The Mortal Thor #11 reaffirmed my belief that good can win a fight against evil. Picking up right from last month, Thor Sigurd Jarlson is confronted by Dario Agger. Before things come to blows, a conversation is exchanged that took every struggle I’ve had with the book so far and threw it so far out the window it’s now in a different area code.
“Eighty thousand dollars,” Agger says to Thor Sigurd. That’s how much he thinks it’ll cost to for Thor Sigurd to disappear and leave him alone to his machinations against the world. He says that despite it being a paltry amount of money to someone like him, it’s a life changing amount for someone like Thor Sigurd.
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Over the course of the next 16 pages or so, Thor Sigurd beats him. Not with his fists or his hammer – that barely registers as anything when it lands on Agger’s face. No, he beats him with words, logic, philosophy, and by simply being good. He shows how pathetic someone like Agger is for thinking he can buy someone off. He shows how Agger’s narcissistic lifestyle is a failure. How his material wealth is nothing. How his physical strength is ephemeral.
Thor Sigurd beats him with righteousness and justice and it’s f#&$ing awesome.
It genuinely made me feel like a kid again reading this book because you were reading this, I guess, thought-provoking exchange of words that was so comically one-sided I couldn’t help but nod my head every time Thor Sigurd dropped another bar on Agger. The battle of Good and Evil was fought in the penthouse office of Roxxon between an unemployed construction worker and the billionaire CEO of a multinational corporation who is also a life-devouring minotaur that sold his soul to something older than gods.
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I can’t help but feel like there’s a metaphor here.
This didn’t feel like previous issues of The Mortal Thor. There was something about this confrontation that did an excellent job of making it feel like the ball had finally made it over the hill and is about to pick up steam on its way down the other side. I’ve enjoyed previous issues of this series, but I genuinely loved this one. For a moment there it felt like I was reading Silver Surfer #3 where he was pushing back against all the temptations of Mephisto.
Frankly, I loved this comic because the simplicity of made it feel more like a parable or a folktale.
Part of the reason this issue works so well is because of the art by Jesús Saíz, who absolutely crushes it. First off, I want to compliment the framing of this book. As early as page 4 we see a perfectly symmetrical face-off sequence between the two leads that’s simply gorgeous to look at, like a 3, 2, 1 countdown to the action, creates a pace that’s electric. Despite what we know, Thor Sigurd is just a dude and he’s fighting against a minotaur – getting punched hurts, getting thrown around hurts, and we’re seeing detailed pain on his face, and duress as he’s trying to overcome pretty terrible odds. The colors from Matt Milla add a lot to the story as well, punctuating strikes with flashes of color in the background that help you feel what the characters are experiencing.
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The Mortal Thor #11 completely rejuvenated my interest and care in this book. Writer Al Ewing and the art team of Saíz and Milla have delivered what’s probably my favorite Marvel issue of the year so far by taking things back to basics, and showing why we can’t let people like Agger win. I don’t know how to explain to you why you should care about other people, but maybe this issue of The Mortal Thor can.
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