Villain Profile: Gorr the God Butcher

He's hunting deities tonight.

So, this week we’ve covered Jane Foster aka Mighty Thor, as well as two of Thor’s classic enemies, Amora the Enchantress and Skurge the Executioner. All of which are solid characters and would be welcome additions to the MCU. Or at least the two ladies would be, as Skurge has already bowed out, so to speak. The last character I want to talk about is a newer addition to Thor’s canon. And I’m talking new-new, not like Jane Fos-Thor where it’s an existing character getting an extreme remodel, but a brand-spanking new character that only just Menaced Thor in 2013. He’s Gorr the God Butcher, and he’s here to kill. Let’s get to it.

Sword of Shadows vs. Hammer of Storms

Gorr began life as a simple man on an unnamed world in the outer reaches of the galaxy. His planet kind of sucked, as it was a burnt-out old husk, filled with strife, famine, natural disasters and horrible predators to give Krogans nightmares. Nice Mass Effect reference for you. Such a land has a habit of creating rather pious peoples, and Gorr’s were no different. A huge part of day to day life in Gorr’s village was devoted toward prayers of protection, for food and so on. You can probably understand Gorr starting to question his faith, though, after his mother was torn to shreds by predators, his pregnant wife fell into a chasm created during a quake, and his surviving son died of starvation… yeah that’s a rough week in anyone’s book. When Gorr started to question his faith, his people drove him out with sticks and stones.

While wandering in exile, Gorr came across a disturbing sight, a battle between actual, factual Gods. One of them was shortly thereafter revealed to be called Knull, Lord of the Abyss and the God of the Symbiotes. Yeah, this is the guy that created Venom’s species. Just saying. Seeing two Gods fight until they were both mortally wounded filled Gorr with a homicidal rage the likes of which he’d never felt before. He was outraged to learn that Gods were in fact real, they just didn’t give a damn about those worshipping them and calling for their aid. His hatred caused Knull’s dropped weapon, All-Black the Necroblade, to react. The sword of living night merged with Gorr and infused him with its power. He killed one god and severely wounded Knull before flying into space, vowing to kill every God in the Universe.

Safe to say that Thor left an... impression on Gorr.

He traveled across the cosmos, killing for untold eons before arriving on Earth around 1000 CE. He killed three Gods on Earth before rousing the ire of a Young, Angry Asgardian Prince named Thor Odinson. The two battle, sword to axe. This is before he had Mjolnir and was carrying around an enchanted axe named Jarnbjorn. The first battle ended with Thor summoning a lightning strike to distract Gorr and escape. Being a glutton for punishment, Thor hunted down Gorr again and resumed fighting shortly after getting his breath back. Gorr ended up trapping the young Odinson in a cave and spent a week torturing him. He was eventually saved by a small band of his worshippers. Gorr kills them left and right, but the distraction is enough for Thor to break free, grab Jarnbjorn and chop off one of Gorr’s arms. He gathered his surviving followers and left, assuming Gorr would bleed out. Gorr survived, however, and decided to rework his strategy.

Realizing the Universe is a big place, with countless worlds, species, and Gods to kill, some of whom might fight back like a certain Thunderer, Gorr decided to dispense with his one at a time strategy. He set up shop on a forgotten world and used All-Black the Necroblade to start creating an army of monstrous constructs he dubbed his Black Berserkers. They would handle menial tasks like killing Gods one to one while Gorr began work on his masterstroke. He kidnapped an alien God called Shadrak and forced him to grant the knowledge of bombs. Yeah, there’s a species out there that worships a God of Bombs. How odd. Gorr began building a bomb that would destroy all Gods, Past, Present and Future.

I mean... he has a point.

To build his device, he traveled to a place called Omnipotence City, a meeting place for Gods and Demi-Gods. This name is something of a misnomer, as Gorr was able to sneak into a library and discover the location of a planet called Chronux, a hidden world where Gods of Time gather to monitor time’s flow. Gorr arrives, murders all of the Gods present and pours their blood into the well of Time. He uses the blood and well to travel to the moment of creation, and rip the heart out of an elder God to power his new device. I wonder if he said “Hey” to Galactus as the devourer off worlds popped out of the big bang? Gorr returns to the present and is almost immediately smacked in the face by Mjolnir. Thor is kind of pissed about the shenanigans that Gorr has been up to. They struggle a bit before Gorr jumps into the time stream again, this time aiming for the future. Thor dives in after. Oddly, he appears hundreds of years after Gorr. In his absence, Asgard had been destroyed, nearly all Gods are either dead or enslaved by Gorr, and a future version of Thor, whom had been named All-Father, was being tortured by Gorr. Thor frees the All-Father, and the two Thunderers attack Gorr’s homeworld to try and stop a universal Ragnarok.

Upon arriving on Gorr’s world, they see how busy he’d been. In the hundreds of years between when Thor was last in the time stream, Gorr had captured and killed countless Gods. Their blood being used to power his doomsday weapon and fueled Gorr’s power. Some were kept alive and used as slave labor for his bomb. One such God was Teenage Thor, pulled out of time to finish the bombs construction. This is a Marvel comic, by the way, don’t waste time questioning how Time Travel works. Oddly, Gorr’s long dead wife and son appear to be there with him. How odd. TT tries to lead a revolt against Gorr, but the powerful God Butcher ends up thwarting his plan and blasting TT into space. Thankfully, this is about when Current Thor (CT) and All-Father Thor (AT) had arrived. The three Gods of Thunder attack, the combined might of the Younger Thors and AT’s Thorforce (same as the cosmic power Odin used, I guess whomever is the All-Father gets to add their name before the Force) proves to be a match for the God Butcher. Gorr has his minions slaughter the slave Gods to boost his power. He’s able to blast AT into space, bury CT in the ground and nabs TT to use as the final sacrifice for the bomb.

He's as much a Reaper as a Butcher.

Gorr’s wife, overcome with joy at her husband’s nearly completed quest, exults him calling him her God. This drives Gorr into a rage, he kills her and angrily shouts he is no one’s God. Disgusted by his father’s actions, realizing he’d become worse than the thing he hated so much, his son decides to stop him. He helps CT dig his way out from the planet, just as AT streaks back into the atmosphere from deep space. But they’re too late. TT is okay, as he decided to bite out one of Gorr’s eyes rather then go meekly. Gorr tossed him aside in fury, grabbed and sacrificed someone else to set the bomb off. AT blasts Gorr with the full ThorForce to distract him while his younger self tries to stop the bomb. At first, he seems too slow. But, as every God across time and space starts to die, they see a vison of Thor struggling to hold the power of the bomb back. They start praying to him, every God that is, was or will be. Thor’s power skyrockets, he’s able to contain the blast and strip Gorr of his powers. Gorr’s son vanishes in a blob of darkness just after denouncing his father. Turns out, both he and Gorr’s wife were just constructs created by All-Black by Gorr. And Gorr’s Son was the manifestation of what good remained in the foul creature. Gorr met his end as he almost did so long ago, at the hand of a Young Thunderer’s Jarnbjorn.

Gorr was once a simple farmer, but was transformed into a vessel of destruction upon stealing All-Black the Necrosword. Having been made by the God-King of the Symbiotes, Knull, using his power and the head of Celestial he’d butchered, it has many of the same abilities as those creatures. Namely, it’s made of a living dark ooze that can shapeshift into whatever the user needs. Wings, tendrils, weapons, and the essence for his Black Berserkers. He seems to mainly use it to create the Sword itself and an inky black cloak. It’s another weapon like Skurge’s Bloodaxe that can cripple or kill a god without much additional effort. It seems to have also made Gorr superhumanly strong, durable, and nigh immortal. Or maybe his super awful planet just forced his species to develop disturbing levels of adaptations to survive. Who knows?

