gods, right? Where in further issues, even even beyond where we get uh just in this trade paperback, we actually get to see flashbacks of Gore's origin in terms of and we saw the Gore's origin in this terrible MCU movie adaptation, right? So um, but he basically is a situation where he was praying to his gods and went through all of this crazy strife and had all this loss, and the gods like did not give a shit and no one was there to help him, right? And and so, but this is actually, even though this is young Brashthor, that we are obviously has a yacht a lot uh yet to learn, he has the admiration uh and support of his people because he's really there with them. He is there, you know, he's he's maybe not being as mature as he could be, but he's pulling up, they're getting in trouble and getting attacked by some trolls or whatever. And he says no. He's coming to help them, he's gonna party with them, he's gonna do it all, right? Lead them on raids, whatever, you know. So again, it's sort of showing um that the gods are meant to be helping. Yes, that's the that's the point, right? And when they are doing that, they in they inspire uh allegiance and uh the you know, they're actually there with their people, right?

SPEAKER_00 53:17

Um versus what uh uh Gore had to experience, right, which is just this this deep loneliness and experience of grief that is that is not helped by prayer, not helped by by any of that kind of stuff. So yeah, we'll definitely get into that. Because I I do again, like I said in the beginning, bro, I don't know. I I see where he's coming from. And we'll talk some more we'll talk some more specifically about some of the stuff that he says, but um, but anyway, um the way that we move on in this issue here is that we actually get another MCU character. We're doing a little crossover already, and we get a little bit of Iron Man who's flying through. I don't know nothing about this black suit. I don't know where this came from. Black and gold. I've never seen that before. It does look sick. I do like that one a lot. Um, but he pulls up and basically um uh he can see that Thor is worried about something. Um, and they end up going through this and he says, you know, um, I know it's probably none of my business, but uh when when have I ever let uh that stop me before? I have to tell you, a big guy, the look in your eyes uh right now has really freaked me out. I've never seen you this unnerved before. What the hell happened to you in that cave? Um and he basically goes on to um explain a bit. Um we kind of get um uh this moment where it says he's like, yeah, I could use your help, and then he goes on. We don't get the full explanation of what he tells um uh exactly Iron Man to do, but he basically says, Hey, go to Olympus and begin warning the gods of earth. Um, I'm about to go into this cave where the God Butcher, I I had this fight with the God Butcher originally. Um, and you know, he says, uh, I have nowhere else to turn, I'm here. Uh this is a place I hoped I would never see again. Um and so we're getting another kind of jump through time here, but this is where we see um Thor, at least of the modern era and kind of in the the previous era, walk into this cave. And in the modern era, he's basically um he calls his mom and he says, or the all-mother at the very least, and he says, you know, shit's gonna get dangerous, I gotta let you know. Um everybody is is under threat. You need to lock down um uh you know Godland. Asgard, Asgard. Yeah, I know Asgard, yeah, you gotta lock it down. Um and we also learn that this is where he thought he killed Gore, right? And then we get this great um uh jump back to, and this is actually one of the moments where they're they're really jumping around in this issue. They're like not always telling you what they're jumping around between. I mean, we know uh through what we've seen so far, but then we jump from modern era back to um the previous era where Thor is being boasterous, he comes in and he says, God butcher, come out of your hole and let's finish what we started, right? And this is another moment that I love um with with the some of the writing, but also just like the character that um that gore is where he says, You came alone, I knew you would. Gods are nothing if not predictable, especially when it comes to arrogance, right? Um, which I think, especially with young Thor, is like, I mean, he really um pinned the tail on the donkey or whatever else with that one for sure. Um, but so uh we get that, we also see um older Thor fighting against and we start basically young Thor here, we see him kind of start to get enveloped by the dark tendrils, and then we get old Thor um being enveloped by um all of the uh um watchdog guys, these um the black berserkers. Um, and he be you know he's yelling that Thor will never fall, Thor will never, and then we see this the sword basically being captured by all the darkness. Um and then we jump around, so we've gone to Nowadays, young, old, and now we're back to nowadays, and he goes into the cave and he runs into um one of the characters that we talked about earlier on, um, who for some reason I cannot remember his name right now. It's Shack uh Sh it's like Shack uh Shadrach. Not Shack, but Shadrach. Um and um Shadrach is basically hiding in this cave because he believes that this is like the only place that um Gore would not find him. Um and he says the the kind of most ominous thing that he says is he says, it's all because of you, Thor. Gods are dying right now because of you. Um and then we get the flashback to uh the young Thor and actually I think the old Thor as they're being consumed by this uh blackness. And one of the crazy um bits of dialogue that we have here is is Gore saying, Screaming, yes, there will be much more of that before you die. All gods will scream by the time I am through. Uh crazy. And so that's kind of our our last ending bit. It says, Yeah, all gods will scream um by the time I'm through, down to the very last one uh as he's being consumed. Crazy. Alright, so that wraps up issue number three, jumping into issue number four, the last god in Asgard, which sounds uh uh pretty ominous in its in its own, right here. So I'll read our I'll read our little summary here. It says the story shifts heavily to the far future, where old King Thor is the last god standing in a ruined Asgard overrun by Gore's black berserkers. In the present, Shadrach explains how Gore slaughtered his pantheon and left him alive to witnesses. And this is Shadrach, Gore slaughtered Shadrach's pantheon, just to be clear. Um Thor learns more about Gore's weapon, his immortality, uh, and his next destination, which is this uh world called Cronux. Um and this issue makes clear that Gore's war is not just against Thor, but a god uh against every god across space, time, whatever next dimension you want to add on to that. Um but but Gore is truly the god butcher in the truest way, where he is not um he's a driven individual, that is what I will say, absolutely. Um, genocidal, actually, yeah, very, very true. He's absolutely genocidal. Um and so this issue starts off with um old Thor. Uh, first off, funny enough, he Mjolnir is out of his hand, and then he's basically being carried away by these um black berserkers. And the crazy shit is that they just will not let him die. And that's what he ends up saying. He says, Um, the God Butcher, he won't even give me that one victory, will he? And then we have Thor, which again is crazy, this guy saying, Come back here and kill me.

