The Unworthy Thor is “the next step” in the grand saga of the Odinson

Thor hasn’t been himself lately. Hell, he hasn’t even bothered referring to himself by a name that is usually used to tell you that it’s the fourth day of the week, ever since Nick Fury took down the OG god of thunder with nothing more than a whisper in Original Sin. Stripped of his hammer, judged unworthy to be Thor and in desperate need of a helping hand after a run-in with Malekith and some ice giants (heh).

In other words, the Odinson has had a crap time lately, while former flame Jane Foster has become worthy enough to wield Mjolnir and be the Thor that the Marvel universe needs right now. But the Odinson is coming back with a new comic this year, to prove himself worthy again. The Unworthy Thor will find the favourite son of Odin back in the spotlight of Marvel’s All-New and All Different world now that the Secret Wars are over, with regular writer Jason Aaron teaming up with artist Olivier Coipel to reveal just where the Odinson has been lately.

In short? The former Thor has been locked up by the Collector, but he’s ready for a prison break that will end with him once again wielding Mjolnir. Only not the hammer he’s used to, but a remnant of Earth 1610, the Ultimate Universe. Even though the Thor of that world may be dead, his hammer managed to survive the Secret Wars and end up in the regular continuity of the current Marvel universe.

“I’ve always written him as a guy who wakes up every morning, look at that hammer and know he would not know if was going to pick it up,” Jason Aaron said to io9.

It was always questioning his own worthiness, which is what made him such a great god the first time. So now he’s at the point where that’s been taken away. He failed for a reason we still don’t quite understand. He dropped the hammer and hasn’t been able to pick it up since. So then we go to a pretty dark place. A darker, more desperate, more driven version. The real fun of Thor is that he wields an axe now.

He’s still out trying to fight the fight, but first he’s gotta be off on his own.

As for that ultimate hammer mentioned earlier? It’ll tie in to the Odinson and his quest to prove himself once again, as Aaron explained:

We also know he’s on a quest to figure out who he is, without Mjolnir. And striving to become worthy again. So, you know this book really kicks off by him finding out— you know what, there’s another hammer out there— there’s another Mjolnir. It sets him off on the thing, so… is this it? Is this how he becomes worthy? How he becomes Thor again? That’s one of the big questions driving the book.

By ending the Ultimate universe, we knew we were kind of given this lump sum of those characters. So, part of my goal with Thors was [to do] the final story for Ultimate Thor. We talked about wanting to make those Secret Wars miniseries mean something in terms of the bigger picture still unfolding, that they weren’t just four random issues you could forget about named Thors. I wanted something big to come out of Thors that would affect our characters going forward, so that turned out to be a hammer.

This is just a great, great beast of metal.

So to have that somehow fly through the events of Secret Wars and land in the normal Marvel Universe, which we saw at the end of Thors, at Old Asgard— of course it went back to Old Asgard, but the old Asgard, nobody lives there. So, it’s just been sitting there, all this time.

If you’ve been reading any of Aaron’s work on Thor, you know that is all part of one truly massive and epic saga. Years back in the first iteration of Marvel Now!, an older and much wiser Thor who existed millennia into the future on an Earth that was bereft of life. Here was a Thor who mirrored all the craziness currently slapping the Odinson down, and who kept a record of the most difficult part of his life in a book that was simply titled “Unworthy”.

There’s a full circle of events being written up here, as Aaron explained that Unowrthy Thor is the next step in the saga. “My Thor plans have grown, and gotten bigger… we’ve still got a long way to go, hopefully,” Aaron said.

Another year is supposed to be the end of my run on these characters. There’s so much I want to do! This is all still the same story I set out to tell all those years ago. It’s just the next step.

The Unworthy Thor arrives in the US Fall season.

Last Updated: August 5, 2016