As of yet, Gorr has not been introduced in any media outside of Marvel comics. As I believe I’ve said before, it’s rare to see anything newer than ten years old to appear outside the comics. That plus the somewhat brutal nature of Gorr, his mission to murder deities, and the sheer slaughter he creates to reach that goal of a cosmos without Gods probably makes all of Marvel Studios and Disney Executives cringe with discomfort. “Oh, the money!” they think, “but oh, the protesting parents!” they groan. That all being said, I think that Gorr would make for an interesting addition in the MCU. Have him hunt down Thor, the last son of Odin as part of his vendetta against all Gods, and attack New Asgard on Earth. That way, when Thor gets his ass kicked and needs back up, Jane Foster can be right there to pick up a Hammer and lend a hand, same with Valkyrie. Let a new Thor sub in for TT and the current King of Asgard sub in for AT. Though it’s a shame we wouldn’t see a BrunnhildeForce since I think you need a world tree to do that, and Valkyrie probably hasn’t planted one yet. Just saying. He’d definitely be a brutal opponent for Thor to face and the end result of the fight would probably lead to a very damaged hero, and that’s if he wins. Oh, and I should probably mention that secret that Fury whispered in Thor’s ear, that terrible secret that shook the Thunder God to the core and stripped him of his worthiness to wield Mjolnir… it was “Gorr was Right.” Not sure if Fury’s position, or something else that gave this revelation extra weight, but believing that a hateful monster that spouted “God’s don’t help mortals” was right shook Thor in a way that took him almost five years to shake off. If the thought of that kind of story doesn’t make you want to vote in favor of Gorr being added to the MCU, I don’t know what will. 

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Villain Profile: Skurge the Executioner

Half Asgardian, Half Storm Giant, All Lovesick Puppy.

It feels like every other time that I’ve covered Thor or a related character I go years between them. But in the last six months I think I’ve covered at least five of them. Or will by the time the post after this comes out. Neat. Norse Mythology is something I’ve always enjoyed and I like how Marvel has tweaked some of it to fit in with their unusual reality. So last time we covered Amora the Enchantress, a powerful sorcerous that just can’t seem to get that Thor is just not that into her. Today we’re going to cover the guy that needed to learn that lesson, Skurge the Executioner. Let’s get to it.

I think the Gun is his most favorite invention of all time.

Skurge is a half Asgardian known across the cosmos for his immense strength. Part of that is due to his unique physiology, his father was a Storm Giant (a cousin species to Frost Giant’s like Loki) and his mother was an Asgardian woman from the realm of Skornheim. It’s an Asgard adjacent region where unspeakable horrors and killer predators are just part of an average Tuesday. He earned his title after siding with Asgard in a bloody war with his Storm Giant kin, whom he cut down with relative ease. Afterwards he traveled to Asgard, met and fell madly in love with Amora the Enchantress. Not sure if it’s a natural love or magically induced one, with Amora it’s pretty much a 50/50 shot. He joined her on her first attempt to win over Thor in his new human guise of Donald Blake. When she was spurred, she called him up and had him “dispose” of Jane Foster, Thor’s human love interest. He cut a whole into another dimension and tosses her in. After, he tells Thor that if he wants her back, he has to turn Mjolnir over to Skurge. I guess Skurge was the only one that remembered Loki told them about what Thor’s been up to and that he wanted the Thunderers hammer. What a surprise. Thor does hand Mjolnir, I think to everyone’s shock. But, Amora is less then pleased when Skurge keeps his end of the bargain and brings Jane back. She starts turning him into a tree, at which point he releases Thor for their bargain. Thor get’s Mjolnir back and he knocks the twosome back to Asgard. Only to be sent right back because banishing someone to the realm they’d just left so they can continue to menace your son and his friends makes perfect sense to Odin.

He spent the next few decades following Amora and helping her with her schemes. Apparently Love makes Storm Giant’s stupid or forgetful… I guess. Right after returning to Earth they found out about Baron Zemo from a newspaper, tracked him down and helped him form the original Masters of Evil. They worked with the Masters for several years, attempting to kill Thor and his allies, The Avengers. Obviously, they were thwarted repeatedly. He led several invasions of Trolls on Earth and Asgard but the monsters are usually easily dispatched. I suppose calling up any of his dad’s relatives among the Storm Giants for backup would be a bit awkward.

After decades of working with Amora, Skurge’s heart took as much abuse as it could handle. The straw that broke the camel’s back was seeing Amora drop her affection for Thor and shift it to Heimdall, the guardian of the Bifrost. Apparently, he could handle her loving the God of Thunder instead of him, but seeing her shift to someone other than himself broke his heart. Sad. Wanting to drown his sorrows in glorious battle, he joined Thor, Thor’s brother Balder and the Einherjar (warrior hero spirits from Valhalla) on a mission to the realm of Hel to rescue some human souls sent there by Malekith the Accursed and held in contempt by Hela. Apparently, Hela is the sort to keep anyone in her realm once they’d been dropped off, regardless of if they’re supposed to be there or not. While Thor was hesitant to trust a man that had tried to kill him dozens of times, he decided to give him a chance. They traveled into the bowels of Hel, battling ghosts and the monsters from the crypt. Hela tried to trick Skurge into turning on his allies by using a shapeshifter in the form of Amora. She lied to Skurge and said Heimdall killed her and begged her true love to save her. While shaken by the vision, Skurge is able to break the illusion by trusting Balder the Bright One over the desires of his own heart. Who’d of thought a fella with the name like Skurge the Executioner would be capable of emotional growth?

He probably thanks Odin everyday for that trip to Tex-Ass.

 While in Hel, they learn that the Naglfar, a warship made entirely from the finger and toenails of the dead of Hel (gross and totally part of the legend of Ragnarok), was nearly complete. This is bad as it was one of the signs that Ragnarok was about to begin. Hela offered Skurge a position as her #2 minion, feeling that the barely reformed villain would do well under her leadership. Skurge decides to use his magic Bloodaxe to shatter the ship, pushing back the Twilight of the Gods, if only for a little while. The group beats a hasty retreat once they collected the imprisoned souls. They’re able to cross the Gjallerbru, the bridge that connects Hel to the outside world. Thor swears to hold the Bridge while the Mortals and his allies escape. Wanting to make up for the years wasted serving Amora, Skurge knocks Thor out, gives him to Balder and takes his place on the bridge. His last words to the Bright One was a request that Thor and him raise a drink to Skurge’s name once they get home. He defends the bridge with the Bloodaxe and a M16 rifle one of the Einherjar lent him. Not a single one of Hela’s minions were able to pass him until after the others departed. While he was eventually overrun, he at least impressed Hela enough for her to give him a short eulogy. “He stood alone at Gjallerbru. And that answer is enough.”

Skurge remained trapped in Hel following his death, as Hela is loathed to let a soul go after she has it. He may have remained their indefinitely if it weren’t for Thor. The Thunderer had been cursed by Hela so that his bones were brittle and never heal while he was still immortal. So, the result was he was in unending pain. To circumvent this, he assumed control of the Destroyer Armor. The suit requires a potential wearer to project their mind into it for it to move. In the Armor, Thor attacked Hel and started wrecking the place. Skurge tried to talk Thor down, but Thor ignored him, knocking his former opponent aside. It’s eventually revealed that Thor was 100% in control but was playing up the crazy to force Hela into lifting the curse. She does, eventually. Before he left, Thor asked Skurge if there was anything he could do for his departed enemy. Skurge just reminded Thor that he needs to raise a glass to him with Balder. As Thor and his little brother toasted Skurge the Executioner, Hela decided that his honor and courage were enough for him to earn an exemption from Hel. Hela might be a villain, but she’s not made of stone. She released his soul and he was able to transcend to Valhalla. I wonder if he ever learned that upon hearing of his death, Amora realized she did have feelings for him and mourned his passing. While this marked the end of his regular appearances, Skurge seems always willing to lend a hand when the Einherjar are called to arms. He’s usually first in line to make an appearance and fight the foes of Asgard.