SPEAKER_01 58:51

They just keep carrying him back and putting him on his throne.

SPEAKER_00 58:53

They just beat his ass, put him back on the throne, they say, sit there, brother. Um, and he says, Yeah, he won't even let me die. Um, and that's that's the again old Thor, and we jump back to now. Um, learning a little bit more about um what Shadrach has to say um about this history here. So um Shadrach, actually, I don't even think he says it in this part. Oh, he does, he does. This is one of my favorite little lines here. Um, yeah, read this whole little monologue. It's gonna sound a little morbid when I say that, but um, he says, I'm the subject god that you don't meet every day, a god who's looked upon the face of gore and lived like you, yes. The mighty Thor, oh how I've heard him talk about you. I was called Shadrach of the Diamond Moons of Um Ogogo. I was uh the god of wine and waterfalls until he came, until the god butcher. I don't know why he kept me alive, why he made me watch as his black berserkers slaughtered the rest of my pantheon. It seemed to amuse him the more I screamed. Every day I begged him to kill me next, but instead he cut all of my eyelids. And this guy, by the way, has four eyes. He's four sets of eyes, or two sets of eyes, excuse me, but four eyes. Um he says, cut my eyelids off so I had no choice but to see. He truly is an artist, you know. I mean that. The things he can do with that weapon of his, the things that he showed to me. Gods are such beautiful creatures. I'd never been more sure of that because I've seen what they look like on the inside. I'm not certain, but I think I may have gone mad at some point, right? Which I think is uh definitely true. And this is, again, kind of like we've been mentioning, great page and great use of realism for the facial expressions, right? We see this again, this is a god, right, who is uh crying and beaten up and just um terrified. And again, saying that he he must have gone mad right through this process. I mean, when I read that shit about him cutting off all his eyelids, I was like, damn, that motherfucker's a freak. That motherfucker's a freak in real life.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

Yeah, he's doing all this other crazy shit, but like you know, that that sounds like somebody we should uh make a like a goofy, silly, funny character in a movie who's just gonna kidnap some.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

Right. He kind of looks like a he looks like a goofy. He like, I mean, he's not looking like this, and no disrespect to this guy, but he kind of giving me a little bit of like Jar Jar Binks kind of vibe from it. Right. Like if he was a goofball, he'd be like a Jar Jar Binks type of goofball. Um But so we learn a lot of this back.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

Yeah, he's a tortured, he's like Jar Jar Binks if he had gotten like his eye his eyelids cut off and like all his friends murdered in front of him and all that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

Right, exactly. And so um also uh uh this guy is the first one to point out that he says, I don't know anything. Uh Thor is basically saying, Tell me everything that you know. He says, I don't know anything. Uh do I? Only things I heard screamed. The secrets are cut out, uh the secrets he cut out of the others. Cronux, there was Cronux, of course, and oh no, we shouldn't talk about that here, not even here. Uh and Thor doesn't know what Cronux is, and so he basically says, Come on, brother, we're gonna go. And they go back to this the omnipotent city, nexus of all the gods. Um, go to the librarian, they end up finding the librarian. I thought he was dead, bro. I thought that motherfucker was real life dead. And he looks dead, but you see the librarian on the ground and barely alive. Yeah, barely alive, everything's on fire. Um we see the black berserkers beat them there, uh, and they're burning down the library. Yeah, they're burning down the library. Also, great line from our boy Shadrach here. He says, No, oh no, if only I could close my eyes. God damn. Yep. Rather, creepy. Um but so they're burning down the library, and um now we jump back to probably one of the craziest, um, and I I think you know, uh we learn a lot more again about Gore's psyche. We get a lot of dialogue from him here, similar to um Thor's fight earlier on. But we're jumping back to 893 AD in the Cave of the God Butcher.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:15

Um, start with now is the time for suffering. Yes. Damn, ominous. But yeah, so this this whole chapter uh this whole section of the chapter, basically, we it's uh it's uh Gore doing some villainous monologuing while he's torturing Thor, who's hung upside down in these spiky black chains.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

Venom chains.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:34

Venom chains, yeah. Again, um, as we we've we keep referencing, but basically the weapon that gore is using is the sword, the all black, the necro sword, which uh is the sword of null. No, the god of the symbiotes.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:47

If you didn't listen to our venom episode, go do that right now. You can do it after this, but go do it and you'll get that context.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:53

