The Defeat of Thor? Of Galactus? Of the Black Winter? Find Out in Thor #6

The creative team of Donny Cates, Nic Klein, Matt Wilson, and VC’s Joe Sabino bring us the finale of their first arc on THOR! Herein lies a lot of Galactus (though a bit less after this), the last whimper of the Black Winter (?), and a glimpse at the death of Thor!

Chris Eddleman: Well, COVID has truly drawn it out, so I don’t know how much of this feeling is from that, but it feels like it took forever to finish out this arc of Cates/Klein/Wilson’s Thor. Are we going to end on a bang? No. Are we going to end on a whimper? Kind of. But it is A Lot about endings, so I suppose there’s a discernible theme. This arc definitely didn’t go the way I assumed, and while we shouldn’t always get what we want…well, I have some thoughts.

Vishal Gullapalli: I’ve been the member of this column that’s been relatively positive on this Thor run for pretty much its entire run so far. I also have some…thoughts about this issue.

RIP Galactus

CE: So, this issue opens AFTER the main conflict of the issue, as Silver Surfer Noir chats up Thor about what the heck went down with the Black Winter. It’s there for framing but these sorts of techniques oftentimes pare down the tension. We knew Thor was going to make it out, which to me deflated a lot of my interest from the previous issues.

VG: Yeah, this wasn’t as clever of a trick as Cates thought it was – it made the entire climax of the arc feel more like an afterthought, like something worth recapping rather than seeing live. And that’s a really weird way to frame the climax of any story, let alone this one. And it really doesn’t help that what happens is honestly…really underwhelming? Thor kills Galactus for his crimes, something that I’m sure will have permanent repercussions and never get undone or retconned or anything the next time a hotshot writer wants to use our pal Galan. And it’s done with a reveal that I really don’t understand – Thor says that the Power Cosmic that Galactus bestowed upon him was actually his to control the entire time? I don’t know, maybe this makes more sense if you read the arc at once, but it just landed really awkwardly for me. What about you, Chris? How’d this big climax hit you?

CE: No, I completely agree with you. It was pretty underwhelming. Sometimes, sometimes, the Rule of Cool-style storytelling of Cates works really nicely, but nothing built up to this. There was no hint that Thor was really in control the entire time, other than machismo being thrown around. I’m also incredibly confused by Thor destroying Galactus. The entire arc, Thor was begrudgingly throwing aside his morals in the pursuit of destroying the Black Winter, only to team up with the entity to destroy Galactus because…? Is the Black Winter an enemy? Is it still coming to destroy the universe? Was Galactus just lying because he was scared? Who knows? The Herald Thing also seemed like a big revelation but, it didn’t lead to anything. Anyway, Thor has been complicit in several genocides and now a god murder for said genocides. I’m really not feeling this thematically, and I don’t think it works storywise.

VG: What’s even weirder is that Thor carries out the act of killing Galactus as if it’s a trial and he’s been convicted of a crime and is being executed. And no doubt about it, Galactus has committed more crimes than is possible to comprehend, but Thor being judge, jury, and executioner doesn’t land well at all. It doesn’t feel like some tough choice he has to make, rather a sudden betrayal of the person he’d allied with in favor of someone he just met an issue ago. The sudden change of power dynamic between Thor and Galactus is sudden and jarring and I really don’t know why it happened. I’m sure Galactus’s final words are a tease for something like “If Galactus doesn’t exist the universe is even worse” but at this point I’m not sold on it at all.

CE: I guess if Galactus had to be trotted out for yet another storyline, thus making him less special and producing diminishing returns, I suppose he could at least be taken off the table permanently…errr, not permanently. It just really didn’t hit hard did it? It was like Very Metal. Thor killed Galactus and used his corpse for a bomb like he’s playing Diablo II. I just didn’t really feel anything about it other than bewilderment.