Skurge power comes from being half Storm Giant and Half Asgardian. The mix made him immensely strong even by Asgard standards. He hit with the same force as Thor, who’s in the upper echelon of Asgardian. He’s incredibly long lived like all Asgardians, being well over a thousand years old but not appearing as more then 35 or so. His body can heal incredibly rapidly, and is highly impervious to damage. He also owned the Bloodaxe. This magic artifact allowed him to teleport or literally cut holes in reality. It’s one of only a handful of weapons that can easily kill a God-level being. It can also project a fiery, icy, or gale force blasts. He can also deflect bullets with it.

The Bloodaxe sings for... well, you know, blood.

Skurge has appeared about as often as his other half, Amora. Its one of those partnerships that seems to have stood the test of time. Also like his partner, while he’s not based on any character from known Norse myth, I also wouldn’t be shocked to discover someone like him in a “thought forgotten” myth or something. What? A powerful Giant warrior, trying to earn the heart of a fickle goddess while helping her in her schemes to woo the God of Thunder, for him to eventually be struck down and only then his love discovered that he did hold a special place in her heart. That’s the sort of tragedy that the ancients ate up. Maybe more the Greeks then the Norse, but, hey, it’s possible.

Skurge appeared in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. He’s Amora’s silent muscle throughout the series. He often ended up fighting Thor or the Hulk when they faced off against the Avengers. In the season 1 finale, Hulk is able to beat his butt across one of the nine realms and steal the Bloodaxe from him. Afterwards he upgraded to rifles. After Amora was forcibly recruited by Surtur, he was imprisoned with the rest of the Masters of Evil in the extra-dimensional prison 42. He was among several villains that helped the heroes when natives of the Negative Zone where 42 was located, led by Annihilus, and even saved Thor’s life from several of the extra-dimensional bugs. In gratitude, Thor told Skurge about what had happed to Amora, and promised to give him a chance to help save her if the chance arises. Thor’s a good dude.

He made an appearance in Disney’s Ultimate Spider-Man. Fun fact, this version speaks and was voice by Travis Willingham whom also voiced Thor on the sister show Avengers Assemble. In the episode he led a version of the Wild Hunt through New York hunting Spider-Man, whom been turned into a Spider-Ham by a hotdog that Loki had enchanted. The weird part of that sentence for me is knowing that Marvel either could do or totally did that plot line at one time or another. So weird. Peter is protected by his team consisting of Power Man, Iron Fist, Nova, and White Tiger with an assist from Thor. After surviving to sunset, returning to normal and punching Loki in the face, Skurge admits Spider-Man led him on a grand chase and tips his metaphorical hat to him. He appeared in the background of several episodes after this point, and made an appearance as part of a new Cabal in Avengers Assemble. Their group consisted of himself, Arnim Zola, the Enchantress, Kang the Conqueror and the Leader.

A super condensed version of Skurge’s entire plot arc appeared in Thor: Ragnarok. He’s introduced as Loki’s replacement for Heimdall when the God of Lies took on Odin’s form and rule Asgard for a few years. He’s portrayed by Karl Urban. This version appears to be kind of dumb and incredibly vain but not an out and out horrible person. Other than almost letting Thor die on Muspelheim because he was showing off his M16 rifles that he got from Tex-Ass to some Asgard-skanks. When Hela arrives on Asgard, she offers him a job as her Executioner which he takes up. I got that this was more a form of self-preservation for him than an actual from the heart decision. It becomes pretty clear within minutes of him taking up the Job that he regrets that decision. He flees Asgard with the rest of the citizens when Thor shows up with a big arc ship. Seeing that the group would be overrun by Hela’s army long before they could escape, Skurge opens fire with his M16s on the undead force. He leaped into the fray shouting “For Asgard!” He’s able to kill… er re-kill several of the undead host charging the Asgardians. Hela, unimpressed with his heel face turn, executes the Executioner.

Skurge is a pretty standard villain, much like his love, Amora. I’ve seen him as deadly serious and humorless in Avengers: EMH, a boisterous Asgardian hunter in Avengers Assemble and a bit of a loveable oaf in Ragnarok. It seems like they can’t decide what the best way to present him as. His kind of tragic yearning for Amora is a bit depressing to be honest. He does whatever she asks, fights and kills for her, all in the hopes that she’ll decide that the man that offers his heart to her is better than the guy that’s said no 500 times. Skurge is a glutton for punishment. I did like the ultimately noble sacrifice that he made in both the comics and the movies. I’m a sucker for villain redemption story arcs. That and his magic axe is really cool. I mean it shoots fire and ice, can kill Gods and is so corrupted by his soul it literally drives mortals mad with its power. I mean how awesome is that? I’d be happy seeing him and Amora in other Thor stories. For our final Thor mini-theme week we’ll talk about a much newer but destructive addition to Thor’s rogues gallery, Gorr the God Butcher. 

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Villain Profile: Amora the Enchantress

Remember that line about hell having no fury like a woman scorned? Goes triple if she's a Goddess.

As I said last time, the next Thor movie is subtitled “Love and Thunder” and they’ve already confirmed that Jane Foster’s Thor form will play a large role. While the story is pretty much all question marks at the moment, there is speculation as to whom the villain of the story will be. Some have thought the Thors might face off against Jormungandr, Loki’s colossal snake of a son. Others have thought either Ragnarok, an evil robot clone of Thor, Gorr the God Butcher, or Ares the Greek God of War. Yes, he is also a Marvel character. Or even the B-list team of Asgardian impowered thugs, the Wrecking Crew. But personally, with a word like “Love” in the title, I can think of only one villain of Thor’s that 100% should appear as she’s got a variation of Love in her name, Amora the Enchantress. Let’s get to it.

Don't let the smile fool you, she's a viper.

Amora’s origins are largely unknown. She is an Asgardian by birth and has a sister named Lorelei who she is at odds with. But other than that, not much is known about her until she hit her teens. At that time, she ran away to the realm of the Nornheim. It’s a smaller, independent nation that exists on the same landmass as Asgard proper. There, she trained under Queen Karnilla, whom had mystic power to rival those of Odin. Amora was an eager student and learn much in a relatively short time, but was expelled from Karnilla’s teaching for being too undisciplined with the skills she’d learned. Unfortunately, Amora was undeterred. She sought out pretty much all practitioners of magic she could find on Asgard and typically seduced them into giving her the training and power she needed. Her biggest accomplishments before the common era was to form an alliance with Brunnhilde, aka Valkyrie, and then capture the winged warrior in a cursed crystal when Valkyrie realized she was being used, and seducing Skurge the Executioner a half Giant half Asgardian warrior. Brunnhilde remained imprisoned until sometime after Thor started hanging out on Earth again, and Skurge remained her loyal minion for centuries.

At some point in history, she met and became obsessed with winning, or maybe more accurately taking, the heart of Thor Odinson. Thor spurned her advances since she’s a crazy person, but that didn’t seem to deter her. When Thor took up the human identity of Donald Blake, she tried again, was spurned, so she ordered Skurge to kill Jane Foster. Thor saved Jane, defeated the gruesome twosome and saw them tried on Asgard. But since Odin’s favor form of punishment is Banishment, he just sent them right back to Earth. I feel like no problem was actually solved with that sentence. Over the next few years, Amora allied herself with the various villainous teams that popped up to fight the Avengers, when she wasn’t hunting Thor on her own. She was a founding member of Baron Zemo’s Master’s of Evil, and worked for the Mandarin on several occasions. Some of her jobs were particularly petty, like the time she agreed to disrupt the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm for Doctor Doom. Like, how low can one sink, Amora?

