Thor (1998 series) #62

On a bright winter morning in Manhattan, Ricky Sykes awakens, turns on the talk radio and prays toward Asgard. As he drinks his coffee he listens to radio personality Mike Alexander list all the reasons humanity should be afraid of Thor….

[Three plots intertwine in this issue; to make writing this up easier, I shall group them each into a single paragraph.]

Reporter Shelly takes a guided tour of Asgard but when Balder isn’t looking she ducks behind some bushes and changes into an Asgardian outfit, concealing a video camera in a basket of flowers. She walks through the market, soaking up the atmosphere when Thor suddenly arrives. He walks around, settling a dispute with a vendor and asking Shelly if she is finding what she is looking for. Her editor, speaking through an earpiece, advises her to leave but she reasons that Thor has left his palace unguarded so she enters and looks around. She finds her way to the apothecary’s quarters. She spies the Elixir of Wisdom on a shelf and decides to try it. She takes a draught and dies. Neffethesk explains to Thor that mortal man was not meant to handle what is the province of the gods, which he says is something to remember in dealing with these people. 

Radio personality Mike Alexander concedes that Thor has done much good but points out that if humanity chose to work together, they could have accomplished all that themselves. But Thor is slowly making all Earth dependent on him. At work, Ricky Sykes hears this and is disturbed by what Alexander is saying. So he goes to the radio station and as Alexander calls on his listeners to stand up to Thor, Sykes shoots him, calling him, “Devil.”

At the high school, Tarene and Amanda approach the math teacher Nate Howser but he begs off, as he has a meeting with the School Superintendent coming up. Howser and two colleagues meet with the Superintendent and explain that they have all adopted Asgardianism as their religion and so they will not work on Thursdays, Thor’s sacred day, just as Christians do not work on Sundays. The Superintendent can’t allow that and he ends up firing them and they respond with threats that more teachers and students are also believers, what if they all take off on Thursdays? The three teachers go back and report that they were fired, others sympathize, there’s talk of civil disobedience. A group of angry kids start fires in the school….