Thor (Marvel)

Thor is the blood-son of Odin, All-Father of the Asgardians, and Jord, who was also known as Gaea, the goddess who was one of the Elder Gods.

Odin sought to father a son whose power would derive from both Asgard and Midgard (as the Earth realm is called by Asgardians), and hence he sought to mate with Jord.

Odin created a cave in Norway where Jord gave birth to Thor.

Months after the infant Thor was weaned, Odin brought him to Asgard to be raised.

Odin's wife, the goddess Frigga, acted as Thor's mother from that time onward.

Not until many decades later did Thor learn that Jord was his birth mother.

The Ragnarok cycle created numerous versions of Thor's origin story, and the fact that Asgard was a place of myth did not help matters when trying to keep track of all of the different stories and personalized descriptions of events.

One such story came from the severed eye of Odin, which grew to great size, achieved sentience, and told Thor of another Thor who had existed before the current Thor's birth.

This previous Thor was also the son of Odin, but had red hair, not blond hair like the current Thor.

Thor was said in myth to have killed the Midgard Serpent, and to have been killed himself by the dying monster's venom, at Ragnarok, the destruction of a previous version of Asgard.

Odin himself was killed, but a new Odin appeared in the place of several gods who survived Ragnarok, and it was this new Odin who fathered the current version of Thor.

It is uncertain whether a true picture of Thor's origin will ever be told.

The young Thor was raised alongside Loki, who had been adopted by Odin after Loki's Frost Giant father Laufey had been killed in battle.

For all of their childhood, Loki was jealous of Thor.

Loki's jealousy, which grew to hatred, resulted in a desire to kill Thor. Thus began Loki's enmity for Thor, which persisted for many centuries.

For example, when Thor was eight, Odin sent him to Nidavellir, the land of the Dwarves, to bid the dwarf lords Brokk and Eitri to create three treasures for Asgard's ruler.

Among the three treasures that Brokk and Eitri created was the Uru hammer Mjolnir (although Loki sabotaged the creation of the hammer so that its handle was made too short by distracting the dwarven weaponsmiths).

Odin bestowed various enchantments upon the hammer, including one that made it impossible for anyone to lift it except someone who was truly worthy of wielding it.

Odin then declared that he was reserving the use of Mjolnir for Thor, who would receive it on the day that great deeds of selfless valor had proved him worthy of its power. (Many of the stories contradict each other. This story of the origin of Mjolnir was contradicted by another story that showed Odin wielding Mjolnir long before Thor was even born).

For years, Thor strove to become physically strong enough to wield the hammer, and was responsible for many heroic deeds.

Finally, when Thor was sixteen, Odin sent him and his friends Balder and Sif on a quest to teach him what was truly required to wield Mjolnir, a pure heart.

Thor became Asgard's greatest warrior.

Before Thor was twenty, he had fallen in love with the goddess Sif.

In fact, when Sif had been kidnapped by Storm Giants and ended up as a prisoner of Hela, Thor offered his own life in exchange for Sif's freedom.

The goddess of death was so impressed by the young Thunder God's nobility that she let both of them go.

The romance between Sif and Thor waxed and waned over the centuries.

Sometime in the 9th Century AD, Thor traveled to Earth to promote his worship among the Vikings.

Both the Norsemen and the Germans, who called him Donner ("Thunder"), came to worship Thor and other Asgardians.

Thor actively encouraged the adulation of his Viking worshipers for years, and also encouraged them to find glory in battle.

When Thor discovered that his more zealous Viking worshipers had slaughtered the inhabitants of a Christian monastery, he was shocked and ashamed that they committed atrocities in his name.

Thor then withdrew from Earthly activities altogether, and the active worship of the gods of Asgard effectively ended.

For centuries, the only memory that man would have of the Asgardians would be through myths and legends.

According to the severed eye of Odin, Odin himself later caused Thor to live on Earth in the mortal guises of the Germanic heroes Siegmund and his son, Siegfried.

In these two roles, Thor played a major role in Odin's efforts to regain the dangerously powerful Ring of the Nibelung.

The warrior Hunding killed Siegmund, but Thor was reborn as Siegfried, the son of Siegmund and his lover Sieglinda. Siegfried took possession of the Ring after killing the giant Fafnir, who guarded it in the guise of a dragon (this Fafnir is not to be confused with the former king of Nastrond).

Siegfried then fell in love with the Valkyrie Brunnhilde, but was murdered by Hagen, the son of Alberich, the dwarf who had created the Ring and placed a curse upon it.

Odin, however, resurrected Siegfried as Thor, who again had his full godly powers, but wiped out Thor's memory of his two mortal identities. (It is unclear how much, if any, of this account by Odin's severed eye is true.)