After years of doing his best to serve her in the hopes of truly winning her heart, Skurge broke things off with Amora and helped Thor on a mission to the realm of Hel in a bid to free some captured souls from Hela’s realm. He sacrificed himself so that Thor and their companions could escape. Much to everyone’s surprise, herself included, Amora was stunned by Skurge’s death and seems to be still grieving his loss. On more than one occasions she’s empowered a new lackey to act as her muscle, and they have a tendency to resemble Skurge pretty obviously. She even outfits them in his armor. The partnerships never last long, though, as apparently Skurge was the only one that she could keep leashed for any length of time.

Yes, she is in fact sitting on a Throne of magical creatures with
a collared Hulk at her feet. Sums up her ambitions nicely.

Amora died like nearly all Asgardian’s during the final iteration of Ragnarok. Thor had found a way to end the cycle of death and rebirth that the Norse Gods had been locked in for time immemorial. Thor was revived, however, and set about rebuilding Asgard. He restored Asgard City proper as a floating island in central Oklahoma, and then went about restoring his fallen kinsmen. The Asgard had been bonded to and were left sleeping within the souls of various mortals after the Twilight of the Gods. He’d intended to only awaken the most valiant of Asgardians, like Heimdall and the Warriors Three, but Loki, shockingly, intervened. It seemed that while he was also bound in a human body, he was more conscious then any other Asgard. He tricked his brother into awakening all sleeping Asgardians, including Amora. She’s since resumed trying to capture Thor’s interest and whatever part of the universe catches her eye.

Amora the Enchantress has the standard Asgard package. She’s incredibly strong, fast, dexterous and durable. She’s also incredibly long lived, appearing to be only about thirty or so but her actual years lived can probably be counted in millennia. Amora is an incredibly powerful sorcerer, on par with other god-like magic users like Loki and the Sorcerer Supreme. Her forte is mind control and enchantment, but she’s also skilled at transmutation, regeneration, energy projection, teleportation, levitation, shapeshifting and illusion. While she prefers to have a man on staff to do the gruesome work, she’s not above dirtying her own hands if you catch her on a bad day. She’s also incredibly intelligent and skilled at manipulating others even without her magic.

The Enchantress has only been used a handful of times outside the comics. Probably due to Thor only being used a handful of times as well, at least until the MCU began. Interestingly, for me anyway, Amora is like the Warriors Three, in that she is not directly inspired by any known Norse Goddess. That being said, a LOT of Norse Mythology was never recorded and has been lost since that craze of Christianity started. I wouldn’t be shocked if there was a lost story or two about a powerful goddess trying to woo the thundered but being spurned by him. It just sounds like the kind of thing mythological Thor and comic Thor have in common.

Think Skurge ever complains that Amora never takes him
anywhere nice?

She was a major antagonist in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. She was the right-hand woman of Loki, helping him break free of the Isle of Silence in the first few episodes, and then later helping Baron Zemo create the Masters of Evil after it was clear that Loki’s initial plan of just freeing a bunch of bad guys wouldn’t cut it as a distraction for the Avengers. She also used her magics to trick Hulk into going on a rampage and then violently leave the Avengers, which inadvertently lead to the group discovering Captain America. Unintended consequences, am I right? She repeatedly tried to seduce and lure Thor away, much to the annoyance of Skurge I’m sure, but was rebuffed each time. She even saved him for a blast from Ultron, and tried to enslave him but he broke free. In the first season finale she tried to double cross Zemo, but was betrayed herself. She’d have been enslaved by Zemo if Loki hadn’t intervened. In season 2, she and Skurge went on a rampage trying to get vengeance against the Masters of Evil. She finds creative punishments for the ones she catches. Her threat causes Zemo and his surviving team to seek aid from the Avengers. She still almost get’s Zemo, as the Skrull posing as Captain America had no intention of helping Zemo, but the destruction of the last Norn Stone blasted her to kingdom come. Or more accurately to Muspelhiem, where she’s forcibly turned into an agent of Surtur, the king of the Fire Giants. She tries to get Loki to join up too, but he bumbles a plan to destroy Thor, Iron Man and Captain America, and is left to rot. This story was never concluded, so we have no idea if she’d have survived Ragnarok this go around or not.

She was one of the lieutenants of Doctor Doom’s iteration of the Masters of Evil in the first Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Game. She seemed to work directly for Loki and Doom, the groups commanders. She’s defeated alongside Skurge in Asgard about 2/3^rds through the game.

She hasn’t appeared in the MCU as of yet, but as I said at the end of the last post and the start of this one, there’s some hope she may appear in the next Thor film in some capacity. But we can only wait and see.

Amora the Enchantress is a pretty standard villain. She’s powerful but vain, as well as vengeful.  She has the power to get just about whatever she wants, money, power, fame, but it’s the things that she can’t have that she desires. Heck, I bet if Thor had shown any interest early on, she’d have given up and moved on ages ago. Sure, the whole Villain ‘loves’ hero thing has been done a number of times before but it’s done well with Amora. And her dynamic with Skurge is interesting. I dare say you won’t find many henchmen that are in love with their boss and are yet still cool with watching them attempt to woo someone else. Skurge was someone for her to play with and tease but not one to put too much thought toward in a romantic sense. Or so it seemed. Hell, she didn’t seem to get that she actually liked and relied upon Skurge until the big lug up and died on her. In a more recent story, she went so far as to try and destroy Yggdrasil the world tree to try and bring him back from Valhalla, but was talked down by Thor and others, whom reminded her that doing such a thing would be an insult to Skurge’s memory even if she could bring him back. Figures she’d only realize who her one and only was after he kicked the bucket, am I right? Her filmography is somewhat lacking, but she’s interesting enough to warrant exploring more in films and shows to come. Especially if they play up the angle of her desire for Thor stemming from wanting to possess his power in a way rather than an actual romantic attraction. I always prefer that kind of villainess to the one that is too stupid to realize that if you want to be WITH a good person, you should try to be a good person YOURSELF. Or at least I think so. Next up, we’ll talk about Skurge. 

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Hero Profile: Mighty Thor

A woman working hard to live up to a Legend.

I’d been trying to think of what to cover after Far From Home, but then Comicon happens and pretty much gift wraps an idea for me. For those uninterested in that particular convention, it was announced that Thor 4, entitled Thor: Love and Thunder would feature the return of Natalie Portman’s Jane Foster, and see her take up the mantle of Mighty Thor. Be bigger than the news outlets that are still calling her Lady Thor or Female Thor, she’s Mighty Thor. Or maybe Jane Fos-Thor, if you like combining words. Yes, it might be slightly confusing, but if DC can have four Flashes, and literally hundreds of Green Lanterns, there can be two characters named Thor. Are you curious how Thor’s ex ended up taking his hammer, mantle, and name, all with his blessing? Well, then you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get to it.

Whosoever holds this hammer, if they be worthy, shall
wield the power of Thor!

I’ll only cover Jane’s past in brief. She was introduced as a nurse hired to assist Doctor Donald Blake, the human alter ego of Thor, God of Thunder. She was a standard Stan Lee love interest. Stan, where ever you are, I love ya but you kind of sucked at writing women. I hope that was more an issue of the time you lived in then anything else. Jane, like Betty Brand, Karen Page, and many other love interests at the time, was mostly there to moon over mild mannered Donald Blake and still be attracted to the dashing God of Norse myth. She would eventually learn they were one in the same person, which is super convenient for her. There were issues, obviously, being in love with a god has never been easy regardless of mythology, but none that I feel I need to draw special attention to. Just know that she tried to be with Thor for years but it repeatedly didn’t work out. She eventually married another doctor named Keith Kincaid and had a son named Jimmy. She also gets a medical degree, making her Dr. Jane Kincaid. But she later divorces Keith, losing custody of her son in the process, and ends up running a medical practice with Thor’s civilian identity of Donald Blake in Broxton, Oklahoma. It’s where Thor built a New Asgard after the last one kind of was destroyed in Ragnarok. Now we get to the interesting bit.

