Thor’s been nuts from the Warrior Sickness ever since he was freed from Mephisto’s realm and took his body back from Thunderstrike.
In these issues, he flies out into space and fights some cosmic heroes because, again, he’s crazy.
The 13-part story starts in Thor, then moves through sequential issues of Silver Surfer, Warlock Chronicles, and Warlock: Infinity Watch.
First, Sif gets a beating until Bill steps in.
It starts with Beta Ray Bill, Sif, and Silver Surfer…
Then, Eternity invites Adam Warlock and his Infinity Watch to the battle.
They don’t do much better.
You can see Gamora’s butt crack in the page above.
To stop his rampage and help get him sane, Dr. Strange has the Infinity Watch over for tea.
And Thor’s not the only mad dude. Maxam is also pretty pissed.
It doesn’t really matter why.
Then they all go to Asgard to tattle tale to Thor’s daddy, Odin.
The heroes have some adventures there that really serve mostly to stretch this thing out. There’s not a lot of story here. But eventually Thor makes his way back to Asgard to find everyone waiting for him.
Thor kicks all their asses, so they teleport away to the land of Thanos.
You can see there’s lots of opportunity for big, full page (and even double-page) spreads of fighting. Crazy fighting Thor is a fun idea–if it sounds like I didn’t like this arc, it’s just because 13 issues was about five too many. Notably, though, Thanos completely humiliates Thor.
I’m counting that under my tag about other people controlling Mjolnir.
Along the way, there’s this thing called the Mind Valkyrie, which is like a mental God that can restore Thor to sanity, so there’s some psychic plane stuff–not a big fan of that–and they realize that the only way they’re going to get Thor back is to have Odin intervene to unite Thor with the Mind Valkyrie.
And that’s where Warlock Chronicles, the series, ends. The heroes have Thor captured and are taking him to Asgard, where Odin mistakenly assumes they are holding his son hostage–rather than trying to cure his madness–so he fights Thanos.
After the big fight, Odin agrees to try to cure his son but then the problems get worse when Thor gets his hands on the Power Stone. Also…
Basically, Thanos stole immortality from Odin.
Crazy Thor with an Infinity Gem is too much, and Odin decides he has to destroy his son.
And of course, for the big finale, Thor is restored in mind and body and gets his own comic back. And kicks Thanos out of Asgard.
I appreciate the “magnitude” of restoring Thor as a character, particularly after the dreadful stuff Tom DeFalco did with Eric Masterson. It’s not a bad story, it’s just too drawn out and creatively uneven to rate higher than a C+.