Warning: Spoilers for The Immortal Thor #1 ahead!
Although he has finally come into his own Ur-beings and their terrible, primal forces – indicating the Asgardian will struggle not only to protect his home realm, and his adopted realm of Midgard, but also to preserve the reality of the Marvel Universe and its superhero status quo.
The Immortal Thor #1 – written by Al Ewing, with art by Martin Cóccolo, and Matthew Wilson – sees Thor attempting to relax on Midgard after fending off an incursion of Frost Giants back home. His musings are interrupted by the arrival of Toranos, the Utgard-Thor, and the terrible superstorm that accompanies him. While the two do battle, far away in Utgard, Gaea and Utgard-Loki discuss what is to come.
The Inhabitants Of Utgard-Realm See The Marvel Universe As A Shadow Play
The beings of Utgard are primal, elder entities, whose inspiration seems derived from Plato's Allegory of the Cave; that is to say, they consider the reality of Thor and the other Marvel heroes as shadows cast against a wall, with the Utgard-deities the makers of those shadows. In other words, Toranos is a more authentic embodiment of the storm than Thor. Critical to their ends is the Age of Marvels, which Utgard-Loki and Gaea discuss at the end of Immortal Thor #1; the term "Age of Marvels" refers to Marvel's superhero era, beginning in 1939 with the creation of the original Human Torch, spanning on to the present day.
The Utgard-Deities Might Be The Forces Behind Marvel's Reality
Marvels, from 1994, is a stellar example of how the "Age of Marvels" manifested. What's fascinating about the threat posed by the Utgard-Gods is that they seem to be coming after the "Age of Marvels" itself: the reality of magic, technology, and superheroes. As bellowed by Toranos in Immortal Thor #1, "Too long has this world stagnated! Too long have you chosen illusion over change!" This seems to bear the terrifying implication that the Utgard-Gods are cognizant of the Marvel universe's existence as a comic-book reality – this, as fiction, an illusion – and have come to usher in a different, more "realistic" reality.
The Utgard-Gods appear to have interpreted every time Thor, the Avengers, and the rest of Marvel's heroes have saved the Marvel universe as perversions of the natural order, prolonging the life of a reality that should have died out long ago. Utgard-Loki's thoughts from Immortal Thor #1's closing pages are particularly dire, with the new villain musing "All things must live and grow - or wither and die. This Age of Marvels can be no exception." Thor's fight against the primeval forces of Utgard will not be just to protect the world. Instead, if these deities have their way, the very existence of Marvel's comic-book way of life could be doomed.
The Immortal Thor #1 is now available from Marvel Comics.
