When Thor Met Thor...and Thor

Follow last week's Thor #7 with another classic Young Odinson tale!

Each week, we use the powers of Marvel Unlimited to look back at the most notable appearances of a character that's made waves recently.

Legend has it that Odin cast Thor out of Asgard for his brash behavior leading to the stint on Midgard first seen in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY. Over the years, many creators have turned back time to show the behavior that made the prince unworthy.

Back in 2012, Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic launched THOR: GOD OF THUNDER by looking back at Young Thor in 893 A.D. and then teaming him up with the modern Thor and a much older King Thor. With the youthful unworthy one making a reappearance in last week's THOR #7 by Aaron and Tony Moore, we wanted to dig those first 11 GOD OF THUNDER issues and re-examine Young Thor's early adventures.

The tale began on the western coast of Iceland, where the Odinson had recently felled a Frost Giant and spent the next four days celebrating with his human comrades. The revelry briefly paused when the townsfolk discovered a dead body that Thor recognized as a god, marking the approach of Gorr, the God Butcher.

Armed not with Mjolnir yet, but instead the mighty axe Jarnbjorn, Young Thor finally came face to face with Gorr over modern day Russia. Had it not been for a last-minute bolt of lightning called down by the god, his adversary may have added Thor to his list of murderous conquests.

After recovering, the Odinson met the Dark Butcher in a cave, but lost once again. This time, Gorr captured Thor and took his time torturing the prince. Thor seemed on the edge of giving the Butcher information about the people of Asgard when Vikings showed up to fight for their patron. During the fray, the God of Thunder sliced through Gorr, leaving him for dead and demanding that his companions never speak of this battle again.

In the present day, Thor helped the people of planet Indigarr only to discover that their gods had all been murdered long ago, which put him on the trail of the Butcher once again. Upon reuniting, Gorr explained that, in that cave long ago, he realized that he needed more than just his own two hands to kill all the deities. He thanked Thor for that revelation before using a time pool to travel millennia into the future to work on his plot. Thor followed only to find himself fighting along King Thor to stop Gorr's final play.

Having traveled through time, and armed with even more power, Gorr reached back through the ages to bring Young Thor to his own world where he made the Thunder God a slave alongside his fellow deities, tasking them all with building the Godbomb. Quick to anger, Young Thor bristled under the yoke of oppression. However, upon meeting three young female warriors who turned out to be a future King Thor's daughters, he learned that his actions had terrible repercussions in the form of more dead gods.

Young Thor eventually allied with his future grandchildren to take out the Godbomb before its completion. He attempted the plan all on his own, but only managed to blow himself out of the planet's atmosphere where Thor and King Thor picked him up and armed him so all three could finally kill the would-be destroyer of deities.

After a vicious battle, it seemed like Gorr would win the day as he blasted all three Thors to the surface of his planet and then ordered his minions to ready the Godbomb. He dragged the nearly lifeless Young Thor into the weapon's inner workings and demanded more blood from him to make the explosive work. The godling responded by biting out his oppressor's eye and setting his own sights on the other one.

Thanks to some help from a very unexpected source, the other Thors and granddaughters of Thor found themselves freed, but facing the powering-up Godbomb. Though Thor managed to take the brunt of the blast that mostly brought Gorr down, Young Thor used Jarnbjorn to forcefully separate the monster's head from the rest of his body.