Thor [2020] #29 - Marvel Comics

THOR No. 29, February 2023

Despite only containing a glimmer of action in the guise of the Thunder God and Runa briefly battling a catacomb crawling with their all-too tangible shadows, Torunn Gronbekk’s narrative for Issue Twenty Nine of “Thor” still should have beguiled the vast majority of its audience. Indeed, straight from its opening salvo, which depicts the odious Corvus Glaive abducting an infant Laussa Odinsdottir, this twenty-page periodical weaves a bewitching spell which promises to take the reader on a disconcertingly dark journey back to the early days of Asgardian lore and Bor Burison.

Furthermore, this comic contains an intriguing flashback to ‘the War to end all Wars”, when Odinson’s grandfather attempted to make himself “God-King of the realms of life and death”, but instead contaminated the battlefield with a magical explosion so devastatingly powerful that it could only be contained “behind a wall of enchantments and spells.” So deadly an environment really helps the Norwegian author quickly establish the noxiousness of the landscape which the titular character must traverse, and also excitingly adds the very real possibility that at least one of the adventurers searching for Borson’s young daughter may not actually survive the ordeal; “I never went farther than this, but my sisters did. The few who came back were not… right.”

Impressively, this impending sense of doom is further heightened by the “guest writer” once the founding Avenger enters Niffleheim and witnesses first-hand the slowly decaying corpses of those whose broken bodies fell aeons ago or became horrifyingly trapped in some volcanic-like substance as if they were a hapless insect immersed in amber. Coupled with a brief appearance by Runa’s wraithlike Disir – “The cursed demons who once were her fellow original Valkyries” – on a night-time rooftop in Cleveland, Ohio and the stench of death is almost palpable throughout this entire publication.

Ably adding a considerable amount of grittiness to this comic’s atmosphere are Nic Klein’s pencils, which arguably imbue Thor with a somewhat tragic world-weariness just as soon as the Asgardian is seen pouring over a map of “the lowest level of the universe.” The “Marvel Stormbreaker” is particularly good at aiding Gronbekk in her depiction of the haunting territory “beneath the third root of Yggdrasil”, and gives all the motionless cadavers on show there a genuinely sad demeanour as their rotting flesh slowly erodes to the bone in the chill, wintry wind.

The regular cover art of "THOR" #29 by Nic Klein