Thor #427-433 (1990-1991): Thor’s soul separated from Masterson

After an interminable sequence involving Eric Masterson being sad about his divorce and missing his son (it’s actually only a couple pages, but NOBODY CARES ABOUT ERIC MASTERSON!), we get the story where he becomes Thor.

Enchantress, Ulik, and Loki…

…create a magic beacon to summon Wrecking Crew (because the Crew have Asgardian-based power and Loki wants it back).

Their beacon also alerts Excalibur and Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, and Quasar, but the latter only have brief cameos.

We get a brief Wrecking Crew vs. Excalibur fight, then Thor shows up but Enchantress makes him appear to be Juggernaut, so Kitty phases him into concrete.

Ouch.  That looks really painful.

Tom DeFalco really wants his new special NYPD force, Code Blue, to gain traction, so they show up, which turns this into a “four-way war.” 

Code Blue actually does pretty well against the Wrecking Crew

After taking out Bulldozer, though, they need help from Ghost Rider.

That’s creepy.

During this battle, the illusions are shed and everyone is friends again.  Excalibur was in the area because they were looking for Juggernaut, who escaped from a British prison before Thor defeated him about ten issues ago, so Thor takes them to the dimension where Juggernaut is imprisoned, and there’s an adventure there as well.

Turns out, Juggernaut did pretty well during his banishment and became the ruler of the dimension.  So, the team takes him down and brings him back to Earth-Jail.

To defeat Juggy, Thor uses his hammer to shoot him into space.  I know this isn’t an instance of someone picking up Thor’s hammer, but it’s close enough.

After the Juggernaut adventure, it’s back to Earth, where Code Blue and Ghost Rider are still fighting the Wrecking Crew, and Mephisto gets involved.  There’s an implication that he and Loki will be teaming up soon.

Loki eventually does capture Wrecker and does some bondage.

More importantly, these are the issues where Thor (who was recently merged with mortal Eric Masterson) is eliminated and Masterson becomes a new Thor-ish hero.

Here’s how it happens: Loki and Enchantress kidnap Masterson’s little boy to use him as bait, so that Loki can wrest the Thor-consciousness out of Masterson. 

Side note: The NYPD special forces team Code: Blue appears briefly to take custody of the lad after Thor saves him from Loki.

Thor warns Loki that the laws of Asgard won’t forgive him if he pulls Thor out of the physical realm, but of course Loki doesn’t care and feels unbound by Asgard’s “dreary doctrines.” He’s all boosted with Wrecking Crew powers and all.

Oddly, though, Thor gets banished by Odin–not Loki.  Odin is such a fucking dick.  Even stranger, his soul is claimed by Mephisto’s realm instead of Hel.

After becoming his own version of Thor, which will later be called Thunderstrike, Masterson kicks the snot out of Ulik.

And so begins a new (and awful) era.

This is the first time Masterson is Thor without Thor’s “soul” being in the same body.

So confusing and stupid. I didn’t hate these issues overall–some fun combat happened–but there are so many things here that just don’t make sense.

It took a village to make these issues. Tom DeFalco got script credit, with plotting by Ron Frenz, who also got breakdown credit with Herbe Trimpe, but the finishes were by Al Milgrom.