She goes from Nurse to theoretical physicist. Talk about a career shift.

Jane’s life takes a very sudden and painful dive as in short order, her ex-husband and son are killed in a car accident and she’s diagnosed with breast cancer. To help her get away from her personal problems, Thor invited her to represent Midgard (Earth) as part of the Congress of Worlds. It was a sort of UN for the Nine interconnected planets of Norse Myth. Wait, sorry, Ten Realms… I forgot that they introduced Heven at one point as world Ten that Odin locked off for centuries. Jane agreed to that, but refused any offer of magical aid for her cancer treatment. I guess as a doctor, she felt that you have to follow the rules of medical science or something. Around that time, Director Fury whispered a secret into Thor’s ear. He was so devastated by whatever was revealed, that he lost the ability to lift Mjolnir. The hammer was left on the moon, anchored to the ground. Needing a new wielder, Mjolnir called out to someone to lift it. At the time the civilian identity of Mighty Thor was a secret, but now we know that person was Jane Foster. She called in a solid from Heimdall, who dropped her off in the moon’s Blue Zone, a patch of breathable atmosphere on Marvel’s moon. She took up the hammer and was transformed. Her weakened, withered body grew stronger, she grew taller, and her hair became a vibrant gold. Using the power of Thor, she helped turn back an assault by Malekith the Accursed and his allies. Thor, upon seeing someone else with his hammer, initially demanded it’s return, but quickly accepted that he was no longer it’s wielder. With a heavy heart, Thor turned over his weapon, his power, and even his name to this new Thor. He went by Odinson exclusively after that point, believing that to be the only name he was still worthy of.

One of her first missions was to stop Malekith’s attempt at reviving Laufey, the Frost Giant’s king and Loki’s father (gender swapped from the Norse Myth, fyi). A mission complicated by Cul Borson, Thor’s Uncle. Cul was under orders by his little brother and king of Asgard, Odin, to reclaim Mjolnir from the unworthy human whom held it. To do so, he was given the invincible Destroyer armor and sent on his way. They had a pitched battle where Cul almost took the hammer, but Thor reclaimed it. She then got back up from Odinson, his mother Freyja, and a small army of heroines. They’d all been women that Odinson had suspected might be the new Thor. In case you were wondering, he struck Jane from the list early on due to her condition. They were able to beat back Cul. Odinson left still not knowing whom now wielded his hammer.

So her Ex is a Thunder God. Talk about high Standards.

Around this time Incursions had begun happening. The origins are complex, but the short version is, something happened to cause the Multiverse to contract in on itself. That means that different universe began colliding into each other, destroying both. And the contact point was always Earth, so our little blue ball was always the first thing to be reduced to subatomic particles. Marvel’s heroes had stopped a few through various means, but in the end Earth 616 (Main Marvel) collided with Earth 1610 (Ultimate Marvel) destroying both. Thor was one of several characters to escape thanks to a life raft designed by super scientist Reed Richards. They were put into suspended animation, waking up eight years later. In the meantime, Doctor Doom had clamed god like power, and used the fragments of the destroyed universes to forge a new Battleworld, and several other smaller parallel dimensions for his amusement. She and the other heroes are scattered across Battleworld by Doctor Strange, as he believed that these remnants of what was were the only hope of a salvation. He’s killed for it by Doom. Thor infiltrates the Thor Corps, Doom’s Thunder God empowered police force, and get the majority of them to revolt against their despot. Thor and the other heroes are able to rebuild the universe, merging the 616 and 1610 Earth’s together. You know, so Miles Morales the young Spider-Man can hang out with Peter Parker the adult Spider-Man. I kid.

Once reality is restored, things return to normal. Well, normal for Marvel. Jane is still working as a representative in the Congress of Worlds, while as Thor she’s a fugitive being hunted by Cul. Odd how much like The Hulk Jane’s Thor has become, isn’t it? The one thing somewhat out of whack is that Odinson has vanished. Her next big mission was a war between two of the other realms of the Congress of Worlds, Svartalfheim and Alfheim, the homes of the Dark and Light elves. She had to deal with that plus the involvement of Loki. You know that lord of Chaos, always sticking his nose in places. After that matter was settled with a good ol’ fashion political wedding, yah, she returned to Asgard to deal with Odin. He’d become a little drunk on power over the last few years, possibly with some help from his crazed brother Cul, and had put his wife Freyja on trial.  She and Loki arrive in time the nick of time, just as Odin was about to announce a verdict. Thor and Odin battled across Asgard and space, eventually flying and smashing their way across the moons of Saturn. Their battle is only ended when Loki stabs Freyja. Thor flies off.

The price of power is rarely cheap.

She has several other adventures, battling the Roxxon oil company’s evil shapeshifting CEO Dario Agger aka Minotaur, a new Silver Samurai, and some monsters from old Norse tales. She even worked as an Avenger, helping the group take on guys like Kang the Conqueror. And all the while keeping her identity secret from most of the word. Some exceptions being Captain America aka Sam Wilson, who saw be forcibly turned back during a battle with Kang, Doctor Strange, who could see through the magic concealing her identity, and Gwenpool, a new Deadpool style character with fourth wall sensing powers. And while all that was exciting, it was also a major problem for Jane.

Why? See, when Jane called upon the magic of Mjolnir to transform her into Thor, it’s a total transformation. The energies of it surge through her body, purifying and strengthening it into an Asgardian form. Do you see what I’m getting at? It removes all Toxins and impurities from the body. … Like chemotherapy drugs. Yeah. Each time she transformed, she basically reset her cancer treatment to day 0. And as she had to change more and more often to battle mighty foes, she was getting sicker and sicker. It got to the point where she had to reveal her identity to the returned Odinson and her teammates, whom force her to remain under Stephen Strange’s watchful eye. Even when an extremely powerful foe of both Thor’s, Mangog, starts attacking Asgard they tried to keep her in a sick bed. Odinson rallies the might of Asgard to drive the creature back, but a monster that has the might of “a billion billion beings” proves to be a little too much for them. Despite Stephen’s warning that transforming even one more time will cause her cancer to spread too much to stop, Jane does what any great hero does. She transforms and confronts Mangog. The two battle across Asgard until Thor pulls a fast one. She wraps Mangog and Mjolnir with the Gleipnir, a long ribbon made by dwarves that once bound the demigod wolf Fenrir to the Earth. It’s made from six impossible things, the sound of a cat’s footfall, the beard of a woman, the roots of a mountain, the sinews of a bear, the breath of a fish and the spittle of a bird to make it unbreakable. Once both were securely tied, Thor hurled Mjolnir into the Sun. Just before the hammer hits the star and the enchantment turning her into Thor breaks, she grabs Odinson and gives him a kiss goodbye. She dies in his arms. Given that she’d proven herself in the defense of Asgard multiple times, had fought and survived bloody battles, and ultimately died in combat, she was given the great gift to enter Valhalla. Odinson, grief stricken and probably a little crazy, tries to use his power to revive her. Having seen all of Jane’s valiant acts, and seeing his son’s grief, Odin aids him. They channel the power of the God Tempest, the massive supernatural storm that was consumed to make Mjolnir to resurrect her. She’d been hesitant to cross the threshold into Valhalla, so she got her body back. In the aftermath of the battle, Jane hands Odinson a chunk of the uru metal that made up Mjolnir. Quite a bit had ‘flaked off’ while fighting Mangog. To his shock, Thor could lift it again. She encouraged her former lover to reclaim his name and be Thor once more. And she decided it was time to focus of her chemotherapy for a while.

