Thor [2020] #33 - Marvel Comics

THOR No. 33, June 2023

Essentially opening with the titular character squaring off against a gang of gun-toting guards in the grounds of Doctor Doom’s magnificent Balkans-based castle, Torunn Gronbekk’s script for Issue Thirty-Three of “Thor” probably had some readers initially checking back through their comic collection to ensure that they hadn’t skipped an edition somewhere. True, the ongoing series’ previous instalment did end with Odinson following Nidhogg to the heart of Victor’s fictional East European country. But there was no sign of the Thunder God attacking Doomstadt first nor any suggestion that the Master of Science and mystic arts had somehow brainwashed his people into becoming “a mindless army of Latverians” – These plot points are merely left to this book’s opening crawl or simply mentioned in passing by the occasional Doombot or two.

Frustratingly, such disorientation as to what this twenty-page periodical is all about doesn’t end there either, as the audience are repeatedly hurled back through time to when a trapped Thanos was busy hunting huge, tusked beasts in Vanaheim and Jane Foster finds herself penetrating “the mystical, invisible transactions that pull and push power likes currents”. Coupled with the “Infamous Iron Man” mysteriously managing to use the souls of the dead as fuel for some ghoulish spell which will supposedly “allow him to claim… the whole of the universe as his own” and many of this book’s already befuddled bibliophiles will doubtless be completely confused as to the entire point of the publication; “His questions echo through the mountain. But there is no answer. Only silence. And death.”

Unfortunately, none of these shenanigans are debatably helped by Juan Gedeon’s style of pencilling either, which whilst proficient enough, seemingly just provides this comic with the most rudimentary of pictures from time to time. The Argentinian illustrator’s work is particularly uninspiring during Thor’s fight against a pair of robed robots outside Castle Doom’s main gates, with the scene’s somewhat basic figures and barren backgrounds giving colour artist Matt Wilson little to work with when it comes to “adding dimensionality” to the panels - apart from the most basic of blends to suggest deepening shadows. Furthermore, the epic climax of “Blood Of Fathers”, when a well-thrown Mjolnir smacks Latveria’s heavily-armoured monarch square in the face, arguably loses a lot of its impact on account of Doom being presented as a lumbering, almost inanimate dullard, as opposed to “Marvel's greatest villain.”

The regular cover art of "THOR" #33 by Nic Klein