There's some crazy crossover there. So basically, even though uh um Gore is not a Venom character, his weapon uh is the weapon of the god of the venom dudes. So he sort of has some, while he has this sword on him, he has some crazy venom like powers, and it's because this sword is so powerful, that's how he's able to be killing all these gods. It's because he's wielding a sword that was forged for the murder of other gods. That's crazy. And lets him create all these uh manipulate the venom goo. Yeah, the venom goo and do and you know, make all these soldiers out of it and and make chains and weapons and whatever else he needs, and his creepy cloak, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:34

That's what I was gonna say, bro. The cloak is like, you know, shout out to him. He was like, Yeah, bro, I gotta kill gods, I gotta do all this other stuff, but you know I'm gonna be dripped out at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:43

In the movie, they couldn't even they didn't even make his cloak black. What? They make it he's just like a goofy looking dude in some white robes.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:49

Like they really but I feel like that's like the opposite of the like they really were like, actually, no, it's not venom, it's not. And we refuse that. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

Well, maybe some of that honestly has to do with um I mean the side tangent, but again, annoyingly Sony bastards own all the Spider-Man shit. The Spider-Man venom they own Spider-Man and all the villains.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:09

So no references.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

So probably it was something where where Marvel was like, can we have this be whatever? And Sony was like, no. So legally you cannot show anything referencing venom or that's venom, so you can't you can't have that be a venom sword.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:22

Yeah, yeah. Crazy. What a bunch of uh losers in the middle of the store.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:25

We're just gonna make Madam Webb instead.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:27

I have not seen that movie either. Have you seen that one?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:29

Of course not, dude. I'm not gonna see Sidney Sweeney do some dumb shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:35

Bro, and I feel like what's funny about that movie is is the people that were in it started shit talking it afterwards. That's a tough one. That's a tough one. But um, yeah, so Thor is being tortured here, and this is another one basically Gore is is is telling me, he says, you know, tell me where all of your friends and family are so that I can go kill them. Um and uh Gore actually ends up saying in another one of the the crazy quotes that I wrote down here, he says, I'm not exactly a novice in the ways of torture, you understand. I want to torture Oh, I I um he says, I tortured a god of torture, um which is crazy. Yeah, and after and he says, after an evening alone with me, he told me where his own children were hiding. After an evening with this guy. Crazy.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:15

Yeah, Gore is really menacing. All his monologuing is um is pretty incredible. And also his uh his word bubbles have uh the the his lettering is is um sort of like this, it sort of looks like hand handwritten, a little uh creepy um yeah. Well creepy. The font the font has some has some evil sauce going on. Subtle.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:38

But his whole thing here, right, is he saying stuff like all the gods have their breaking point. It took uh it took me nine days uh to find this one god and his flesh was made of stone. I'm hopeful that you can keep me entertained for at least half as long. And then we hear this this scream coming from the cave. Um and we're back to to nowadays where Thor is fighting against all these black berserkers in the library. Um, pretty cool for our boy uh Shadderak, though, where he says, No, please, I'm not going back to Gord. He can't, he can't make me watch anymore. We see Shadderak fight against these guys, and he's, you know, taking his moment. He's sinking his teeth into people with Thor's, and everybody else is hitting them with books and shit like that. Um, and what we end up learning is that uh Thor is asking for the book of Cronux, and the librarian's like, uh Cronux is not, he's like, Oh, it's a god, right? Thor thinks it's a god. He says, Kronux isn't a god, it you imbecile, it's a world again, calling him an imbecile. He's like, You stupid fucking, but he says it's a world, a hidden one, and and the only book that can tell you where to find it is burning over there. And Thor drops his other game's face right there. Yeah, where he's like, oh shit. Thor drops his hammer, which is crazy. That's how fast he's trying to get to this damn book. But so whole library's burning down, which is terrible, bro. It's like the Library of Alexandria, except times like a trillion or some shit like that. Terrible.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

Terrible. Um, but we jump ahead again in our time-traveling world uh to um Thor as an old man basically kind of crawling along the ground, um, saying, you know, I will uh he wants to die. He wants to meet his death, do very Valhalla Viking type things. Um and he still has enough strength to wield his sword uh and he uh you know he says for Asgard, right? So there's still some fight in this in this old guy at the very least.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:13

Right. And then we get this really cool page where we see uh the Thor of the future battling. There's this huge explosion as he's fighting the uh these you know, these monsters. We see Thor of the past getting tortured in the cave. We see Thor of the present reading this burning scroll to figure out.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:29

The scroll's burning, his cape's burning, and he's just like standing there, just like roided out, just being like, damn, I'm gonna read this. I'm gonna get through this in at least less than 30 seconds before it burns.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:39

We get another, there's sort of like, I feel like the Jason Aaron shout out all his writing. He sort of does such a good job of putting like one or two little funny moments in each each section. And we get a great one here where the the librarian is saying, damn, useless enchantments, where the devil are those water pixies? And then he says to Shadark or Shadrach. Shadrach. Shadark.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:00

Shadark. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:01

Um, he's like, I don't suppose you're the god of sprinklers, are you? And he goes, I am Shadrach, god of songs and somersaults. And he goes, Terrific. Try rolling around enough fire to put it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

