Thor Chronology RE: T2 50/3

[Nausiated]

Was going through the 2000s era run on Thor and noted something peculiar about his appearance in T2 50/3.

It is placed as happening between Thor's appearances in T:WOLVES and M/GN 15 and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

This is a flashback tale from Thor's youth. The only reference to the time period is a vague "long time ago" in the opening narration. This story features a young Thor getting upset that his father wasn't answering the prayers of the mortals who worship them on Earth. Thor goes down and provides for them until he is unable to bring a dead baby back to life. The mother spits in his face and the locals murder her to appease him. Thor gets upset and flees back to Asgard where Odin imparts an important lesson to his son that mortals need to find their own way.

So here's the thing, this story features a *young* Thor and it is placed between two stories where Thor is depicted as a young adult. The way artist Jack Jadson draws Thor making him look more like the young Thor in the early Tales from Asgard stories in Journey into Mystery. He's short and scrawny, he looks like he's just barely a teenager here. When you compare how he looks here to how he appears in other stories on this part of his chronology, Thor doesn't look all that different from his early Modern Age appearances. There is no logical reason why he'd go from a buff young adult to a scrawny tween between stories. There is certainly no reason given in the story in question.

The only thing in this story that can be measured against the chronology is the fact that Thor is wielding Mjolnir in this story. Other than that, there isn't really much of anything that happens here that dictates when this story could have taken place. Unless there is something about Viking history that I'm not aware of, I think that these events should take place at an earlier point in Thor's chronology than what is listed.

I'd argue that this story has to happen much earlier in Thor's timeline. Given that this story is about a teachable moment that Odin had with his son about the nature of mortals, the fact that he is depicted as being younger and less toned, I'd say that this story has to take place not long after JIM 102/3, the story where Thor lifts Mjolnir for the very first time.

At least that's what makes sense to me, I don't know what the original rationale was for placing T2 50/3 in the spot that it is currently sitting, but if there is a specific reason I'd be very much interested in knowing why.

At any rate, if this is something that does need to get moved, this will also affect the chronologies of Odin and Loki, the only other main characters featured in the story. Odin plays a bigger role in the story, but Loki's only has a cameo at the beginning of the story. He laughs along with the other soldiers when Thor asks Odin why they don't help mortals more often and that's about it.

That all said, moving this story to earlier in Thor's timeline wouldn't affect either Odin or Loki's chronology if this story is moved back for them either.

[NexusOfNightmares]

At least that's what makes sense to me, I don't know what the original rationale was for placing T2 50/3 in the spot that it is currently sitting, but if there is a specific reason I'd be very much interested in knowing why.

I was curious about this myself and just checked, and it's placed there because of the Official Index.

The reasoning seems quite odd, and I agree, but it seems to me that there isn't strong enough evidence to refute it, only a lack of evidence in support of it. As you yourself noted, there doesn't seem to be a lot of continuity clues in the story to accurately place it one way or another.