Thor by Donny Cates (and Friends) vol. 6: Blood of the Fathers

Vol. 5 ended with the revelation that Doctor Doom was now going to have a role to play in this storyline about Thanos fighting Odin’s father Bor in the past.  What were they fighting over?  The power of the mysterious Black Infinity Stone.  Doom wants this power for himself, of course, as he’s now looking for a way to control the will of everyone on Earth, because Doom has no need of free will.  Caught in the middle of all this are Thor, Jane “Valkyrie” Foster, and a version of Thor’s sister Laussa from the future.  I’d say Odin would be a part of this as well, given that he’s still trapped in Mjolnir when the story starts.  Except he makes a quick exit when his spirit is consumed by a zombie version of the dragon Nidhogg.

I can’t say that any story which involves “a zombie version of the dragon Nidhogg” is bad, per se.  Yet a large part of “Blood of the Fathers” feels perfunctory, as if it’s simply trying to finish off the story that it came here to tell and nothing more.  Which is likely the case as it’s arguably a misnomer to call this volume of “Thor by Donny Cates.”  The writer only has a co-writing credit on the first issue, with the rest of the storyline being handled by Torun Gronbekk.  She gets the job done but does it with a lack of surprise or style.

Much the same can be said of the art as well.  Nic Klein turns in the rough yet striking work that has defined his contributions to the series on the first issue in this volume.  Juan Gedeon and Sergio Davila handle the art on the rest of the issues in this arc and they do a perfectly capable job here.  It’s all decidedly “not terrible” work from all involved and it at least makes this volume worth picking up for the completists.  However, the only thing stopping me from saying that people shouldn’t pick up vols. 4 & 5 of this run on “Thor” is the fact that the two issues from Al Ewing in the previous volume are likely going to be relevant to his current run on “Immortal Thor.”