A Vision of Winter

VG: Of course, killing Galactus isn’t the climax of the issue. It’s not the big thing that we have to sit on for a month until the next chapter of this story. Thor immediately turns his attention to the Black Winter, the brand new entity that’s supposed to be Galactus’s Galactus, and whoops its butt. I honestly thought the revelation of what the Black Winter was was really cool, but it’s immediately relegated to some weird enemy that Thor has disposed of with relative ease. Way to delegitimize your big new villain, Donny.

CE: And then, my friend, the Black Winter becomes a mere snowflake and shows Thor his end, which is the absolute most buckwild thing. Not in a good way though. Instead, it’s just completely over the top ridiculous. It’s like a cake made of 90% fondant and lit only with trick candles. Thor sees his end, which is a bunch of zombified Marvel heroes led by…sigh…Thanos wielding Mjolnir, sporting all of the Infinity Stones. That sentence just drained me. Anyway, this revelation made me nearly throw my tablet. It’s just, not new. It’s not unique. It’s a patchwork quilt of “been there, done that.” You’re more hot on this book than me, Vishal, what do you think?

VG: Like I mentioned in the intro, I’ve been really positive on this run for some time. I think that Cates has brought some really good fresh energy to it, and Klein’s art has been out of this world. I have nothing bad to say about Klein still- he’s fantastic. But this one double-page splash made me lose all of my patience for Donny Cates’ self-indulgence. It reeks of “Remember when I wrote Thanos? You liked that, didn’t you?” And I did like it! It was a good arc! But Thor following up on that is tiring as hell and I don’t need more of it. Chris, you also forgot to mention that Thanos also has what looks to be an Infinity Gauntlet made of the Venom symbiote. Because this run isn’t allowed to stand on its own, I guess.

CE: I completely missed that it’s MADE OF SYMBIOTES. Thank you for pointing this out. Now before we move onward, I did want to point out that Nic Klein and Matt Wilson can basically do no wrong, and put out incredibly well crafted pages. The layouts aren’t too out there, pretty standard good stuff, but the composition of the panels is larger than life, with incredible coloring and big fight feels. But, it’s just not enough for me.

VG: I’d also like to point out how good they are at depicting the smaller moments, like Thor’s genuine fear that you can see in his eyes. Klein and Wilson are a dream team, and they’re a perfect fit for Thor as a book. I just wish they were doing something that felt properly exciting instead of… a return to Marvel Zombies and Thanos Wins? I don’t know. It feels like we’re running out of stuff to say, which actually segues cleanly into our last segment.

A Farewell to Thor

CE: This is going to be our last installment of A Thor Subject, as it’s become rather difficult. That’s maybe putting it generously. A lot of the ToX style articles that we do are done specifically because there’s a lot of meat in a comic that two critics can really dig into and pass around. When you’ve got lots of allusions, mysteries, and big character moments, there’s often a lot to talk about. But the issue with Thor is that there are not a lot of these. It trades in visceral moments, but they often seem so shallow that mustering up the gumption to discuss them in huge detail becomes a bit of a chore. And we don’t want to give you, our fine readers, a chore.

VG: It’s not even about the quality of the book, really – I enjoyed it even when Chris didn’t until this issue. But even on a good issue, we never felt like there was much to talk about. It was a lot of style over substance. And style is good! It just doesn’t really lend itself to regular pieces breaking 20 pages of content into analysis and discussion. Like Chris says, we don’t want to be giving readers something that was tedious to write. Because if it’s tedious for us, I can only imagine how it feels for everyone else.

CE: Anyway, you’ll still likely see it on our weekly Marvel Files minutiae reviews, so if you’re dying to know our thoughts on this gestalt Thanos enemy boss, we’ll be sure to still send them your way. We just won’t be throwing down these behemoths of text around about Thor. I sincerely hope it goes a bit of a different direction, and proves that Cates can tell a new kind of story, instead of building his own expanded universe within Marvel. But it does seriously seem like we’re getting a familiar story, using familiar characters, all jammed together for maximum effect.