Right, yeah. So just great little, great little goof moments that, again, in crazy, crazy stuff, but uh, you know, it also doesn't feel I think what's also good about this is it's like using like the right characters like for it, right? There are moments where young Thor is like funny, this librarian has already been like you know shitting on Thor and being kind of a goofball, and then obviously uh Shadrach's kind of crazy. So um just good use of that there. But we figure out where Cronics is the Palace of Infinity. Palace of Infinity. That's uh that's pretty crazy. And the first thing that we see showing up in this in this world is all of these gods being uh butchered, if you will. Um, and there's this gigantic, gigantic pool of blood. Um, and um Gore is saying we're gonna need every last drop, and he's talking to the last god that's on this, and he says, Will it be enough? And he says, It will have to be, there's no one left. And Gore says, Don't be ridiculous, I could always cut off your arms and legs. And the guy says, It will be enough. And he says, Yes, I thought you might say that. Um, but so what we end up learning um through the kind of next piece of dialogue here is that uh Gore is trying to go back in time, and we don't know exactly how far he's going back originally, but this guy's like, you know, if you go that far back, I can't, you know, you you're saying, you know, asking me if you're gonna get killed. I don't fucking know, bro. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. Um, and uh, you know, we'll see what he's trying to do. Basically says, you know, this is this is monstrous.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:31

Oh, this is actually you gotta read this whole page.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:33

All right, I'm gonna read this whole page. This is uh actually one of the ones that I wrote down because I just love the way that this is written. I this one in particular was actually one of the ones that stood out to me. He says, This is monstrous what you've done to the pool of forever. A few drops of our own sacred blood were all we ever used to travel the timeways, to shepherd the herds of yesterdays and prune the wild fields of tomorrow. Ooh, what a banger. And he says, We time gods have always been peaceable beings, caretakers of time, nothing more. Uh we never did anyone uh any or did anyone harm. And then Gore goes on to say, In my travels I have learned that there are two kinds of gods, those who do harm and those who do nothing at all, and I have yet to decide which I find more worthy of my wrath. But soon enough it will no longer matter, as all gods will have one very important trait in common. They will all be dead. And this is this crazy moment where we see um Gore uh in the kind of in uh what word am I looking for? I want to say like entrenched, but he's like uh stepping, he's stepping into the pool. He's stepping in the pool, he's covered in his kind of black cloak, and he's got his arms out like very godlike. Yeah, it's like a priest. Like he kind of looks like he's got these like he's about to do a sermon walking into this gigantic or it's like a vat like baptism or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something like that for sure. I mean, this is like a gigantic vat of blood that he's uh stepping into. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:44

He's about to do some time travel shenanigans with a pool of the blood gods. I mean the time gods.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:51

The blood gods time. Yeah, I mean, kind of, but um, and then we get so what's interesting about this time travel thing, and I will say, I don't know if I first expected this when this happened, but we see old Thor in in his fight against all these gigantic or these uh creatures in his time. Um he's trying to get death, and he's like, you know, I've been beaten, you know. Do you hear me, Gory? Thor is beaten, finish it already, I'm too old, too tired, I can't fight anymore. And there's this gigantic uh uh I was gonna say flash, but the the the writing says fizz ash, right? There's a little fizzash. And great splash page, uh, very painting-like, like you said, where is and he says, Where is the butcher of gods? And you'll never guess who it is, dear reader, if you have not read this already. It's nowadays Thor, who's shown up to hang out with his old self. In the future. In the future. Future and and and now and and past will maybe all meet up. But that's the end of issue number four. Crazy. Crazy. And again, I mean, Ben's shown it to me right now. I wish you guys were here right now with you. I wish you were all sitting next to me on this couch, but crazy splash page of a fight between Thor and Gore uh as the as the uh the cover for this issue, crazy with the sword coming out of him, black tendrils, all this craziness. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

Issue number five, dream of a godless age.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

Our final chapter. Final chapter, final chapter. So jumping into issue number five, the last one of our trade paperback. I did not know how many issues there were gonna be because we normally have like six and seven, but this was five, which felt good. Um, this is uh number five, as Ben said, uh, I'm gonna find the title of it again. Um it is the dream of a godless age. So Gore travels billions of years, not millions, billions of years into the past to kill an elder god and brings its heart back for the next stage of his plan. That's pretty crazy. They they don't show you that fight. I kind of wish that they did a little bit, but the heart is like the size of this dude. So pretty crazy. But so in the past, young Thor is tortured for 17 days. Remember that that guy that had like rock for skin or whatever else? Nine days. So Thor's really sticking it out. He's got two weeks and three days with this guy. Um, but then his Viking companions help him fight back, but they show up, which I think is so crazy. And again, uh we'll talk about this, I think, with the specific pages of this, but it really throws Gore for a fucking loop that they're actually riding for him uh this hard. But so um Thor ends up fighting back, he wounds Gore and severs one of his arms. Um in the present, Thor follows uh Gore through the pool of forever and lands in the far future, like we talked about. Um, that's actually so that's so we kind of saw the moment that Thor arrives, but the way that we end up realizing that he's arriving is that Gore is going into this pool, and Thor is like, not without me, you don't throws himself in there after him. Um but so that's how he shows up in the future, um, where he meets his old self, um, thinking that it's actually his dad, funny enough, originally. And then the this uh these issues end by bringing multiple Thor's into the same war and revealing that Gore's plan is is is so much bigger than uh simple revenge. So it's about to get nutty. Um we're back on Cronax uh the Palace of Infinity, and we get these actually. Is this the first time that all of his speech build is turned black? Um yeah, it's well it's one of the first times we have his narration. Or his narration. Oh, yes, you're right. It is the narration, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:14:02