A short time later the Dark Elf Malekith the Accursed and his allies, a group called the Dark Council, launched a global assault on Earth. Jane helped with the fighting as best she could, but a collection of foes from across the Nine… er Ten Realms now, proved too much. Earth’s defenders were forced back to Avengers Mountain, an Avenger base in the Arctic. Jane was promoted to All-Mother, de-facto queen of Asgard, when Freyja joined a group of heroes to destroy the Dark Council’s means of transport, the Black Bifrost. The defenders take a pretty serious blow when Valkyrie (Brunnhilde) and the Valkyries are killed in a battle with Malekith. While the defender’s forces rally, Heimdall reveals to Jane that Thor is being overwhelmed by Malekith’s forces. Believing that this was a crisis big enough for a few Thor’s, Jane grabbed the damaged but still empowered Mjolnir from Earth 1610. The hammer forged in the heart of a star is powerful enough to survive a universe ending event, who knew? So… Thor Odinson, time hopping versions of himself as a young and old man, and Jane Fos-Thor team up and fight back Malekith’s forces. Jane has a particularly bad ass moment where she hurls the crumbling 1610-Mjolnir to kill Laufey again. While the hammer crumbles, it’s individual pieces merge into a vambrace (it’s that bit of armor that covers your forearm) on Jane’s arm. This change is explained by the spirit of Brunnhilde. See, Valkyries are needed to shepherd the souls of the worthy dead to Valhalla. And with the other Valkyries dead, they need to start recruiting. And who better to be the first new Valkyrie then she who’d just been Thor? Mjolnir had been reforged into a shapeshifting weapon called Undrajarn the All-Weapon for this new job of hers. One journey end, and a new begins. Got to love comics.

Some heroes never die, they just take up new mantles. 

While holding Mjolnir, Jane Foster can transform into Thor. This magical transformation gives her the full Asgardian package. Enhances her strength, speed, stamina, durability and endurance to beyond human levels. It also makes it so she can take Hulk punches without batting an eye. With the hammer she can fly by spinning the hammer and hurling it in the direction she wants to go. And she can summon lightning and channel it through the hammer. The transformation also purges her body of toxins and the like, something that I imagine would be a lot more useful if she was dying of anything besides cancer. Just saying.

Jane is a character that has been used very sparingly outside of the comics. Probably because she’s a support character of Thor’s that isn’t in mythology and he hasn’t had a standalone TV show. Interestingly, I don’t think a single one of her appearances have her be a nurse. No, oddly, most of her appearances have her be an astrophysicist. Not necessarily complaining, just pointing it out. Unfortunately to date she’s only had one appearance in her Asgardian form. That’s mostly due to her debut as Thor only having occurred back in 2014. As I believe I’ve stated before, anything that occurs in comics rarely makes an appearance outside them within a decade of it first happening.

She was introduced as a Paramedic in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, whom had befriended Thor before the series began and had a none too subtle crush on him. Dude’s a literal God, I’m shocked he doesn’t have women literally throwing themselves at him. She only makes a few appearances, and seems to have been written out by season 2, after Wasp basically tells her that being with a superhero is… difficult to say the least. But, given that the show had set up the beginnings of the Ragnarok storyline, and was cancelled before it could be completed, I can believe that the plan for anything Thor related after that story would have had Jane taking up the Hammer. You can’t convince me otherwise.

To paraphrase a Prince most Fresh, "She makes this look good."

Jane is introduced in the fourth season of Avengers Assemble as a cross-dimensional researcher helping the Avengers find Iron Man, whom had been stuck in interdimensional space at the end of the previous season. Their efforts are interrupted by a new Cabal of evil that use her tech to scatter most of the Avengers across time and space. She helps Black Panther and his team of New Avengers track and free the scattered team with her tech. It’s eventually revealed that the new Cabal is being backed by the Beyonder, a god-like being whom had come to Earth to snap up the best bits of it for his Battleworld. Over the course of the battle with the Beyonder, Thor hands off his hammer to Jane to save her from a quicksand trap. This transforms her into Thor and she helps finish off the Beyonder and later Loki, whom had been working with him. After the fighting died down, Jane returned Mjolnir to Thor and was given her own magic uru mace with similar powers and took up the codename Thunderstrike. That’s a nice nod to another… Thorite? I guess. Eric and later his son Kevin were two men that were given a magic mace that gave them Thor’s powers and their codename was Thunderstrike. Neat.

It was revealed at 2019’s Comicon that the fourth Thor standalone movie would be dubbed Thor: Love and Thunder. It will feature Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, and the return of Natalie Portman as Jane Foster. She hadn’t been present in the MCU since 2013’s okay Thor: Dark World. It was also revealed with her return that she will be lifting Mjolnir as Thor for this one as well. The movie was just announced, so details are few and far between, but given what Taika Waititi did with Thor: Ragnarok, I’m excited for it.

Mighty Thor is a character that I’m not super familiar with, but whom seems to have had an overall positive influence during her brief stint in the Marvel Universe. I’ve seen a few panels, possibly out of context, that were seemed about as cringy as the “X-Women” stab Mystique gave Xavier in Dark Phoenix. But, Jane has proven to be a powerful character that did her damnedest to live up to the legacy that she was handed, fought when she new each battle was costing her days if not weeks of her life as her health deteriorated, and when things were at their bleakest, she pulled a hail Mary play that helped  save the universe. I think that’s all one really needs to be considered a hero in a sane person’s book. And heck, they did something right, I saw a statistic that said that during her stint as Thor that the books had a quarter increase in sales. Financial gains of any percentage are nothing to sneeze at. I hope that we’ll get to see more of Jane Fos-Thor in the future, and that Natalie Portman’s portrayal of the Goddess of Thunder does her justice. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Next time… let’s look at a top contender for Love and Thunders big bad, Amora the Enchantress.

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Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home

Night Monkey, Night Monkey, does whatever a nocturnal monkey does... nope, not nearly as catchy.

When the MCU got the rights to use Spider-Man, I was cautiously optimistic. Marvel had already done a great job in adapting their characters and stories into movie form, and while they haven’t all be spectacular or amazing, the worst you can say about the lesser movies is that they’re okay. Not great, but not awful either. And after seeing how Tom Holland did his Spider-thing in Civil War, and then his performances in Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame I can say with confidence that they’d exceeded my expectations. Sure, they had to make a lot of changes to make the Spider-Man stuff fit in with the rest of the MCU mythos and do enough altering so that Tom’s Peter Parker would be distinct from Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield’s performances, but they stuck the landing. Sure, Aunt May is now significantly younger, and as attractive as Marisa Tomei always is, MJ is now Michelle Jones instead of Mary Jane Watson, and Harry Osborn seems to have been subbed out for Ned (maybe) Leeds, but they’re all great in my eyes. Shall we see if Spider-Man: Far From Home can keep my optimism aloft? Let’s get to it.

Care to guess who in this photo is trustworthy?

We open on the devastated town of Ixtenco, Mexico. Agent Maria Hill and Director Nick Fury arrive to investigate. Just as they begin their investigation, an enormous Man shaped creature made of Sand (how odd) appears and attacks. It’s quickly stopped by a Mysterious man in a fishbowl helmet. A week later, we’re shown this same trio fighting and defeating a similar wind-based, almost Cyclonic, monster in Morocco.