At one point, Adolf Hitler succeeded in contacting Thor and deceived him into aiding the cause of the Germans, the descendants of the people who had once worshiped him, in the current war.

Thor therefore clashed with the Invaders and nearly killed the second Union Jack with a blast of lightning from his enchanted hammer.

Learning that Hitler was evil, Thor vowed to aid him no more, and withdrew most of the electricity in Union Jack's body back into his hammer, somehow restoring him to health in the process.

The second Union Jack now possessed the superhuman power to discharge electrical bolts from his body.

Following the war, Thor was not very active on Earth. He had been summoned to assist the Olympians on a handful of occasions, such as when he helped defend Olympus from an invasion by creatures spawned from the mind of Professor Buffanoff.

In 1951, Thor came to the assistance of the Olympians on three more occasions.

The first came when Venus was trapped in the nation of Cassarobia, a prisoner of its ruling sultan.

Thanks to his half-brother Loki, a spell prevented any gods from using their powers in the region.

Loki was convinced to lift the spell and both he and Thor worked together to hold off the sultan's forces long enough for Venus to overthrow him.

Later, both Thor and the Olympian war god Mars (Ares) helped Venus defend New York City from mad inventor John Dark and his mechanized army.

When Dark refused to surrender, Thor decimated his lab with a bolt of lightning, seemingly slaying Dark.

Thor once more came to the aid of Venus, lending his lightning powers to stop the massive Creeping Death.

Thor led an active, adventurous life in Asgard, doing battle with Frost Giants and other enemies of the Golden realm.

Odin watched Thor become more and more arrogant, and sent him to Midgard several times to learn humility.

Over the years, Odin grew increasingly dissatisfied with Thor's headstrong behavior and excessive pride.

On one occasion Thor violated a truce between the Asgardians and the Frost Giants, thereby nearly starting another war.

Finally, while Thor was engaged in a brawl in an Asgardian tavern, Odin summoned him to his presence.

Odin decided that it was time Thor learned humility.

Odin had Thor surrender his hammer to him, and then sent him to Earth in the mortal guise of a crippled young medical student named Donald Blake, stripped of his memory (again) of his true identity.

As Blake, Thor learned the value of humble perseverance in dealing with his injured leg, and he came to care for the sick and dying, first as a medical student, and later as a successful physician.

After leaving medical school, Blake opened a private practice in New York, and quickly gained renown as a great surgeon.

After Thor had spent ten years in the role of Blake, Odin planted within Blake's mind the suggestion to take a vacation in Norway.

There Blake encountered a party of alien Kronans, also known as the Stone Men from Saturn.

Blake fled from the Kronans into a cavern, the very same one that had served as Thor's birthplace millennia ago, where Odin had left Thor's hammer in the enchanted form of a wooden cane.

Trapped in the cavern by a great boulder, Blake struck the boulder with the cane in frustrated anger, and was transformed back into his true godly form of Thor.

As Thor he escaped the cavern and drove off the Kronans.

At first Thor still had no memory of his past life as an Asgardian god, although as months passed, more of his memories returned.

Finally, a few years later, Odin revealed to him the false nature of the Blake identity and the reason for it.

Thor maintained his Blake identity on Earth and continued his medical practice.

Part of his affinity for Earth was his subconscious realization that his maternal heritage was of this world.

The other part was simply his love for humanity and his need to experience those things that only mortals could know.

Thor came to divide his time between Earth and Asgard, and does so to this day.

For years, Thor was in love with a mortal named Jane Foster who worked as a nurse for Blake.

Odin disapproved and refused several requests by Thor to make her immortal, going so far as to allow Loki to set the Enchantress on Thor to drive a wedge between the couple.

Odin even traveled to Earth to end their relationship.

When Thor decided to reveal his secret identity as Donald Blake to her, Odin temporarily removed his powers.

Eventually the romance between Thor and Foster came to an end on its own, and Thor renewed his relationship with Sif, though that relationship has suffered strains in recent years.

When Loki's manipulations forced several of Earth's mightiest heroes to band together to stop the Hulk, Thor became a founding member of the superhuman champions known as the Avengers.

He continues to serve with the team while also working with other super-heroes, like Doctor Strange (whom he also operated on as Donald Blake).

He has, however, left the team several times for extended leaves of absence.

Some time later, a cybernetically-enhanced alien known as Beta Ray Bill arrived on Earth and proved worthy of lifting Mjolnir.

Odin created a new hammer for Bill and transferred the enchantment that enabled Thor to change into mortal form to Bill's hammer.

This allowed Bill to assume his pre-enhanced form but also removed the Blake persona from existence.

