Avengers: Secret Wars Needs To Give Us Thor’s Best Team
Avengers: Secret Wars absolutely must feature the Thor Corps--an army of variant Thors from across the Multiverse.
You can never tell exactly what will or will not survive from Marvel comic book to movie screen, but this is my warning to anyone involved in the production of 2025’s Avengers: Secret Wars that by the hammer of the greatest among them–who, I think we can all agree, is Throg, Frog of Thunder–there will be pure Hel to pay if the film doesn’t include the Thor Corps.
In the 2015-16 Marvel Comics line-wide event that Marvel’s upcoming event film will most likely take its inspiration from, Doctor Doom patches together pieces of the destroyed Multiverse to create Battleworld. The now all-powerful villain, calling himself God Emperor Doom, rules Battleworld and his “justice” is delivered by the Thor Corps: an army of seemingly countless Thor variants utterly dedicated to enforcing Doom’s will.
An Avengers: Secret Wars without a Thor Corps would be the biggest missed Marvel opportunity since someone foolishly convinced Sam Raimi to make Willem Dafoe wear a mask as Green Goblin. In the entire Secret Wars comic book event, there is no more potent manifestation of the awesome variety that Marvel’s Multiverse has to offer than the gatherings of the Thor Corps.
You see, the way Marvel handled the event was that they temporarily ceased publication of all their regular titles, while publishing only Secret Wars and the dozens of tie-in miniseries. Meaning the Thor Corps not only showed up in Secret Wars and the police procedural tie-in miniseries Thors (nope, not kidding), but in most of the other miniseries. It rendered the group one of the most tangible connective tissues between the series, and it also gave the artists and writers the chance to create so. Many. THORS.
There are variants of the character based on versions fans had already encountered like Jane Foster’s Mighty Thor, Beta Ray Bill, the Ultimate Thor (who was the main character of Thors), Throg, the Ororo Thor (i.e. Storm from the X-Men), Thunderstrike, the Destroyer Armor Thor, King Thor, the Unworthy Thor, and the redheaded Red Norvell. But they barely scratch the surface. Between all the Secret Wars series there are Thors based on Gamora, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Sam Wilson, Groot (who only says “I am Thor”), Valkyrie, Sif, Angela, a wolfman based on either Man-Wolf or Werewolf By Night (named Thrr), and pretty much any Marvel hero you can think of (except Hulk; I haven’t found a Hulk Thor yet, which tracks considering their relationship).
There’s a Thor with a lizard’s head, one with a cat’s head, and one with a boar’s head. There’s at least one Thor for every variation of the original hero’s costume that’s appeared in the comics. Most of them seem to carry hammers, but they’re not married to them; some have battle axes, swords, ankhs–yes I said “ankhs.”
Among the wonders we would be robbed of in an Avengers: Secret Wars without a Thor Corps are shots of a squadron of Thors descending into Greenland to clash with a whole tribe of Hulks, Thors blasting into the Deadlands to take apart some Marvel Zombies, or just exploding into a massive brawl between variant each other in a tavern.
And no–the notion that Avengers: Secret Wars will include the Thor Corps is far from certain. Avengers: Age of Ultron had almost nothing to do with the comic book event of the same name, and similar things could be said about other films based on Marvel Comics events like Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. From all appearances, the upcoming miniseries Secret Invasion will likewise be very different from the source material.
But to let an Avengers: Secret Wars exist without a Thor Corps would be a bigger mistake than greenlighting 2004’s Catwoman. However the MCU adapts Secret Wars, it will no doubt have a lot to do with the Multiverse, and with that in mind if we can’t get a Frog Thor and a Groot Thor and a werewolf Thor hanging out together, what the Hel is the point of all this anyway?
By the way, when he was busy creating the source material for Avengers: Secret Wars, writer Jonathan Hickman didn’t pull the Thor Corps out of a void. Like much of what appeared in the event, it was based on past comics. The O.G. Thor, Beta Ray Bill, Thunderstrike, and Dargo Ktor (a Thor from the future) worked together in the short-lived 1993 series Thor Corps.
