Tell me, small god. Who are you? Who are you to know my reasons?
While intentionally far more light-hearted than Immortal Hulk, The Immortal Thor hasn't been without its share of dread-inducing moments.
- In issue 4, Ewing explicitly ties Toranos to real-world climate change for his ability to wreak havoc with the weather, giving a sobering reminder of the world we live in while also demonstrating just how ominous the god-above-gods himself is:He is coming closer. Across the void of space, he is coming closer. Across the gulf of time, he is coming closer. You wake. You work. You eat. You sleep. And he is coming closer. The summers are hotter and the storms are stronger and the tides rise higher and he is coming closer. We can't rush these things and he is coming closer. It's an election year and he is coming closer. I don't believe it anyway and he is coming closer. [...] Look up. Look at the world outside your window. Look at the raging fires, the screaming winds, the rising waters. Look at the ticking of the clock. See how the hour grows late - and see whose hour has arrived. He is no longer coming closer. He is here.
- Issue 4 reveals the return of Dario Agger of Roxxon. And he has plans to own the legend of Thor. And as this is set in the aftermath of Immortal Hulk, Dario's face is in rough shape: thanks to being "converted" by Xemnu, his bones and muscles are fully exposed.
- Issue 6 has Thor mention a lost god, Ullr, and notes that while he'd be happy to serve him if he ever returns, no one who knew his true legend would ever have an easy night's sleep.
- In the same issue, Loki's chillingly matter of fact Badass Boast: "I am the Loki who will kill you"
- In issue 8, Thor finally confronts his mother, Gaea...and she is not Ms. Fanservice or the kindly Mother Nature this time around. Fed up to the back teeth with humanity's callous exploitation and destruction of their world, particularly after she did everything she could to make the Earth habitable for life at all during the war between the first gods, Gaea manifests before Thor as an eldritch colossus in a cavern filled with skeletons, resembling a woman but with her face completely obscured by her hair, leaving only her ethereal glowing eyes - and she oh-so-calmly explains that releasing Toranos to kill thousands was her way of giving humans a grim reminder, with the worst still yet to come. Thor certainly has his work cut out for him...
- Oh, and one more lovely detail that definitely won't come back to haunt Thor later: Gaea flat-out calls him the weakest of her many progeny, and when describing her first-born and strongest, Atum, who razed the primordial Earth of most of the elder gods and would go on to face Thor many times in a weaker state as the Demogorge, we get this chilling statement from her that, notably, acts as the only motherly interaction she has with him during the whole exchange:
- The depiction of the Demogorge itself is not a very pretty sight; a mass of screaming faces jutting out of a headless body. And the narration ties it in to previous depictions of the Hulk, and the One Below All. The implications are... unsettling.
- Issue 9 has Dario reveal his personal endgame for Roxxon and the planet: simply put, he intends to take Gaia's Lament to its natural conclusion and goad humanity into completely exhausting Earth's natural resources, leaving it a scorching, barren wasteland with no water and only ash for clouds, nearly devoid of life...save for a town-sized Roxxdome, where the "downsized" remnants of the human race will live in an enforced hierarchy of the ruling class (whose continued survival will be the only thing keeping the life support on) and the "rabble" serving them, all while Dario himself is off on another planet, starting over in his own image. Deeply nonplussed by this vision, Thor can only inquire as to why Dario would go this far to kill his own planet for money - and Dario's cheerful answer only solidifies what an irredeemable monster he is, with Ewing clearly giving his two cents on the sociopathic mentality of real-world oligarchs as well:Dario: Oh...I could make a speech, I suppose. Some Roxxtube-ready blather — pop-fascism for the rubes and the tech bros. I could blame my tragic childhood or the lust for blood and cruelty that never abates...or revenge, of course... You'd believe revenge... But the truth, Thor? Absolute and unvarnished? I like it when the number goes up. That's all. Because that means I win. That means I'm better. And that's all there is.
- The Roxxin' Thor comic is a parody comic of Thor and his adventures, but Dario briefly breaks the comic fantasy to inform Thor that it's all a joke, but it's at his expense and it will bring him down. Thor barely has time to react before he's pulled back into the fantasy.
- The comic is more disturbing in its meta implications. It's shrewdly employing story magic to rewrite Thor by spreading Roxxon's propaganda of who Thor is to the masses, and while very meta and funny, it's made abundantly clear by Dario's speech that this is how real-world corporations get away with it too:Dario: The comic is self-parody, of course. But parody is an effective weapon in these times. A brand that takes itself seriously is mocked — a brand that mocks itself has free rein. A free pass into every consumer's head. Screenshot the cheesy advertisements. Turn them into memes. Make them viral, a disease that nests inside you. Make them harmless. We can laugh together, can't we? We're such good friends — how could you do without us? We are allowed to play — to be in on our own joke. Because in the end, the joke is on you. The joke is you. And we'll tell it until it eats you alive.
- The comic is more disturbing in its meta implications. It's shrewdly employing story magic to rewrite Thor by spreading Roxxon's propaganda of who Thor is to the masses, and while very meta and funny, it's made abundantly clear by Dario's speech that this is how real-world corporations get away with it too:
