Thor #211: Review

May 1973

Gerry Conway, Don Perlin

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Story Name:

The End of the Battle!

Review & Comments

Rating:

Thor #211 Review by Peter Silvestro (November 30, 2022)

Review: It’s “The End of the Battle!” And the beginning too. More action with the standard amount of property damage that is casually glossed over in comic books. Because insurance companies are reasonable in places like this. Plus, no other superheroes were available that day which is why Tana Nile and Silas Grant have to get involved, despite the latter being an old guy with no particular fighting skills or weaponry. Oh and there was no mention of Balder having returned before the W3 left for the battle with the trolls, yet they have news about him only a few minutes later? But 1970s Marvel was a lot of dumb fun—and intelligent fun, in a way that seems to have vanished over the decades.

Comments: Part two of two parts. Hildegarde is with Thor and the Warriors Three next issue but there’s no mention of her here. The letters column includes one by future Monty Python scholar Kim "Howard" Johnson and one by future independent comics creator Matt Howarth.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Thor #211 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Thor has leapt into a troll furnace to recover his hammer Mjolnir and has only a few seconds before he returns to his Don Blake form, which would kill him. He locates the hammer and pries it free from the magnetized slab and returns to the cave, only to find it deserted, the trolls having massed to attack Midgard. He is approached by the troll Queen Ulla, who had called out to save him during his battle with Ulik. She is distraught, having brought shame to her husband, allowing Ulik to gain control of the troll army. She directs him to a tunnel leading to the surface…

…where the troll legion under the command of Ulik breaks through with their war machine, destroying buildings and terrifying the populace. Meanwhile, Thor has become lost in the cavern tunnels so he begins making his own. And in the throne room, King Geirrodur dismisses the two guards who call Ulla’s action treasonous and confesses that if Ulik’s invasion is victorious, his reign is over. The King and Queen sit down and share their misery….

Ulik and his trolls fight the New York police, gaining the upper hand as Ulik hurls an eighteen-wheeler at his foes. At Avengers Mansion, Jarvis informs the Warriors Three about the battle downtown and they decide they needs some excitement and head out. Thor emerges from the tunnel and it is captured on television where Silas Grant and Tana Nile see it so they decide to go to his aid, Tana resuming her Rigellian form. Thor battle the trolls; stopping to keep a large inhabited building from toppling, he is at the mercy of his foe but his comrades arrive to hold off the enemy and Tana employs her stasis gun on Ulik but it doesn’t not stop him. It does, however, weaken him so that Thor can beat him unconscious. The other trolls, seeing their leader fallen, panic and retreat underground, taking Ulik with them. Thor topples an abandoned building into the tunnel’s mouth and Tana Nile seals it off with her stasis gun. And then the Warriors Three tell Thor the bad news: Balder the Brave has returned—but he has gone mad….