Thor: Blood Oath

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Chris McCarver
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Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Chris McCarver »

Can anybody recommend an insertion point for the Thor: Blood Oath miniseries?

Since Absorbing Man appears in it, it has to be at least after JIM 114 and the latest point can be no later than JIM 124, since Index #2 indicates that Hercules' appearance in Blood Oath precedes his appearance in JIM 124.
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Michael »

This is tricky- the problem is that the Absorbing Man always got trapped in some horrible fate in his early appearances. In JIM 115, he gets turned into helium. Loki restores him in JIM 120 and he fights Thor and Odin in JIM 120-123, but Odin uses a spell to stick him to his sceptre and sends him flying into outer space. He is still there in T@ 2 and he returns to Earth in H2 125, but he gets trapped under a mountain. Loki frees him in T 206, but by then it's too late for Blood Oath to occur. Anyone have any ideas?
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Chris McCarver »

Compounding that is that there's really no noticeable gap in any of the stories between JIM 114-124. Each issue flows pretty much directly into the next. I'm also wondering... T:BO 1 shows Creel fighting Thor as a giant, having absorbed the concrete and steel of Manhattan's buildings, just as he did in JIM 121. Each of those battles had different outcomes (the JIM fight spilled over into JIM 123 where Odin hurled him into space, the T:BO fight ended that issue with Thor casting him skyward in a tornado and forcing Creel to absorb the wind and dissipate). I wonder if this was supposed to be a modernized re-interpretation of that fight? I suppose it could be conceivable that Creel could have employed the same method in two consecutive battles (he doesn't strike me as a tactical genius), but even then it has to be slotted in somewhere, and therein lies the dilemma...
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Michael »

Yeah, the problem is that Jane Foster appears in Blood Oath. She's being held captive by Harris Hobbs during Thor's battle with the Absorbing Man in JIM 120-122. That battle ends with Loki transporting Creel to Asgard. Then Thor goes to rescue Jane from Hobbs. There's no way to reconcile that with T:BO 1.
Another possibility might be to place T:BO between Creel's defeat in JIM 115 and his return in JIM 120- maybe Creel returned to Earth before T:BO and Loki rescued him in JIM 120 from his fate in T:BO 1. But the problem with that is that Thor is accused of defying Odin in JIM 115 by bringing Jane to Asgard and only proves it was Loki who brought Jane to Asgard in JIM 120. That doesn't really fit in with T:BO 1. And as soon as Odin returns Thor to Earth, he finds Jane is missing. So it doesn't look like there's any space for T:BO to take place.
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Chris McCarver »

Okay, after reading and analyzing the miniseries and the JIM books, I think I've got an idea on how to place this. It's not overly elegant, but I think this'll nail it down.

Before I get to the wordy part, here it is in a nutshell: I propose placing the entire miniseries during JIM 120, specifically between 7:3 and 7:4. Now for the explanation.

Creel was left floating in the atmosphere as a helium cloud in JIM 115; however, Creel was one of the villains the Headmen pulled out of their respective times to fight the Defenders in DEF2 10, which the MCP has listed right after JIM 115. IIRC, Creel was reintegrated into human form during that issue.

Here's how I propose sequencing this:

JIM 115: Creel is defeated by Thor, turned into helium and left to float in the atmosphere.
JIM 120 (1:1 - 7:3): Thor gives the Norn Stones to Odin and asks him to return him to Earth, which Odin does.
DEF2 10: Creel is plucked out of time by the Headmen, then returned to his own time.
Off-screen: Creel lands back in New York, encounters Thor, fight ensues.
T:BO 1: We join the fight in progress, and Thor again turns Creel into gaseous form, floating him up into the atmosphere a (retconned) second time.
T:BO 1-6: The events of the miniseries take place.
JIM 120 (7:4 - 16:3): Thor flies to Don Blake's office and discovers Jane Foster is missing. Loki finds Creel floating in the atmosphere (retconning that Creel's recent happenstance happened not in JIM 115 but in T:BO 1), reintegrates him, and he fights Thor a (retconned) third time.

How's this work for everyone?
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Michael »

One problem- the dialogue in JIM 120 makes it clear that Blake has been gone for "months". If we accepted your solution, we would have to assume that Thor was away from New York and unable to contact Jane because of an untold story. We'd also have to assume that the Asgardians didn't notice that one of the Norn Stones was missing for a while. I guess it could work.
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Chris McCarver »

Yeah, I'd noticed that as well... If anyone has a less sticky solution, I'm by no means resistant to hearing better ideas.
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by loki »

Chris McCarver wrote:Can anybody recommend an insertion point for the Thor: Blood Oath miniseries?

Since Absorbing Man appears in it, it has to be at least after JIM 114 and the latest point can be no later than JIM 124, since Index #2 indicates that Hercules' appearance in Blood Oath precedes his appearance in JIM 124.
It may be as simple as Index #2 having errata for Hercules' timeline; when that chronology was figured out, Absorbing Man's chronology might not have been taken into account. What is there in Blood Oath that requires it to happen prior to JIM 124 for Herc?
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Chris McCarver »

Not discounting that option, but it'll mean errata for more than just Herc... Zeus is listed in the same entry as last appearing in T:BO 4, and Hermes, Artemis, and Dionysus are also listed as appearing last in T:BO 4 in the entry for T 129. This appears to be a consensus both the MCP and the Master List have reached; all of the Olympians' Master List entries place Blood Oath in that general spot, and Zeus' MCP chronology has #4 tentatively placed there as well.

Something else: Sif appears in the mini (at least I think it's her, Scott Kolins didn't fill in his blacks back then) prior to her first published modern-day appearance in T 136, where it's mentioned she hasn't seen Thor since they were kids. I suppose it could be argued that Sif hadn't _interacted_ with Thor since then, since they don't interact in the mini.

On the other hand, Creel next appears in T@ 2, after Jane has essentially been written out of the series as a regularly recurring character. And Don Blake laments his lack of a lovelife at the mini's end and Thor had already hooked back up with Sif prior to T@ 2 in T 136. Hmmm...
Last edited by Chris McCarver on Fri Dec 31, 2010 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Michael »

I'm not sure if that's supposed to be Sif.
When Hercules appears, he's so drunk that he doesn't remember Thor, and Thor notes that they last parted as friends. That means that this can't take place in the middle of a story where Thor and Herc are fighting. It also shouldn't take place too late- if this took place after the Korvac Saga, for example, I'm sure that Herc would remember Thor, no matter how drunk he was.
There's another factor to consider- Jane doesn't seem to know that Blake is Thor, but she appears to be working for Blake- that would place this story before JIM 124, when Jane learns that Blake is Thor.
I just thought of an alternate placement- maybe T:BO can take place between JIM 123 and JIM 124. Maybe Odin decided to give Loki and Creel a second chance after JIM 123, and allowed them to return to Asgard and Earth respectively, and then after T:BO he realized they'd never change, and sent them back into outer space. Yes, Jane is in the hospital in JIM 124, and she's hospitalized as a result of JIM 122, but the dialogue makes it sound like Jane's condition is largely psychosomatic. Maybe Jane recovered after JIM 122, then T:BO took place, then she suffered a (psychosomatic) relapse and that's how she was in the hospital in JIM 124.
Truthfully, I'm not sure if I like my solution or Chris's solution more- both solutions involve a LOT of shoehorning.
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Re: Thor: Blood Oath

Post by Chris McCarver »

Yeah, I have to agree with Michael... there's no elegant slide-in spot for T:BO.
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