We then jump over to Midtown Tech, the High School of Peter Parker. We’re given a quick exposition dump from school journalist Betty Brant. In quick succession, it is year 2024, they know that Iron Man, Black Widow, Vision and (kinda) Captain America died defending the Earth, they are now referring to the five years where half of all life was gone as “The Blip,” everyone who was erased hasn’t aged in the five years they were gone, and while things are weird, they’re adjusting. These kids adjusted way better than I could have, to be honest. Peter, Ned, and several other students are going on a cross country trip in Europe as part of their summer break. Peter is rather stressed out about it, as he is planning on telling Michelle (MJ) Jones that he’s got a crush on her. Add to it the additional stresses of being Spider-Man, and seeing a bunch of homages to his now deceased mentor Iron Man, Peter really needs the break. He also helps out Aunt May at a charity event for the Homeless. Which I guess is a much bigger problem now that you’ve got a TON of people who’ve probably lost their homes while being ash. She’s super supportive of Peter as Spider-Man, first time for everything, which is good. But then Happy Hogan shows up with a big check for May’s charity and things get… weird. Huh. Before Peter can think too hard on his Aunt’s social life, he gets a call from a blocked number that Happy is pretty sure is from Nick Fury. Then the unthinkable happens. Peter. Ghosts. Nicholas. Joseph. Fury. Yeah… nobody does that. He redirects the call to Happy, who is very much un-Happy to screen Peter’s calls.

The next day as Peter preps for the trip, he spends a good couple minutes wondering if he should bring his Spider-Suit with him. May tosses him a banana and is curious why it hit him, as shouldn’t his “Peter-Tingle” have warned him? … I’ll get back to that later. He opts to leave the physical suit and completely ignores his Iron Spider-Suit in its weird vat container.

I guess cosplaying is big in Italy? 

Things don’t start off super great for Peter on the trip, as his and Ned’s attempts at getting him to sit next to MJ to begin his plan fail. Horribly. Peter ends up sitting beside the teacher Mr. Harrington from the last movie. Dude has a super sad story about his wife faking being ‘Blipped’ to run off with a hiking buddy. Ned ends up next to Betty Brant who is less than thrilled to be next to him. And MJ ends up with Brad Davis, a pretty boy classmate. Which is super weird for Peter and Ned, as Ned points out that from their perspective, less then a year ago Brad was a 12-year-old kid with a runny nose. That damn Blip, man. They land in Venice, Italy. Peter discovers that on the trip over Ned and Betty had bonded and decided to start dating. Which is shocking. But not as much as when Customs pulls him aside to check his bags for contraband and he discovers Aunt May had packed his suit for him. Damn it May! Thankfully the customs agent just takes out the thing setting off the dog, a banana, and lets him go on his merry way. Guess Cosplaying is big in Italy?

In Venice, Peter breaks away from the group to buy a Black Dahlia glass necklace for MJ. The Black Dahlia is her favorite flower because of the murder. That is the reasoning the movie give multiple times. I think I love Zendaya MJ. He gets back to the class just in time to see a giant water-based creature rise up from the grand canal. It’s almost as if the water, or Hydro as the Greeks would say, is taking on a Man shape. How odd. Peter ushers his classmates away, and dons a silly mask when he realizes that he left his suit at the hotel. He gets knocked around by the water monster, since he wasn’t dumb enough to leave his web-shooters behind, just to be saved by the arrival of the Mysterious man in a bubble helmet. The two lead this Man of Hydro from the canal and distract it until it’s seemingly destroyed. The Mystery man thanks Peter for his help and flies off.

Where is Electro when you need him?

Peter regroups with his class, who are speculating what the liquid monster was and who this “Mysterio” is. The news was calling him a mysterious man in Italian, which I guess translates to Mysterio. How odd, and convenient. Flash read on a conspiracy website that the Water creature was the result of a sailor getting transformed into a monster, but no one’s buying it. That night, Peter finds Nick Fury in his room. To say he was annoyed at being ignored is a bit of an understatement. He tranquilizes Ned and threats to do it to the next person that knocks on Peter’s door after several interruptions. Nick escorts Peter to their mobile base in Venice. There he meets Quinten Beck, an interdimensional warrior from a parallel world. His version of Earth had been destroyed by these creatures, the Elementals. He’d been helping Fury track and stop the creatures since he’d arrived. The only Elemental remaining is the Fire Elemental, who’ll attack Prague in two days. Peter says he can’t help, as his class will figure out that he’s Spider-Man if the web head shows up on another class trip, and because it’ll ruin his plans to ask MJ out at the top of the Eiffel tower. He tries to suggest other heroes to help, but Thor is off world, Dr. Strange is unavailable and Fury is touchy about Peter taking Carol Danvers name in vain. But he lets Peter leave… oddly gracious of him.

The next day Peter discovers that his class trip has gotten an “Upgrade” and they’ll be traveling to Prague! Nicholas Fury, you are a cheeky bastard. During a pit stop in route, Peter is given a new stealth suit and a gift from the late great Robert Downy Jr. I mean, Tony Stark. There’s a bit of a snafu when pretty boy Brad walks in looking for a bathroom to see a pants-less Peter alone with a beautiful woman. He’d been changing for the seamstress to check the fitting, not sure why he felt the pants should go first to be honest. Brad snaps a pic and tells Peter he’s going to inform MJ.

Why didn't Ned think to call him Black Tarantula? It was
right there!

Back on the bus, Peter discovers that Tony’s gift is a pair of Sunglasses in Tony’s favorite style that actually house a super advanced AI named EDITH. It stands for Even Dead, I’m The Hero, Tony loves his acronyms. The glasses let him access the Stark Industries global satellite network and a few thousand tactical drones. They can also hack your basic security system and phones. How convenient. Peter almost gets everyone killed when he accidentally sics a drone on Brad, but he destroys it quickly and covertly before actually getting EDITH to delete the photo. Phew.

In Prague, Peter gets a tongue lashing from Fury for being so stupid with a multibillion-dollar defense project and Beck consoles him. Hmmmm… Peter and Beck gets Fury to protect his class by getting them stuck in an Opera for four hours (yeah travel upgrades!). He has Ned feed everyone a story about feeling ill before ducking out and donning the stealth suit to help out. Unfortunately, MJ sees him sneak off and follows, and Betty forces Ned to sneak out too, thinking Peter and MJ were going to the Carnival of Lights. Shoot. The Fire Elemental arrives. Like the others, it takes on the form of a Man, a man of liquid, Molten metal. How odd. Peter and Beck work together to destroy it, but the creature grows too fast for them to stop. During the fight, Peter’s web hits something unseen, tossing it into an alley. Beck flies into it, trying to kill it by sacrificing himself. Peter, who’d been forced to hold up a toppling Ferris wheel, watched in horror. Beck survives, burnt but alive.

If Beck used his tech legally, he'd have made billions in movies.

Fury congratulates Beck for his work, and tells Peter that he needs to choose to step up or step aside. If he wants to step up, he can meet them in Berlin for a debriefing. After a celebratory drink Beck, Peter decides that he’s not worthy of the glasses and hands them off to Beck. Beck takes the responsibility solemnly and promises to be a worthy next Iron Man. And once Peter walks off, the shows over. Literally. The bar they were at is revealed to be an abandoned building, with the patrons being holograms and the staff start celebrating with Beck. Turns out, Beck is no hero. It was all a massive Con. He was actually the scientist behind Stark Industries advance hologram project as seen in the beginning of Captain America: Civil War. He’d been infuriated when Stark had named his invention the Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing or BARF. Tony fired Beck after they’d argued about the name, claiming Beck was unstable. He’d since gotten a band together of disgruntled Stark Industries ex-employees, including that scientist that Stane yelled at for not being able to shrink the Arc Reactor in Iron Man, and are planning on making Beck the next Iron Man. They used Beck’s “Illusion Tech” as he preferred to call it, to create the Elementals. The cameras were mounted on his mobile drones that also had weapons to make the damage the fake monsters created seem real. They also made projections of Beck flying around and blasting the things, and he’d hop in during distractions for any IRL interactions. Their plan is to use EDITH to create an Avengers level threat and make Mysterio the next Iron Man. Damned clever.

