Thor #801 Review: The God Is Gone, But the Quest Is Just Beginning

After everything Thor has been through, Thor #801 does something I wasn’t expecting. It makes his absence more interesting than simply throwing him back onto the page with lightning exploding everywhere. Al Ewing begins the quest for Thor with Sigurd Jarlson walking through a world where gods, monsters and ordinary people are all trying to figure out what comes next. For a character whose mythology has spent decades screaming about destiny, Ewing turns the search itself into the story.

Sigurd is the hook for me. Ewing gives him enough mystery that I immediately wanted answers, but he doesn’t turn the entire issue into twenty pages of coy dialogue. There is personality here. Humor too. His interactions with the people around him give the story some needed humanity before Pasqual Ferry sends us wandering into increasingly bizarre mythological territory. The relationship material is particularly good because Ewing lets these characters behave like people instead of exposition machines wearing Asgardian clothing.

Once the quest moves beyond Midgard, Ferry gets to go nuts. This is where the book starts looking gorgeous. Strange landscapes, undead creatures, impossible architecture and mythological weirdness all feel like pieces of the same universe without looking repetitive. Ferry has always had an ability to make fantasy feel enormous without sacrificing facial acting, and that’s crucial here because so much of Ewing’s script depends on characters reacting to things they don’t fully understand.

Matt Milla’s colors help separate those worlds beautifully. The colder blues surrounding death and memory give way to warmer, stranger environments as Sigurd keeps moving. There are pages where Ferry and Milla basically get permission to turn Thor mythology into a psychedelic fantasy album cover, and I’m absolutely here for that. VC’s Joe Sabino keeps some dialogue-heavy sequences moving without letting balloons bury the artwork, which becomes especially important when Ewing starts stacking mythology on top of mythology.

The fight material is fun, but I actually preferred the quieter pieces. Sigurd talking. Characters remembering Thor. The uncertainty over what death even means for somebody whose existence has never obeyed normal mortal rules. Ewing has been playing with those ideas for years, and #801 feels less interested in giving us a cheap resurrection than asking what remains when a god disappears. That gives the eventual search some weight.

My only hesitation is that Ewing is writing DEEP in the mythology again. I dig that stuff, but there are moments where names, realms, histories and metaphysical rules start coming at you fast. Readers who want Thor to swing Mjolnir into somebody’s forehead for twenty pages may wonder where their dude went. This isn’t that book, at least not yet. It’s a fantasy quest with Thor hanging over everything even when he isn’t physically dominating every panel.

By the end, I wanted to follow Sigurd through the next door. That’s the win. Thor #801 doesn’t try to top #800 by screaming louder. Ewing and Ferry change the rhythm, open another chapter and send us looking for a god who may not be as gone as everybody thinks. Thor’s legacy has gotten complicated as hell over the years, but when Ewing focuses that history into character instead of trivia, this series can still hit hard.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4/5