So this is all black for and all the uh venom tendrilly, too.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:06

Yes, you're very, very right. Um, and I I don't know, I might just read this whole shit to be. Do it, man. Read it, read it. The writing is so good. It is. He says, Where I come from, we knew nothing of the world beyond what we could see with our own eyes, and even much of that we could not comprehend. I was raised to believe that stars um I was raised to believe that the stars uh were the eyes of our ancestors, um uh of the ones who'd pleased uh the gods and proved worthy of the soothing embrace of the night. The damned suffered forever in the sun, and so the more uh who died unworthy, we were told, the hotter our world would burn. And that's how we were taught to honor our gods through fear, right? I think that that's a very important part of this, right? Is he truly believes that the way that gods work is that they do it through fear, which you know, like I said, there's a little uh, I don't know, nuggets there. No, you know. Anyway. Yeah. Nuggets, but anyway. But uh uh uh but where were those gods whenever we needed them? I always asked. Where where were the gods when I needed them most? Uh where uh they were where they always are, all throughout the universe. They were uh uh nowhere to be found, right? So what we're seeing here is Gore has got some childhood trauma about gods not showing up when he needed them. And so he's going back 14 billion years ago to the void. This is the creation of everything. And so they were taught, um, and he says, I was taught that the universe was born from the tears of the first God when he um beheld the emptiness around him, and his heart was filled with loneliness. The tears became the ocean, which became ice, which became worlds. And there the lonesome God planted the seeds of all life as we know it. And the first God looked upon his work and smiled. Bro, I didn't know what was going on in these issues, because there's like this big old blue baby.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:46

Maybe that's the first ever God of creation. I mean, is it's like I think that's I think that's what we're meant to believe.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:51

Because look, he's creating like creating something creatures, right? And so this this monologue goes on, and he says, I stand here, and I'm gonna read this whole shit because it's just so good. But he says, I stand here now witnessing with my own eyes the first awkward plumb uh awkward, as you say, plumbings. Fumblings. Fumblings. I just can't read. The awkward fumblings of life in the void. I see no lonesome weeping god, no tears except those shed by the misshapen creatures around me, minutes old and already begging for death. And we see these like blue, misformed, misshapen, um kind of humanoid-esque looking things. They kind of look like they could be, I don't know, Gore's cousins or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:23

Yeah, it looks like what this this creation god is just making these little guys out of clay and some of them work, some of them don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:30

He says, I see no grand planet work, no benevolent omnipotence on display. Ooh, that was a that was some SAT words right there. Good work. I see only an inbred offspring of the elder gods treating primordial life as his fleshy plaything. But despite the best efforts of the gods, I know that life will still find a way. Worlds will be blasted into being, and creatures will slither from the ooze to evolve and thrive, and ultimately learn to fear and worship the bumbling deities they assume to be their makers. But for this young god at least, there will be no temples erected. My name is Gore, son of uh son of a nameless father, outcast from a forgotten world. I've slain my way through multitudes to stand here at the genesis of all things, blackened with vengeance, wet with holy blood, one simple dream still strong in my heart, the dream of a godless age. And it's such a beautiful um panel right here, with a totally white background, Gore enveloped in his um black kind of venom cloak, charging forward with a sword. And I don't know, really all I can kind of assume is that he goes after this little baby. Rips his heart out. Well, big baby, but yeah, rips his heart out.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:30

So, I mean, we're led to believe he murders the and build like he goes to the basically the beginning of time and kills the first ever creator god that made the universe.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:41

And this is where the time stuff gets complicated, because it isn't just over. Don't the lights just turn off after that? I don't know. We're gonna have to find out, man. But he does say life will always find a way, so maybe somebody else showed up. Who knows?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:51

But yeah, then we we cut to the the blood pool, we see Gore walking out of it, and that we see this time, the this time god saying, Impossible. Gore's like, sorry to disappoint you. The last time god of Cronox, but Gore yet lives, and he has claimed his prize.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:06

So he's walking out of there with a big ol' heart. Right. Big old heart. And actually, I'm gonna let you read the rest of what he says right here because I actually think it's super important.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

But yeah, he says, the still warm heart of an elder god. Yes, now all I need is a moon or two, some centuries to myself, and the space in which to build enslaves so very many slaves. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:24

He also got a creepy ass fucking face in that uh in that thing. He's like looking at the it's like it's like bloodlust. Like that's the best way that I could almost subscribe. It's like bloodlust and like just nothingness. And actually, that's an interesting thing that Thor actually brings up a long time ago. Actually, I don't know, did we talk about this story that Thor tells? I don't think we did. Um Thor uh uh remembers a story when he was younger, like very, very young, like a child. Um there was a guy that was killing gods actually way, way back when, and I'm trying to remember what his name was. I'd written this down here as well. Um but this this other uh god was killing gods. Um, and this god was named uh Dagger. Dagger, great. Um, but he was killing, and Thor basically remembers a story of seeing this uh, they called him like the mad god in a pit. That's where all the the gods they put him in this pit. And he uh Thor ends up falling into the pit, which is crazy. And he talks about how he saw in his eyes like calmness. The way he, and this is the quote, he says, the way he looked at you so coldly through the darkness made you feel as almost as if you were already dead, right? And so, long story short, Thor is in this pit and uh ends up getting saved after like five hours, but this guy just kind of like monologues to him about killing these gods and doing whatever else.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:35

