A review by caitcoy
Thor: God of Thunder, Volume 1: The God Butcher by Jason Aaron

4.0

I hate time travel but three Thors was just too awesome not to love.

I will admit that Thor is another one of those heroes that I was never terribly interested in. Shockingly, he’s a little too god-like for me.
I mean, the fact that he literally is a god this time (instead of Superman, who just feels like one), probably should have clued me in but I’m not a fan of insanely powerful characters. Thor’s also arrogant and tends to think with his fists rather than his brains, none of which appeals to me. However, Jason Aarons does a pretty good job making Thor vulnerable enough to be interesting in this one.



The main plot involves Thor in three different stages: young, brash Thor who has yet to earn the right to wield Mjolnir, slightly older Thor who wields Mjolnir and is part of the Avengers and old Thor who has seen grim things and is very Odin-like. All three Thors face a constant clash with a being known as Gorr, the God Butcher.




Thor first confronts the God Butcher as young, brash Thor and is a complete fucking idiot. As per his usual, he storms in on his own and things don’t exactly go his way. He barely survives and the experience is one he refuses to think about. Then, as Avengers Thor he begins to notice gods disappearing and remembers his experience in the cave with Gorr. He decides to pursue Gorr in an attempt to stop him. Avengers Thor chases Gorr into some kind of a time portal.
SpoilerApparently there’s a planet that has a pool where you can travel through time by spilling a few drops of blood into. Since this is the God Butcher, he murders all the time gods and pours their blood into a pool in the most over-the-top way possible.
Instead of landing with Gorr, this lands him 900 years in the future with an old version of himself who has been battling with Gorr and his minions. Now that he is stuck in the future, Avengers Thor must work with the other two Thors (I can’t even remember how the young one got to the future, my brain just stopped trying at that point) to defeat Gorr.

The first part of the story bounces back and forth between Young Thor and Avengers Thor, giving you the back story on both Gorr and his past experiences with Thor. This was confusing enough for me. Then, the second part deals with what happens when the three Thors are together in the future. Needless to say, I just stopped trying to understand it by that point.


I couldn’t agree more Thors, time travel sucks.

Gorr wasn’t that great as a villain, he’s ridiculously overpowered and pretty one dimensional. But differences between the three Thors and how their experiences have shaped them was really interesting. And the humor between the old Thor and the others was actually damned good. Old Thor was fucking hilarious. If Thor was always so cynical and sarcastic, I’d be way more into him.





The artwork is gorgeous, I absolutely loved getting to see all the gods in their full glory and the granddaughters of Thor were exactly the kind of kickass women I love to see.

Overall, if you enjoy watching Thor kick ass (three times the fun!) and aren’t totally turned off by time travel, this is worth a read.