Thor’s a king now, so Thor Girl is Earth’s Thor. This is amazingly prescient, given the current state at Marvel, which seems to be to create diversity not so much by bringing in new characters but by changing the genders and races of existing ones.
The story jumps between Thor’s “king duties” and Thor Girl’s role on Earth, with neither of them doing a particularly great job.
Thor’s fighting Ice Giants and generally being bored by the administration of running Asgard.
On the Earth side, though, we get a Grey Gargoyle story and I always love those! He turns Tara to stone, steals her hammer, and shatters her.
So I guess her hammer can be lifted by anybody, not just the “worthy.”
Jake Olsen (who sadly is still a player in this series) has to get Enchantress’ help putting her back together again. She isn’t home, but she’s got a magic mirror that enables Jake to access some of Thor’s powers. (Sigh. I’m tired of Jake. He’s the weak link in all this.)
Being Thor again, he goes after Grey Gargoyle, but their confrontation is interrupted by Desak.
Remember him?
The god-killer proceeds to kick Jake Thor’s ass, knocking him through a water tower.
Until the real Thor shows up.
At first, his power seems irrelevant to the god killer.
But then Jake Olsen intervenes (ugh), and Thor figures out the answer…And kills Desak using the Bloodaxe
But we’re not done yet! We still have issue #50!
This issue is a little disappointing. It’s told in the past tense by a narrator, in a novelistic form—meaning that there’s no real dialogue, we’re just told that Thor Girl got back into her body but some kind of big change is coming, and Desak will be restored. The punchline is that Thor Girl actually ends up being the mystical Spirit of the Jewel that summons Desak, who is also the narrator…I don’t dig the Desak mythology. Frankly, this story would have been better ending at #49. Issue #50 is a hard read and it’s just set up for future storylines.
Among other things, Thor decides being king is a pain in the ass and decides to hook up with Amora.
It’s unclear whether she enchants him, or he’s just into her. She is hot, tbh, so either is credible.
Then he goes back to Earth and moves the location of Asgard to be directly over New York because New Yorkers are also a pain in the ass.