And that was the realization from that anecdote, right? Is Thor says that all the other gods of Asgard said this guy in the pit was crazy, like he was crazy and insane, and so little kid Thor wanted to go see how crazy and insane he was, right? And then what he found was way scarier. He didn't seem crazy at all. He seemed totally rational, yeah. Um and that was much scarier, and so again, that's one of the things where it you know part of this arc where uh you know Gore, as evil and terrible as he may be, he's really has a point that's worth considering. Right. Um and is similar to uh, you know, this some this villain from from Thor's youth is also clearly made some uh made some points that that freaked little kid Thor out. Uh it definitely did.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:22

It definitely did, yeah. Him, yeah, him seeing that. I mean, I can only imagine, bro, seeing like a serial killer, and they're just like, I mean, and that's how they would be too. They're just chilling, bro. They're like, eh, just another Wednesday, brother. I don't know. Um, but back in our story now, uh, Gor has come out of the pool, and then we get this big old uh, I'm trying to read this one. This is a uh uh it's like a crack a crack a tomb or whatever else. Yeah, but lightning blast that goes, Thor shows up, you know, prepare to feel the wrath of Thor, and then we jump back, we do another little another little time jump back to uh 893 AD, back with this is in the cave of the god butcher, and Thor is still being tortured. And this is when his boys pull up. And this is actually another great moment artistically, um, with uh Gore's eyes turning and just the intensity of um he says, Who dares? Right, and the the intensity in his eyes with the realism of how this is um drawn and and and illustrated is so so cool to me. But anyway, um Thor's Vikings role, and they say, you know, uh redden uh redden, I was gonna say ready, but redden your spears, berserkers, let fly it's funny that his boys are also called berserkers, right? Let fly your your raging hand rather a thousand deaths than one retreat. This night we feast in Valhalla. This night we die for Thor. And they said that as they're stabbing into uh Gore.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:36

And we see just shock in Gore's face, right? Because this is one of the like we just heard his statement previously, right? There's only two types of gods, gods that do nothing and gods that do harm. Right. And uh this is, you know, he clearly hasn't maybe he's had opportunity to see some of these gods, but he probably just pulled up and killed them anyway. But this is some of his first realization where he's like, oh my god. Some gods actually do their shit, I guess. These guys are actually here willing to sacrifice for Thor. Um and he can't he can't believe that. Um But yeah, so then the rest of this chapter, we've got we've got Thor's three different conflicts going on sort of simultaneously. We've got Thor, we've got Thor being rescued in the past by the his Vikings in this cave. We've got Thor battling Gore as he's just stepped out of the blood pool, and they're sort of monologuing at each other and uh little bit of monologuing. Um and then he says, Gore says to the Vikings, Stop this, I'm not here to hurt you, men of earth. I come instead to liberate you and your kind from the yoke of divine servitude. And they say, And we come to liberate that hideous head of yours from its shoulders. Cut him down. Don't worry, Lord Thor, don't worry, Lord Thor. We'll have you free of those chains or die, try. And then he kills that guy and he says, Listen to me, you fools. You do not throw your lives away on something as useless as a god. He is not worth your devotion. None of them are. Just listen to me, listen, and let me tell you of my dream. A dream of a which we know dream of a godless future, whatever. Um and then they say, For the love of Odin, someone get a spear in that throat and stop this wretch wretch's muuling. He says, Very well, die for your god if you wish, see if he even takes notice.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

Yeah, crazies. And again, zoom in on the face, Gore's real, real pissed about this one.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:20

Great expressions again, which again following returning to that idea from the Scott McCloud choice of realism versus cartoon, like what serves the story most? And and clearly, like they're taking full advantage of this, these very realistic faces, giving us these very nuanced expressions that are conveying a lot of um specific emotion and and whatnot.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:39

Right, exactly. And so um, yeah, so what he ends up saying, we get this little um kind of internal monologue, also with some dialogue from Gore, and it says, Of course I'd seed men willing to die for their gods before on more worlds than I can count, but never with such such wicked glee. Um, and then Gore goes on to say, Your Vikings taught me two important lessons that day, Thor. One, that mortals' childlike fear of a godless world is far stronger than their fear of death, no matter how painful, and two, no matter how fierce my devotion or how invincible my weapon might make me, no matter how just my cause, I could never, I can no longer do my job alone. Um crazy. So again, this is the day, right? This is the day where Shadrach and all these other people are basically being like, you changed something in him this day. Um and uh Gore goes on to say, you know, I walked the cosmos for two thousand years, killing God after God with these very hands, very hands. I tortured them and skinned them and burned them alive and left them rotting in their heavens, which again they're heavens, right? I kind of like that. I made no proclamations, I issued no threats or demands, I simply killed every immortal tyrant that I could find and moved on through the shadows. But you brought me out of the darkness, Thor. You showed me a whole new way for the first time in the history of the cosmos. And this is actually this is a jump around, this is a dialogue that's coming from nowadays, Thor, where they're at the um the gigantic pool. Um, but Gore goes on to say, a god did something useful. Um, and he says to these people, he says, Tell me as you die, men of earth, do you at lay at last see the truth? Where are your gods now? Where are your great lies you wasted uh your lives worshipping? Where's your savior? Where is Thor? And then right then, Thor has broken out of his chains and uses his axe to slice through the arm of Gore. And this is, I mean, this is the first time that we've ever really seen Gore get hurt or seem to get hurt, right? Because again, this is a guy that goes on after this to be killing motherfuckers that'd be you know dancing around with black holes, right? So this is a this is a very, very big moment here. Uh great splash page as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:29

