After years of not doing so, Thor finally switches places with Donald Blake and brings the surgeon back to the forefront with a deadly new weapon.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Thor #9, by Donny Cates, Nic Klein, Matt Wilson and VC’s Joe Sabino, on sale now.
In Thor #9, the God of Thunder’s search for answers about what is happening to his mighty hammer Mjolnir leads him to decide to once again trade places with Donald Blake. Dr. Donald Blake is Thor’s human alter ego, a human body that was created by Odin through Asgardian magic to humble a young and brash Thor. Once upon a time, Blake and Thor would often trade places, but it’s now been years since the God of Thunder assumed his human form.
Now, Thor once again makes the transformation so that he may access the Elder-Sleep, a plane where he will be able to converse with the spirits of previous Asgardian kings. But what Thor doesn’t expect is for Donald Blake to have changed after all this time. When the doctor is finally brought forth once again, he is revealed to be a completely mad villain — and he’s armed with a frightening but ultimately perfect weapon.
Thor #9 reveals that when Thor assumes his Asgardian form, the human Donald Blake is sent to a mystical plane where he lives through a happy, eternally sunny day in a quiet, white picket fence neighborhood. Odin’s magic made it so that he would never be aware of the time that passes by in this magical world, and he would be eternally at peace until Thor would trade places with him once again.
However, with Asgard’s magic coming apart thanks to a mysterious threat attacking the very fabric of destiny, the world Odin had created for Donald changed. Suddenly, Donald was aware of the time that was passing by in his world, and it was made worse since Thor stopped trading places with him.
As a result, Dr. Blake grew mad, and he proceeded to kill every one of his neighbors, dissecting their bodies in the hopes of learning the nature of his prison.
Now, Thor finally trades places with Donald once again, unaware that he is about to let a veritable menace loose upon Asgard. When Blake first arrives, we can see that his madness has given him a completely new look: he has a long, unkept beard to match his hair, and he is wearing a dark makeshift armor held together by rope. With his classic wooden stick still in hand, Blake looks like an evil mage, ready to take over Asgard.