Mighty Thor #705
THE GREATEST COMICS OF THE 21st CENTURY
By WALT STILES
Rairly is there a comic book story that is so epic as Mighty Thor #705. It began with people complaining that Odinson had lost the mantle of Thor and become unworthy then Jane Foster picked up Mjolmir and became the Mighty Thor even though it wasn’t revealed till later in the series who the new Thor was. Even the All-Father Odin did not know her identity. Odinson later said of her you made Mjolmir do things I never did and he realized she was truly worthy.
Jason Aaron crafted a story that was years in the making and added greatly to the Asgardian and Thor mythos that Marvel has created over the years that began in Journey into Mystery #83 in 1962 with Stan Lee, Larry Lieder, and Jack Kirby. The Jane Foster Thor has been a breath of fresh air to the story about superheroes. She was unpretentious, unwavering, and uncompromising as a person and also as The Mighty Thor.
Jane Foster was presented with the warning by Doctor Strange that if she becomes Thor one more time she will die but she chose to save Asgard, Odinson, Odin himself, and Lady Freyja his wife and she became The Mighty Thor one last time. The Mangog is the physical manifestation and sum total of the hatred of a billion beings from a race that was slaughtered by the ruler of Asgard and the Norse Gods, Odin. The Mangog in this story is the ultimate judgment of all the gods and destroys Asgardia the new place of the gods.
Odinson the former wielder of Mjolmir and called by the name Thor originally was a god. He inherently was the strongest of the gods of Asgard and called the god of thunder because he could control the storm and lightning. With all this power it took him many years to become worthy to pick up the hammer called Mjolmir, but he never really understood the harnessed power of the God Tempest or comprehended the sentience within the hammer. But Jane Foster reacted to Mjolmir as she picked it up for the first time like she was born to use it.
Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman brought an epic story conclusion which has to be a classic in comic books and I am sure others will agree. One of the last things Jane says as she saves the Asgardian people from The Mangog, “I Die for Love, Mangog. You Die naught for Hate. That is why you lose.” Then as she breaths her last she dies in the arms of the son of Odin that introduced her to the world of superheroes as the god she has always loved.
This is a fitting conclusion to a controversial decision by Aaron and Marvel to put Mjolmir in the hands of Jane Foster a woman. Thank you Jason Aaron for sticking to your guns and completing one of the best story arcs in comics I have ever read. This is one of the greatest comics of the 21st century.
Did You Know…
In August of 1978, Don Glut wrote the comic What If Jane Foster Had Found — the Hammer of Thor? There What If… series of comics was very popular and suggested how the Marvel comic universe would change if events happened differently. As the story goes Jane Foster found the hammer of Thor. After some instances of her helping in Asgard against Loki and an alien invasion, she was promoted to a goddess and the hammer was given to Donald Blake, as it was supposed to. Thor got involved with Sif and Jane Foster married Odin. I do not know how much this story happened to influence Jason Aaron in his storytelling but sometimes ideas from the past are used again.
As many Marvel fans know, Thor: Love and Thunder is an upcoming American superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Thor will have Jane Foster played by Natalie Portman becoming some version of Thor in that movie coming in 2022. It will be directed by Taika Waititi who also brought us Thor: Ragnarok and the 29th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.