With the aid of Nick Fury, Public Director of SHIELD, Thor adopted a new "secret identity", that of construction worker, Sigurd Jarlson.

Thor did not actually become mortal in his Jarlson identity; he simply dressed as a contemporary human and wore glasses.

Thor grew a beard to conceal the terrible scars left on his face due to wounds inflicted by the Asgardian death goddess Hela.

Hela later healed the scars on his face and Thor shaved himself smooth again.

After Odin disappeared during his battle with Surtur, the people of Asgard wished to make Thor, Odin's designated heir, their new ruler.

Unwilling to give up his guardianship of Earth or his life of adventure, at least not yet, Thor declined the offer and instead nominated his half-brother Balder the Brave to be Asgard's ruler.

Balder ruled until Odin returned and reclaimed the throne.

For a time, Thor was merged with the human Eric Masterson, an architect who first met Thor as Jarlson.

The two men would exchange bodies using Mjolnir, as Thor had done before as Blake.

After Loki attempted to kill Susan Austin, the woman who cared for Eric's son, Thor became furious and slew Loki.

As punishment he was exiled from Earth and Eric Masterson was given the thunder god's power to continue in the role of Thor.

Eventually, after Loki reappeared, Eric was able to find Thor, who had been hidden within Eric's own sub consciousness, and rescued him from exile.

Eric had proven himself to be a hero in his own right, and Odin rewarded him with the enchanted mace Thunderstrike.

Taking Thunderstrike as his alias, Eric continued to serve as a hero on Earth until he died heroically after battling the Egyptian death god Seth.

Thor grieved for Eric, who had become a close friend on Midgard.

Odin and Thor eventually learned that the constant shift of identity and sharing of power Odin had encouraged had driven Thor insane, marked by the appearance of a Valkyrie who was a manifestation of Thor's insanity.

With the assistance of Adam Warlock and Doctor Strange, Thor regained his sanity, and Odin came to realize the error he had made.

Once again attempting to thwart Ragnarok, Odin tried to trick the world-ash tree Yggdrasill into believing that Ragnarok had already happened.

To do so, the Asgardians were to be transformed into mortals so that they would not be recognized as gods.

Odin intended that Thor would restore the Asgardians to normal, but Seth accidentally prematurely activated the plan.

Compounding the situation, Thor disappeared battling Onslaught and wound up on the new Counter-Earth created by Franklin Richards.

By the time Thor returned to Earth, the Asgardians had managed to regain their identities, but were then captured by the Dark Gods.

Ultimately, Thor rescued his people from the Dark Gods with the aid of Hercules and the Destroyer.

After a paramedic named Jake Olson was slain during a battle between the Avengers and the Destroyer, Marnot, a servant of Odin, gave Thor Olson's form as a new identity.

Although Thor could assume Olson's form, he had none of Olson's memories and thus found this identity to be troublesome for him.

He also re-encountered Jane Foster while in this identity, and brief sparks were rekindled between them.

Odin finally separated Olson from Thor, and Olson was allowed to return to his own life.

After Odin fell in battle against Surtur, Asgard was left without a ruler.

Thor eventually reluctantly accepted the throne and assumed his father's Odinpower, becoming much more powerful.

Thor became determined to restore the gods of Asgard to their former place on Earth as beings to be worshiped, merging Earth with Asgard to accomplish this end.

Thor's increased activity on Earth resulted in a resurgence of followers for the Asgardians, and a Church of Thor soon emerged.

Thor's willingness to fight for the lives of his followers ultimately set him against his fellow Avengers when he attempted to overthrow the government of Slokovia.

Earth's citizens became increasingly wary of Thor, and the Consortium of Nations finally launched an assault upon Asgard that reduced it to rubble.

From that point on, Thor devoted himself to Earth's conquest to bring order to humanity; he ruled Earth for nearly two hundred years.

In that time, he married the Enchantress and she bore him a son, Magni.

Thor finally came to realize that he had done wrong, and used a device created by Zarrko to travel back in time and prevent Asgard's destruction.

He re-emerged as his younger self with Jake Olson, to ensure that Olson's humanity would prevent his future from occurring in that timeline.

Returning Asgard to its own realm, Thor was faced with yet another Ragnarok threat when Loki teamed with Surtur using weapons created from the same forge from which Mjolnir was made.

Determining that the gods above all gods known as Those Who Sit Above in Shadow had manipulated Asgard into the repeating cycle of Ragnarok, he sought them out and gave his life (and that of the reality of his dimensions) to destroy them.

The Odinpower, having manifested itself as a young Asgardian, congratulated Thor on his final victory, the plan his father had always had for him, leaving Thor to rest the slumber of the gods and all that remained of them were memories on Midgard.

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