Dan Jurgens has been doing some cool stuff in the pages of Thor, wherein Thor has become…A God. By which I mean, he is actually worshipped as a God in a Church of Thor. In Slovakia, it is apparently a crime against the State and Thor’s worshippers are killed.
That’s some heavy duty content for a comic.
Thor and his crew descend on the country and destroy their army.
Meanwhile, Iron Man is told by the United States to go get Thor to chill the f-k out.
It’s interesting that Iron Man—not Captain America (who often is an agent of SHIELD)—is recruited for this purpose. Not that it doesn’t make sense. Tony Stark frequently makes weapons for the U.S. Government (when he’s not busy trying to change his company’s reputation for munitions manufacturing).
Iron Man’s diplomatic gestures are rebuffed, leading him to meet with the leader of Slovakia’s neighboring country: Latveria.
After that, Tony builds the Thor-busting armor (that uses an Asgardian power source), which you see on the cover to the Iron Man installment of this story.
It leads to a fight for most of that same issue, until Cap shows up. He starts to reason with the two of them, but in the background Dr. Doom has armed the Slokovians with weapons that Doom himself can pilot by remote control.
Seeing peace imminent, he takes a shot at Thor, which leads to renewed combat.
I never realized this scene from The Avengers movie was from a Geoff Johns comic.
In the end, though, Captain America is able to calm everyone down. (See what I mean? They should have used him in the first place!)
When Thor relents—in part because Russia is threatening a nuclear war over this—the heroes retreat. Thor decides he can no longer be an Avenger.
To respond to Doom’s meddling, Tony Stark releases a “Friday Virus” into Latveria’s computer network.
Big crossovers are often disappointing, especially when different writers are on each installment, but this one works well—in large part because Alan Davis draws the whole thing.