Thor
has been cast into a dodecahedron containing the living planet Alter Ego by
Zephyr, working with the Collector. Alter Ego is hungry and as Thor tries to
fly away, the planet employs its volcanoes as a propulsion system to pursue
him. Thor tests his divine powers by escaping from the tesseract through its
seams and it appears to work. He is pulled all the way through by the Stranger.
Stranger claims Thor has done him a favor by revealing which of the Collector’s
multitude of tesseracts contained Alter Ego. Thor asks for more information so
Stranger obliges with the full story. Stranger had once wished to create a
living planet and the Collector possessed some scientific equipment required
for the task that he wished to borrow. Collector’s stipulation was that Stranger
would make two living planets, one of which would be kept in Collector’s
museum. Stranger thought that a grand idea, speculating on what he could learn
from two identical planets, one in space and the other kept from birth in
isolation. And so recently, Stranger visited Ego the Living Planet and informed
him of the existence of his brother and gifted him with the ability to move
through hyperspace to find said sibling. The purpose: Stranger assumes they
will try to destroy each other and wants to know if freedom or captivity breeds
the stronger will. Thor will not permit this. Stranger finds that amusing….
Back
at the museum-ship, Collector asks Zephyr about her sordid history with Thor.
She explains that a millennium ago, she was searching for a ruby scarab that
might restore her fellow elementals to power. Hearing that a Norse god was in
possession of a ruby artifact she checked it out and, discovering it was merely
a seduction gem, stole it anyway (seen in issue #1). Thor tracked her down,
they fell in love, having similar powers, but their passion led to horrific
storms devastating the Earth and so they were compelled to break up….
Meanwhile,
Thor is on his way back to stop the clash between the two brother planets,
knowing that the Stranger also engineered the violent confrontation to occur
near Earth, a planet the Stranger never particularly liked….