All his effort is placed in the storytelling, which is phenomenal, his being otherwise a no-frills style that nonetheless supplies everything needed as Trolls, Elves, Dwarves and Giants team with Thor. Butch Guice is also good on the episode where we learn what motivates the God Butcher, and Ron Garney has the heavy lifting of establishing the nine worlds featuring mythical creatures of which Asgard is but one. He supplies that grandeur via sheer scale, with little decoration, his Asgard a sparse, white space, but Thor in all his incarnations having a stature. None of this is the fault of Ribić, whose interpretation of the grandeur of the gods is in stark contrast to the baroque splendour we’re used to. While Aaron sticks to mystery and action the story flows beautifully, but once he begins providing answers the wheels come off, with several obvious flaws to the plot enabling the reader to question the God Butcher’s sanity, methods and motivation. He battles the God Butcher in 894, in the present day, and again in the distant future when Thor sits alone in an empty Asgard cut off from the world, now resembling Odin visually and in terms of personality. He’s very successful, possessing mystical technology against which few gods stand a chance, and the way Aaron shows this is by reminding us that Thor, by human standards at least, is immortal. That’s down to the plotting lapses in what was originally published as Godbomb.īefore then everything runs beautifully, Aaron with Esad Ribić introducing the threat of the God Butcher, a being who so resents the very idea of gods, he’s determined to wipe them all out, no matter who believes in them. This bulky paperback collection combines the first three Thor trades written by Jason Aaron, and while his reputation on the title is rightly solid gold, if plotted on a graph, the quality level of this material is two peaks separated by a bit of a dip.

Thor by jason aaron