As well as being a universal tongue, war is a language that both Carol Danvers and Thor Odinson are well versed in.
The former having served as a pilot in the US Air Force before finding a new career as a test pilot, and the latter having led the armies of Asgard and the Avengers against the universal hordes who sought to trample Midgard and his home underfoot.
The role of commanding the Avengers in battle is something that that they also have in common, as the Odinson has been part of the team since Tony Stark originally put his ragtag bunch of superheroes together in Avengers #1, and Carol ended up leading the team against their founder Iron Man during Civil War II.
But if they ever ended up on opposing sides of a war, who would prevail? The son of Odin or the soldier with the power of the Kree flowing through every atom of her body?
Being cut from a remarkably similar cloth and sharing a similar worldview, Thor and Captain Marvel are both hot-headed, stubborn and have spent most of their long and storied careers leaping into action without first critically assessing the situation or enemy that they’re facing.
This impetuousness and willingness to barrel headlong into the fray is undoubtedly a key part of their individual reputations as great warriors, but it’s also been the driving force that led to them butting heads more than a few times in the last couple of decades.
However, for all of their bluster and bravado, almost all of Thor and Carol’s confrontations have ended amicably with one of them choosing to stand down and apologize before matters could escalate further.
Then Kelly Thompson arrived on the scene, took control of the reins of Captain Marvel and everything changed.
Thompson’s run on Captain Marvel has been sublime, picking up the baton that Margaret Stohl dropped and surging forward with a combination of insightful and rich, detailed characterization and direct, immediate, and engaging storylines.
It’s the perfect companion piece to Brie Larson’s cinematic debut as Carol, Captain Marvel which was released to universal acclaim in two thousand and nineteen.
It’s also the book in which Thor and Captain Marvel finally go head to head in a no holds barred, slug-a-thon that at long last lets them take their gloves off and do what they’ve been threatening to do for more than twenty years. That is, find out who the most powerful Avenger really is.
A Showdown For The Ages
It was and is a fight for the ages, and Lee Garbett’s deliciously detailed art managed to capture every subtle moment of Thompson’s intricately and precisely plotted action.
Did it provide us with a definitive answer as to who would win and who the most powerful Avenger (as he’s still technically on the team’s books, we’ve always just assumed that it was the Hulk, but as he’s not a god and isn’t blessed by Kree DNA and is still licking his wounds after the events of Endgame we’ll leave “Puny” Banner out of the picture for the time being) is?
Sort of, but at the same time, it left a lot of questions unanswered.
It was a brutal and devastating fight, but as Thor didn’t have Mjolnir, and was reluctant to unleash his full fury on his friend as he presumed that she had fallen under some sort of malign influence, their fight wasn’t as decisive as it should, or could have been, even though Carol ended up decisively beating and actually killing Thor as their contest came to an epic conclusion.
No, you didn’t misread that last sentence, and yes it actually happened. Carol Danvers killed Thor in Captain Marvel #12
The Great Swerve
Except, she didn’t actually kill Thor, as it wasn’t actually Carol and Thor fighting, at least not the versions of the characters that we’ve been rabidly following every month for longer than we care to remember.
It was All-Father Thor who died, slain by Dark Captain Marvel for showing mercy to the foe he assumed was a friend.
Having said that, it did serve as a perfect way to judge who might win, as the alternative versions of Carol and Thor pretty much acted and fought the same way that their “real world” counterparts would have done had they been in the same situation.
Were we surprised by the outcome? Yes, and no, and if you bear with us a little longer, we’ll tell you why we were shocked by the outcome, and at the same time completely unphased by it.
The Warriors Two
While we’re dedicated four-color fanatics and used to adhere to the idea that mythology and canon were established solely by comics, as the cinematic and print universes become ever more closely intertwined, we can’t deny the impact and influence that the movies have had, and continue to have on the established lore of Marvel Universe.
And taking that into account, it’s impossible to deny that Captain Marvel and Thor are, from a super-powered perspective, pretty evenly matched.
We’ve seen Carol tear through starships, stop planetary bombardments, and hurl ships back into space in Captain Marvel and have witnessed Thor almost defeat the Hulk in single combat and kill Surtur in Ragnarok and withstand the raw unappalled fury of a neutron star when he traveled to Nidavellir to forge a new weapon in Infinity War.
In our book, that makes Carol and Thor equals among super-powered gods.
So Who Would Win?
If we were bookmakers, we probably wouldn’t accept a bet either way, as the odds of who would win if Thor and Captain Marvel went to war with each other are too unpredictable to predict.
Carl could be the victor one day, and on another Thor might triumph, but the one thing that we can say with sure and guaranteed certainty is that if it ever does happen, it would be a fight that book front seats for, regardless of how much they cost.
