Immortal Thor #22: Have You Any Change?

Spoiler warning, kinda: While this review doesn’t contain major plot spoilers, this issue has some intriguing interactive elements as seen in the preview that this review discusses in depth. 

In this month’s Immortal Thor, we find the narrative once again guided by a horned fourth-wall-breaking antagonist who lectures readers on capitalism and the craft of storytelling. Energy company CEO/supervillain the Minotaur delivered his lecture on how capitalism subsumes all critiques of itself and turns stories into “content” via an ad-laden propagandistic Roxxon Presents comic. This issue is narrated by Utgard-Loki, who asserts that money is socially constructed before inviting us to play a game. And while Utgard-Loki may be a giant flaming skeleton with horns, artist Jan Bazaldua’s dramatic framing and expressive posing make him an engaging and imposing narrator. The game is quite simple: flip a coin; if you get heads, move forward to the next page; if you get tails, go back a page instead. For some readers, Immortal Thor #22 will instantly remind them of writer Al Ewing’s choose-your-own-adventure/solo RPG comic miniseries You Are Deadpool (2018). But here, there are only two outcomes, rather than the six of a die. Here, there are no stat checks and no choices. There is only chance. 

With each flip of the coin, the reader determines Thor and Skurge’s journey through a living, labyrinthine city. In Mesopotamian mythology, Nergal is the god of war, disease, and death. His name translates as “lord of the big city” in reference to the underworld. (The issue’s epigraph comes from Archibald Lapman’s 1894 poem “The City at the End of Things,” which is set in the Ancient Greek underworld). In Immortal Thor #22, Nrgl (no vowels) is the city itself. The comic’s structure is quite clever, Ewing’s narration looping seamlessly when an unlucky flip sends you back and has you reading in reverse order. 

The coin flip mechanic can, of course, prove frustrating. On my initial readthrough, I spent roughly 15 minutes “trapped” in the first five coin-flip pages. Like Thor and Skurge, I began to think “I’m never getting out am I?” Then, my luck changed. Of course, such a change of luck may never come. The only guaranteed way to reach the end is to cheat—to deprive the coin of the value we give it by playing. But by cheating, one would inevitably miss out on the opportunity to share in the experience and to see what makes this particular issue brilliant. 

Ideally, a work of art rewards revisiting. One can find new meanings and new details to appreciate. And while this certainly feels true of Immortal Thor #22 as a whole, it feels less true of Bazaldua’s artwork on the pages readers are expected/forced to revisit. While the opening and closing pages are engrossing, repeat viewings of the middle pages draw attention to the facial same-ishness between characters, rushed backgrounds, and the absence of varied compositions. Matt Hollingsworth’s color palettes are quite restricted but (in the case of the “flip” pages) not always pleasing to the eye. 

However, the boredom that starts to creep in may, to an extent, be the point. While it’s popularly believed that a capitalist economic system breeds innovation, Immortal Thor continues to illustrate narratively how it can instead lead to stagnation, with the same characters playing out the same stories as long as people continue to buy them. If there is progress, it is often illusory and easily lost. The implication, of course, remains the same: the only guaranteed way out is to deprive the coin of its meaning.