He goes on to say, You thought you were killing me that day in the cave, but instead you saved me. You saved me from a life of failure. You saved my dream, and for that I will forever be indebted to you, Thor of Asgard. That is why you die last. Wow. And that's why he's keeping him alive in the future, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:45

Uh villain, I think, you know, a lot of the writing is great in this, but the villain writing in particular. So good. I think it's so, so good.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:51

Um so then he's asking this guy, uh, you know, whatever. So basically he's he goes on to create his uh create this this pool. He's got the heart, he kills the the guy, um the the last of the time gods. Yeah. And Thor's like, no, I swear by the spires of Asgard, no more gods will die. Uh Gore says, You're not listening, are you, Thor? All gods will die. From the first until the last. No almighty gets out alive. I go now to make it so. Building myself an army was just the beginning. With these next steps, I go to explore new horizons. Of Deicide. I had never heard I had to look that up.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:26

Deity, Deicide. Deicide, holy moly. Um, but anyway, we we're jumping around through times here. But so he uh young Thor is is attacking uh Gore and Gore, saying, No, I refuse to die, I refuse to die while gods yet live. Um Thor is doing a whole bunch of faboo, he's doing some lightning shit. Um Gore is going back into the pool again to be going off and doing his thing. This is when Thor um throws himself using it. This is I think he uses Mjolnir to he's spinning him around doing some shit like that, but he throws himself into the pool, and that's what leads us to having um Thor in the future Asgard. Yeah, teleports into the farm thousands of years into the future. Right. And Thor originally he sees his old self and he's like, damn, dad, what's happened to Asgard? And he's like, I'm not your father, you beardless whelp. Now get ready with that hammer. Time to show me, uh time to show me you're all I remember you to be. And so they're ready to do this fight together. Um Thor's teaming up. Double Thor, yeah. So we jump back, and this is again is an interesting moment in the past where they believe that they've slain the God Butcher. Um, and you know, Thor's people are like, Thor has slain uh the God Butcher, all hail the Odin son by the eyes of uh Heimdall. What a cut! What axe uh that axe could have felled the world tree itself. Oh, the songs that will be sung of this day, the tales that would be told for generations to come. And Thor's like, no, we will never speak of this day ever again, like you know, never for as long as we shall live. Um, which again shows the intensity of this moment uh and also the fact again, this is a great moment where they take that that for as long as we shall live, jumps into the the next time jump and shows that um it's gonna come up again. It's gonna come up again in the future. Um and Thor at the end of this is talking with his older self, basically saying, you know, where's the God butcher? I was right behind him, and he says, Right behind him, you're even dumber than I remember you, aren't you? You appeared in the exact same spot he had, I'll give you that, but you're late, uh a bit late, boy. The God Butcher has been here for 900 years, and he's been busy, and we see these um like venom-like tendril type things going through the universe, seemingly going to different planets. Um, and he's I think he's like getting this information, but he says, Hmm, another Thor, how splendid. One can never have too many of those, and just in time as well. Uh, I would uh I said I would save you for last, God of Thunder, and that day is imminent, the first day of a new age of freedom, the day all my dreams come true, and we see this gigantic world that looks like it has his kind of army that he's building on it. So like a slave city. Yeah, good lord. And we get some great uh man, I was talking to Hannah recently about all these uh great variant arts that appear in the back, but what a crazy, crazy story.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:58

And there's our cliffhanger. Yeah, cliffhanger. How's this gonna resolve? We so we've got the context of the the the Thor in the past who learned this crazy lesson, the Thor in the future, that it knows how bad everything gets. We've got our current day Thor has just arrived in the future to team up with the King Thor. Yeah, um, all those storylines like converged really beautifully, all three of them at the same time. Right. And we were able to follow-I mean, um, I think it might have been more difficult for you guys to follow listeners as we're reading it to you. Go read it, it'll be good. But go read it. It all makes sense when you actually are reading the book. It's it's really not confusing, it's beautifully put together. We're just confusing. Don't worry about it. And how cool also that like you know, Gore keeps referencing his dream and all this stuff, and he never actually says it, but the title of the final chapter is Dream of a Godless Age. It's just it's like poetic. Quality of life, baby.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:47

Quality of life, poetic. Um So I mean, I gotta ask you, I think that the people already know, brother. What did you think of this shit?

