Marvel‘s Heroes Reborn Rebooted Thor With Another Avenger’s Story

Thor has become one of the more popular Avengers in recent years, but his origin in Midgard and connection with the other Marvel heroes has remained somewhat fluid. Thor's Silver Age origin involving Donald Blake and other such extraneous elements from yesteryear are many times glossed over, making the God of Thunder's beginnings as a superhero less concrete than other characters' origins.

This allowed Marvel to play with convention in the '90s when the publisher briefly rebooted the Avengers and their individual mythologies in an alternate timeline. Not only was this Thor more divinely arrogant and violent than ever, but his revised origin heavily resembled the Silver Age return of a fellow Avenger, Captain America. Here's how the original Heroes Reborn storyline combined a heavily revamped Thor with Captain America's classic reintroduction.

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Heroes Reborn was a storyline and licensing experiment that Marvel conducted back in 1996. The plot involved the Avengers and the Fantastic Four seemingly perishing to stop the evil Onslaught, who was the amalgamation of Professor X and Magneto. In actuality, however, these characters were saved by the cosmically powerful Franklin Richards, who contained their essence in a pocket dimension in order to keep them from truly dying. The characters involved included the Fantastic Four as well as most of the major Avengers such as Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk and Thor.

In a bid to rejuvenate some interest in these other languishing properties, Marvel outsourced them to Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and their imprints, which were near the height of their popularity. The artists and the writers who worked with them completely revamped the Avengers and Fantastic Four's continuity, resulting in some wildly different concepts meant to update the characters.

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The rebooted Thor first showed up in Avengers #1,  by Rob Liefeld, Jim Valentino and Chap Yaep. He was not one of the initial heroes to appear in the new continuity, and it was suspected that Thor's godly Asgardian power prevented Franklin from immediately translating him to this new world.

In an inversion of Captain America's discovery in the modern-day Age of Heroes in the main continuity, this Thor was first found encased in a block of ice in Norway. His finder was Donald Blake, who in this continuity was a completely separate character from Thor. Loki would soon be alerted to Thor's presence and attempted to confuse him and pit him against the Avengers. This essentially cast Thor in the Hulk's role as the Avengers' first antagonist. Eventually, however, Thor saw through this and fought by the Avengers' side, defeating his vile brother.

Though he essentially had an origin mirroring Captain America, Thor would constantly get into bouts with Steve Rogers. This version of Thor was written much more as a traditionally arrogant god who lived for self-pleasure and a fight. This story also saw him written as far more violent than his usual portrayals. When Captain America prevented him from killing a villain, Thor finally gave up and left the Avengers.

Eventually, the true Thor of the Marvel Universe would show up in Franklin's Pocket Universe and aid the Avengers. He would work alongside his counterpart, who had been tricked by Loki and the Enchantress, to help defeat the God of Mischief. This ultimately saw the Heroes Reborn Thor sacrifice himself to defeat Loki for good. Before continuity was restored, the true Thor would give his fallen comrade a proper funeral. Since then, this version of Thor and the universe he lived in have yet to be revisited, and given how controversial the story was, it's doubtful that lightning will strike twice.

KEEP READING: Thor 2099: How Marvel's Tragic Future Made the Asgardian a God Again


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