Thor #35: An End That Never Began

Thor #35 had a lot running against it. It’s the finale of a run started by a writer who had to abandon the title right before the finish line, the book falling into the lap of author Torunn Grønbekk who got stuck with clean-up duty. Its finale seems unimportant in a meta sense, as it’s already been announced that the title would be relaunching under Al Ewing and Martín Cóccolo, donning the title ‘Immortal Thor,’ which is essentially a promise that the book will be a monster of its own. Lastly, the current run on Thor suffered a massive art change that damaged the book’s tone and readability; it is a keen example of how a good artist on the wrong story can make their art worse than it is.

Sadly, Thor #35 wasn’t able to win its uphill battle. The book is a jarring, rushed read without any sense of gravitas or finality. While there is no such thing as a story being over in superhero comics, there is such a thing as momentary endings. Each run on a book is a story in itself, and when read in a vacuum, it should be satisfying even if there are a hundred stories set to follow it. This issue fails to meet or successfully end.

It hangs on a strange and unclear time travel plot that cannot hold any water as a story with stakes. It leaves all of our characters, from Thor to Jane, in a weird gray area where plot revelations and flavorful retcons are meant to satisfy more than a story with a bit more emotional punch. The issue was rushed, everything with Doom, Thanos, Odin, and For coming to a screeching halt without room to breathe or communicate any story-theming. This book falls on its face with nothing to say, moments that should have big massive for Thor’s world being nothing more than a pointed cough of poor paneling.

The plotting and visual communication within the issue is full of weird cuts, surface-level payoffs, and art that fluctuates between really excellent and really rough. It genuinely hurt the book having two artists with completely different styles work on this book. They undercut one another completely, one especially unable to give the book a sense of visual scope that the other is, which only drags down certain sections of this issue even more. To stress it as much as possible, neither of the artists in this book is a lousy artist. They are both fantastic in their own right, but Juan Gedeon’s work does not fit this series and what it demands tonally.

Torunn Grønbekk should be commended for trying her best to bring this book to a close. She didn’t have the time or ability to tell the story she wanted to with more competency, as her other comic work is often evident and rich. Being sandwiched between another writer’s ideas and the looming future of a relaunch already valued more than what you have to offer is difficult to overcome, which is a shame. Her early work on this title alongside Nic Klein was immaculate, the fall of likely a combination of other factors.