SPEAKER_01 1:29:54

Incredible. It's so good. It's like I think one from a purely writing perspective, one of the one of the best written things we've read. Absolutely. Absolutely and paired with the art, everything, all I mean, though it was honestly, honestly incredible.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:06

Yeah, I might argue that this maybe is the best written villain that we might have run into, other than maybe Osmandius uh in in Watchmen. But this I I really like the way that this villain is written. And again, it's like, you know, he's he grew up in a world where we see that gods can answer prayers. Thor is answering prayers from not the world that's not even his own. And this guy was left in a desolate place um to fend for himself and feel that the gods were nothing. And I love again that quote where it's like, I don't know, he basically says, I don't know which I hate worse, gods that don't do shit or gods that are bad. Because you know, they're basically as bad the same way to me. And there those are only two types, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:43

I mean, I mean and and it's interesting showing that like oh he still is villainous, like it because then when confronted with a third example alternate facts, right? Uh when confronted with a situation where it seems like a god is maybe looking out for people and the people responding in a different way, yeah. He just doesn't put that he doesn't put that into his equation.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:03

Yeah, he's jealous, he's angry that um yeah, he just thinks that they don't get it, right? Which is I think is a very classic thing that you know we when I think about other random Marvel things like um oh what is that big motherfucker's name? Thanos. Uh yeah. But like, you know, he in the same way was like, you know, people just don't get it, right? And he thinks that his means will justify the ends, right? I think that this guy I don't know. The ends justify the means. The ends justify the means, thank you very much. Um the means justify the ends, too. But um, but um I think the interesting thing here that's a little bit different about Gore, for example, right, is I don't know exactly what his end goal is because what it seems like is that there's gonna be no gods except him. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:40

Is he has he become a god at that point?

SPEAKER_00 1:31:42

And that and that's actually another thing that he points out where one of the gods that he was torturing, um, he says he had the basically like the nerve to ask if I was a god, and then I tortured him even worse, right? It's like he hates gods so much, and yet realistically, like, bro, if you're fighting against gods, are you not one of them? Are you not like you're gonna differentiate yourself maybe in a way? I guess that maybe it's because you have that sword, but uh uh or the the necrosw, but like you know, when do you you know you either uh what do they say, maybe in uh strata to um Christian Bale in uh The Dark Knight, not that he said this, but you know, you either die a hero, you live long enough to see yourself become a villain. I'll say that shit all day, bro. I love that quote.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:19

But and and full circle, Christian Bale plays gore. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. What a what a waste. Oh my gosh. I mean, we should do it, we'll do this sometime just for fun together. Let's watch Love of Thunder. You're honestly gonna be like, we'll just get like high shit or something and have a fun time. But you're you're you're obviously gonna be like jaw on the floor, being like This is crazy. I can't they had the one of the best written villains in all of Marvel and one of the best actors of all time of our generation, and then just wasted.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:46

How do you think uh how do you think our boy Jason feels about that too?

SPEAKER_01 1:32:49

I don't know, man. Well uh maybe we'll maybe we get to ask him someday. Yeah. Maybe we can find some stuff online and and read about it. But yeah, anyways, I mean, very cool. It's also like a classic, you know, a classic theological debate of like if God, you know, you know, uh we don't need to get too too deep in into uh you know real world theology here, but it is, you know, it's like there's so how can how can there be an omnipotent God who's in control of everything when the world is full of so much abject suffering?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:14

Um which is a you know has been a tale as old as time, something that humans have been grappling with since uh, you know, as long as we have written records uh or spoken records of um you know mythology. That's actually interesting, another interesting Norse tidbit. We've been uncover having to uncover a lot of the Norse mythological stuff. We um so much of it was lost to time because the Icelandic people, most of their storytelling was just oral tradition. Um and so a lot of those stories weren't ever uh fully written down. I see. And so I think they've been uncovering more and more written down stuff and piecing it together and whatever, but um yeah, pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:49

Pretty cool. Here's one thing, one last thing that I got that I just thought of about um this story here with Gore, actually. Um his gods, right, did not come to help him, right? In the same kind of way that uh, you know, Thor showed up for these people on this planet and came because they're gods and did not show up to them. What if Gore's gods got murdered by another person before that and that's why they weren't there? What if that guy that was in the pit was the guy who killed his gods? I don't know. Maybe I just gave someone away. I don't know. Maybe, who knows? We gotta read on and find out. Shit. All right, read on, guys. But anyway, this has been Kickback Comics. You can go follow us on Instagram at kickbackcomics uh underscore pod, if I remember that correctly. Check it out. Check out the other issues, go listen to Venom. You'll get a little bit more context for what's going on here with the Necrosword. But anyway, this was crazy. This was a great read. Thank you guys so much for joining us.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:38

Next week, uh our episode is gonna be on spawn. We've got uh a guest, uh the the A guest lecturer. Guest lecturer, yeah, exactly. Isaiah, uh friend of the pod, is gonna be joining us. Um and as we keep saying in these episodes, our our you know, um goal for the year is to try to be bringing on as many guests as we can realistically uh make scheduling work for.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:59

Yeah, so if you wanna, you know, hey, we're we're small right now, jump on here, right? When we're when we're getting the comicsology Amazon sponsorship, you're gonna be like, hey, bro, I was on that shit back in the day. So come join us.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:09

But regardless, for those of you who have listened all the way to the end of this episode, thank you so much for for uh for riding with us. Um and yeah, shit, you know, let people know what we got going on.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:19

Yeah, and we'll and we'll and we'll catch you in the next one. Peace. Peace.