Peter, upon learning the trip is being canceled early due to repeated monster attacks, gets MJ to go on a walk with him. On the historic Charles Bridge, Peter tells her he’s got something important to tell her. She tells him she knows he’s Spider-Man. He tries to play it off, claiming he has no idea what she’s talking about and that black suited hero at the carnival was “Night Monkey.” Way to name Ned. She isn’t buying it, claiming she’d been watching him for a while now and seen several instances of him running off just before Spider-Man swung in, or the like. MJ shows Peter the thing he’d webbed and tossed away in the fight, claiming that it’s covered in the same silk that Spider-Man uses. Peter, dejected at thinking MJ had only been paying attention to him because she suspected he’s Spider-Man, is pulled out of his melancholy when the projector turns on again showing another monster. Peter, realizing what that might mean, freaks out, tells her he is Spider-Man and something very bad is about to happen.

Beck and his crew are rehearsing their “Avengers level Threat,” when he notices one of the Drones was damaged and missing a camera. Going through the footage they see MJ grab it, and then show it to Peter. An infuriated Beck yells at his cronies about how now they have to kill Fury AND Spider-Man.

It's like if that Pink Elephant song from Dumbo included punching.

Peter gets on his stealth suit, explains the situation to Ned and MJ and runs to warn Fury about Beck’s plan. He travels to Berlin and Fury, thinking he’d made it just in time, only for it to be revealed that Beck just lured them into a trap. Using his drones, he creates mind-bending illusions to distract Peter and beat the crap out of him using the terrain and the drones. Peter is knocked around hard, is knocked from the building and ends up at Beck’s mercy. In a surprise assist, Fury arrives, shoots and killed Beck. He tells Peter that Beck’s goons will go after his friends, so he needs to know who Peter had told. Peter blabs, and Fury reveals he’s in fact Beck. An illusion within an illusion, props to commitment. The fight continues for a moment, before Beck tricks Peter into being hit by a train. He has his team reroute the class to London, to take out the three he needs.

Peter wakes up in a holding cell in the Netherlands. The other detainees explain that he’d been found on the tracks and was brought here to dry out. The Dutch are offputtingly cheery in this. Peter breaks out and gets a phone to call Happy for backup. He’s all too happy to fly out to the Netherlands in a Stark Industries jet to pick him up. Happy helps patch him up, and then cheer him on by saying he’s just like Tony. They fly out to London to stop Beck, and along the way Peter uses an onboard workshop to throw a new suit together. Can he stop the master of illusions from lying his way to the top? See the movie to find out. The answer will surprise you.

The good first. The cast is great in this one. Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Marisa Tomei, and Jon Favreau are all great. As are Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders as the most dangerous secret agents alive. And Jake Gyllenhaal is great as Quentin Beck. At first, he comes across as a generic, stoic hero but when he drops the act it’s amazing. Beck is like an insane movie director, orchestrating the show that is his great con of being a hero. He had a really great line of shrieking “THEY’LL SEE WHAT I WANT THEM TO SEE!” when his illusion starts coming apart due to Peter’s meddling. The effects are spectacular. I don’t think they’d have been able to pull off half of Beck’s illusions even five years ago, but the advances in CGI made all of his mind-bending tricks seem almost real.

The bad is kind of minimal, mostly suspension of disbelief type things. Like how did Beck and his crew learned about the glasses and formed their plan around it just in time to pull it off? Or even when the heck did Tony have time to design and build EDITH. Tony’s brilliant but I can’t see him programing an AI in the short amount of prep time the Avengers had before their time travel adventure. Or the idea that EVERY other superhero is busy at the moment. You’re telling me that Black Panther or Dr. Strange couldn’t spare a Dora Milaje or a fledgling Wizard to help out? I know of at least one Attorney, one PI, a Harlem folk hero and a minor millionaire that have nothing but free time right now. I suppose that’s the issue one has when we’re dealing with an expanded universe, more disbelief to suspend for the tories to work. The character of Brad Davis was kind of pointless. No offense Remy Hii, he did a great job, but he’s mostly there to ineffectively hit on MJ and then be the butt of a peeping joke when he tries to draw attention to Peter’s behavior and MJ and Ned try to discredit him. Honestly, I’d have just named him Harry so people could speculate if this iteration of Harry Osborn will become evil because he was framed as bathroom peeper. That’d be a… unique version of his background. Also, the movie introduces Peter’s Spider Sense idea just for it to not be useful in the first fight and instrumental in the climax. It’s pretty odd. Side note, I love that May decided to call it the “Peter Tingle” since he hadn’t given his sense it’s alliterative name in this iteration. It’s such a mom thing to do, giving a cutesy and embarrassing nickname to something that her son/surrogate son does. Also, not sure what the plan is for Beck beyond the Syndrome idea to fake being the greatest hero on Earth. Like, even if he tricks Fury, the illusions could only help so much the next time an actual invasion begins. Earth has had like six in the last ten years, so you know there will be more. Maybe he thought he could get SHIELD or Stark Tech to upgrade his tricks, but it’s never mentioned. So Yeah, not that bad at all.

And I’ll say that I think this is the first bit of Spider-Man media that didn’t try to visualize Peter’s Spider Sense. Every other version that I can think off add some sort of visual or auditory clue for us to know that it’s going off. A shuddering sound, a semi-visible pulse going from Peter’s head, slow-mo of Peter’s surroundings, that sort of thing. As near as I can tell, MCU Spider-Man’s Spidey Sense is just part of him. I guess.

Like with Homecoming, I want to point out some of the fun things they did in this movie to make homages to classic Spider-Man characters and story elements. Like with the last Spider-Man film, they seemed to want to counterbalance the number of changes they’d made to the Spider-Man mythos by doing as many nods to the source material as they could squeeze in. The elementals, Earth, Air, Water and Fire design wise are nods to four Spider-Man villains. They are Sand Man, Cyclone, Hydro Man and Molten Man. They even use Hydro Man’s backstory of a sailor getting into an industrial accident as the conspiracy website explanation of his existence that Flash talks about. I can’t speak for Cyclone, but I know Sand Man, Hydro Man, and Molten Man all fall under the category of an “untouchable villain.” Hydro and Sand Man can take on forms that render them more or less intangible to Spider-Man’s fist and webs, while Molten Man is so hot that the webs burn. They also did a nod to one of Mysterio’s early schemes, where he used his hallucinogenic gas to convince Peter he’d been shrunken down to an inch high and tried to smash Spider-Man with a giant puppet of Mysterio.  It was one of the more mind-bending bits of his illusion fight with Peter. I liked how they also kept that MJ figured out the Peter = Spider-Man thing before he told it to her. She’s one of those that pays enough attention to realize her (at the time) friend had a habit of never being around when things got weird.

This one is an A for me. They once again had to make a lot of changes to make Spider-Man work, but the majority were for the story’s benefit. The minor nitpicks I mentioned in the bad category hardly detract from a fun but important tale. I even liked how they updated Mysterio to match modern technology. He’s always been a stage magician villain, using sleight of hand, magic tricks, guile and hallucinogenic gas to get the job done. Adding the near perfect holograms of the illusion tech made him all the more dangerous. I loved the deranged director angle they went with his character. Like anyone who knew the character beforehand, I knew that Beck was going to be lying through his teeth until his master plan was revealed. But I was surprised as to how the story went. I mentioned in my Black Widow Possible Plot the idea of using old tech and old surviving bad guys to threaten the Avengers again. While I’m not vein enough to believe that I influenced how this movie’s story turned out, but I’m content with the thought that my mind went in a similar direction as professional screen writers. I hope that they continue with this style of story for Spider-Man. Ones that are very MCU but also give nods to the source material. That’s the only way I can think of them squeezing out seven more solo Spider-Man movies out. Yeah, that’s the current rumor, three trilogies for Peter Parker. As a Spider-Man fan, I’m stoked at the idea, but I’m trying to keep my expectations low. I’ve been burned too many times. All I can say in closing is, it’s been a hell of a ride and we’re only two solo movies in. Sorry this one took so long, I love Spider-Man and felt like gushing. The next post should be somewhat lighter, me thinks. 

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