The Mighty Thor And The Celestials Saga!

Retro-Continuity is an artform. In the world of comics which forward decade by decade, it has often become necessary to tweak the details of certain characters and worlds to make them dovetail with other immediate concerns. The greatest and most famous "ret-con" is still the in famous DC "Crisis" which pruned the DC Universe of countless worlds and scores of vintage characters. Their reappearance over the course of time is ret-conning too. Ret-Conning was a fun practice especially in the Bronze Age when the fanboys who had digested countless comics had their chance to play with the toys. Steve Englehart was especially deft at the practice with his attempts to account for the 1950's Captain America and Bucky which was at odds with the continuity of the Marvel Age. Later he plucked Patsy Walker out of the funny pages and gave her a potent role as "Hellcat". But the undisputed master of the Ret-Con is Roy "The Boy" Thomas. His Invaders comic was a masterpiece of the art and later his All-Star Squadron was even more so, though I do think things got a bit out of hand in that series in terms of minor details being considered worthy of attention. But one of Roy's better Ret-Cons was the way that he took hold of Jack Kirby's Eternals and fused them into the larger Marvel Universe tapestry. Assisted by continuity maven Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio, Thomas made sense of the Eternals in a MU which was already brimming with gods of all sorts. But it's a tale not without flaw as we shall see. 

The ball got kicked off in the seventh Thor annual by Roy and artist Walt Simonson in which we see Thor at the time of the ancient "Third Host" of the Celestial visitation. This had been referred to in Kirby's series but now we are front and center as Thor teams with some Eternals we know such as the Polar Eternals Valkin, Druig and Ajak along with the father of Ikaris a chap dubbed Virako. They battle the Deviant Dromedan and we see the arrival of the Third Host almost as Thor is swept away and his memory wiped. 

And it's the story of how Thor regains his memories of these events as well as his own secret history that motivates most of what is dubbed "The Celestial Saga'. It begins with Thor miffed with his Daddy Odin, as he often was, because of Odin allowing Balder the Brave to continue in a state of near-death to stave off yet another Ragnarok. He remembers his Celestial adventure and heads to the Andes and finds the great dome the Celestials had put into place to keep interlopers from finding them. He also finds a plane which has lost control and takes it in tow staving off a mighty crash. This saga is written by Roy Thomas and drawn in the beginning by "Big" John Buscema with Chic Stone handling the inks. 

Gammenon the Celestial gathers up Thor and the plane and takes them inside the dome where Thor encounters Ajak and Professor Daniel Damien and we find out that three years have passed since Fourth Host arrived. Turns out there is a SHIELD agent on the plane as well as a Deviant in disguise named Ereshkigal. As thor battles her other Eternals such as Ikaris and Sersi are gathering in NYC. Thor defeats the Deviant and takes the plane home. 

After depositing the broken plane Thor goes on to encounter the Eternals in NYC and goes with them into the underground of the city where they encounter more Deviants including Kro the Warlord. 

Thor and the Eternals and their allies come into conflict with the Deviants and end up destroying their base under the city. Keith Pollard takes over the penciling chores with this issue and draws every issue thereafter save one. 

Then Thor and the Eternals Ikaris, Thena, and Sersi along with the Deviant Mutates Karkus and the Reject head to Olympia where Thor meets Zuras and comes into conflict with "Hero" the Forgotten One who now serves the Celestials. Meanwhile Sif is on a mission for Odin to collect some old armor. 

Thor is taken aboard the ship of the Celestials and encounters the "One Who is Above All", the top Celestial. His battle with Hero continues as do the quests of Sif and the Warriors Three who have been sent to battle Fafnir the dragon. 

Thor sees a vision of  Odin bending knee to the Celestials and heads to Asgard to find out what that's all about. While the Eternals wait to form the Uni-Mind to confront the Celestials Thor ends up in Asgard battling the thing Sif had been sent by Odin to find, the relentless Destroyer. Thor is thrown from the Rainbow Bridge when he is defeated by the Destroyer. 

And ends up in Mexico where he finds more Eternals and Deviants, this time disguised as "Luchadores", the wrestlers of Mexico. In this story guest-drawn by Arvell Jones  Thor has great success in the squared circle. 

