A new version of Thor coming out of the Multiverse gives the perfect new spin to the character and to his relation with his fabled hammer Mjolnir, turning the weapon into Thor’s sidekick in a tragic story of failure and rebirth. While Mjolnir has been a key component in Thor’s stories for a while, this new approach is one of the most originals seen in a long time.
With Marvel’s Multiverse being the central feature of the Avengers stories, fans of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes got the chance to see many alternate versions of their favorite characters. In the pages of Avengers Forever, a group consisting of Ghost Rider, Deathlok, and Ant-Man, is traveling through the Multiverse to assemble a team of Avengers from different realities to battle the dreaded Masters of Evil, who are conquering one Earth after the other. This is a chance for the creative team behind the comic to explore different “What If?” scenarios and create new characters (such as the Samurai ghost Rider) starting from familiar ones, at the same time highlighting the values that all Avengers share, regardless of the time and the universe they come from. In previous issues, the series introduced the Vibranium Man, a version of Black Panther who grew up in space after the destruction of Wakanda, and an entire army of Captain Americas.
Avengers Forever #8, by Jason Aaron, Aaron Kuder, Cam Smith, and Guru-eFX, focuses on the Thor from Earth-56337, the “most broken” and unworthy God of Thunder in existence. This Thor was never able to prove worthy enough to lift Mjolnir, and thus he was powerless when the Masters of Evil arrived and burned down Asgard first, and then conquered Earth. Even worse, Mjolnir does not simply refuse to be lifted, he follows Thor everywhere, a constant reminder of his failure as a god. However, after meeting the last survivor of K’un-Lun, Thor trains to master his own power without relying on Mjolnir, and becomes the God of Fists. After he literally punches the hammer into submission, Mjolnir apparently wants to follow Thor, not to mock him, but to help him in his battle.
In recent years, Marvel writers have been seemingly obsessed with Thor’s relationship with Mjolnir, having him lose the hammer, destroy it, and reforge it many times. The conflictual relationship shown in Avengers Forever, however, is a much more interesting one, because it goes beyond the worthy/unworthy dynamic and becomes a mix of tragedy and comedy. Mjolnir following Thor to remind him of his failures is a sadistic twist on Odin’s famous spell of worthiness, but at the same time it creates some more lighthearted moments. At the end of the story, Mjolnir essentially becomes Thor’s sidekick, which is something never seen before and absolutely worth exploring in the future.
While most of the alternate realities and the characters shown in the Avengers’ Multiverse have been underwhelming, this God of Fists Thor is one of the best things to come out from this long storyline. It gave Thor and Mjolnir‘s relationship a new intriguing twist, by turning the hammer into the hero’s tragic but also hilarious sidekick.
