Thor (1998 series) #71

New Asgard, 2170: Lord Thor hosts a banquet celebrating Thialfi’s return from the past. Thialfi excuses himself to go to the restroom where he is stunned and teleported away by Mistress Kya. When he recovers his senses he threatens Kya and is zapped with stun guns by her followers. Kya tries to put magical shackles on him but he is able to throw rocks, escape the bonds and dash around fighting the acolytes. Kya assures him that they only want to talk as he has reappeared just where Zarrko had said he would. She tells Thialfi he is the best hope for reclaiming what Thor has destroyed. She explains that Thor’s first actions benefitted the world but slowly he abolished governments, national boundaries, and religions and they want their freedoms and identities back. She reveals her mother Wanda Maximoff was killed by Thor’s misguided followers just as his own mother was. She then casts a spell on him, directing him to see the world as it really is….

Elsewhere, Prince Magni takes Jordy for a ride across the skies in his chariot while flirting. When she points out her house, Magni takes the chariot down to see her home, causing a great commotion among the neighbors. She asks why he rescued her from Loki and he replies that he liked her eyes. A passing salesman suggest he buy her a jeweled gift; she declines and they walk off and the salesman is revealed to be Loki’s agent, allowing his master to observe all through an enchanted jewel among his wares. Magni meets Jordy’s mother who is shocked and when he takes his leave, he kisses Jordy on the cheek, shocking both women into silence….

Thialfi finds himself in a run-down village where the inhabitants spend their nights in a tavern, drinking and wenching. Thialfi thinks Kya has rigged the test so she tells him to go anywhere and he does, racing around the country, seeing poverty, want, and nostalgia for the past. So Thialfi wonders whether Thor or an ungrateful humanity is to blame for what has gone wrong. He returns to the rundown village and asks Kya to take him back but he is told there is a missing child in the town, a toddler who wandered off while his mother was high on drugs. Thialfi searches and finds the baby dead, drowned in a pond; he is shattered when he must return the child’s body to the mother. He returns to Mistress Kya, ready to admit the world is not the paradise he was told. But he still won’t believe that Thor is at fault. So she has one more thing to show him. She takes him down a hole in the ground and draws aside a blanket from the ground, revealing Mjolnir lying beside the skeleton of Jake Olson. Thialfi doesn’t believe it so she invites him to lift the hammer and prove her wrong. He can’t and he wonders what it means that Thor cannot lift it…?