Meanwhile the Eternals have made the Uni-Mind and been repelled by the Celestials and find that their city of Olympia is invaded by the immortals of Olympus led by Zeus and Hercules with Odin having organized the attack. Thor fights on the side of the Eternals and falls under the spear of his father Odin. 

But of course Odin cannot harm Thor really and calls off the attack and abruptly leaves. The gods of Olympus head back home and decide to leave the Earth to others to fret about. The Eternals consider their opitions and Thor begins a long quest to discover the truth behind Odin's words that he had killed Thor before. To this end he seeks out the "Eye of Odin" the one he'd plucked out which had grown to immense size and is sentient and is something of an oracle. 

We then begin a long odyssey as the Eye tells Thor of his own past and even beyond that history to a story in which the Gods of Asgard, called the Aesir did fall in during a Ragnarok. All this happened two thousand years before when the fire that raged in Asgard proved to be the star that led three wise men to a certain rather humble manger. 

Then the Eye begins to tell of the earliest days of Asgard's new beginning and how all the survivors of the Aesir became as one and that one was named Odin. This then becomes an adaptation of sorts of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, with Thor playing certain key roles as the saga unfolds. 

He battles against the giant Fafnir who had been promised Idunn of the Golden Apples, the very apples that given the Asgardians immortality. That promise was made by Odin in exhanged for work done by Fafner and his brother. Odin for his part makes the memory of this go away from those involved. 

Then Thor becomes "Siegmund" the hero of the Cycle and he contends with Hunding for the affections of his wife Sieglinda who is his sister. Hunding doesn't understand this and they battle to the death, Siegmund's death who dies under the spear of Odin in a manner of speaking since Odin empowers Hunding. 

Then we follow Brunhilde the Valkyrie who betrays Odin and is put into a deep sleep atop a mountain surrounded by fire. The hero who can free her is Siegried, the son of Siegmund by Sieglinda (though Marvel glosses over this point a bit for obvious reasons), He is raised by dwarves who want the Ring of the Nieblungs and see him as a way to get it. 

To be honest this story gets very confusing at points as now Thor as Siegmund battles the dragon Fafnir and gets the Ring and frees Brunhilde. But this is contrary to the wishes of Odin. 

So in the next issue Siegfried (Thor) falls in love with the wife of the leader of the Gibichung Clan due to a spell and rejects Brunnhilde who is sought by the very husband of the woman he fell helplessly in love with. (My head's spinning a bit at this point.) But there is more betrayal and eventually a truce is declared and this series of visions mercifully ends. By this time Roy is no longer writing the series but has been replaced by Mark Gruenwald who had helped plot it, but this long diversion from the Celestials plot does a great deal of damage to the ongoing story. 

Finally at long last in the three hundredth issue of  Thor (now I guess I know why they were stalling) written by Gruenwald and Macchio and drawn by Pollard with inks this time by Gene Day. We reach (at long last) the finale of the Ring adaptation in which it is revealed that Odin is shown the arrival of the Celestials in a vision and he begins plans to stand against them. All of the folderol to this point has been part of the plan. We are introduced to the Sky Gods of many mythologies who hold a meeting and it's determined by all that when the time comes, Odin will inhabit the Destroyer which grows to the size of the Celestials and using the already oversized Odinsword will protect Earth from the final judgment. The battle rages but the solution is when twelve "Young Gods" are presented to the Celestials and Arishem makes his decision in favor of Earth's survival. As it turns out we'd seen some of these mortals made into Gods way back in Thor #201 when he battled Ego-Prime. It's nifty to see these long-standing plots come together and it would've been far dandier if they'd been assembled in a more timely and expedient fashion. 

There is a coda ending on this sprawling sage when Thor learns that Mother Earth is his true mother and he ends up fighting Shiva, representative of the Sky Gods. When he wins that battle he is at long last able to return to Asgard where he meets up with his mates (including a revived Balder) and they celebrate in fine Viking fashion. 

And so we have some wonderful Retro-Continuity here working the sprawling Eternals adventures into the larger MU, but we also have some less successful work in the rather terrible pacing in the story. It's a shame as I had delightful memories of this saga, and now I see the flaws. Still and all a noble effort by Roy and gang. Actually my biggest complaint about this collection is that the cover image they use. The cover by John Buscema for issue #283 is used as the back cover of the collection and it would've made a magnificent front cover. It's a stunning image that captures the Celestial dilemma in a single image like a good cover image ought. 

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