Beta Ray Bill is trapped reliving the worst moments of his life, and the experience makes it clear that he’s Mjolnir’s most tragic wielder.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Beta Ray Bill #4 by Daniel Warren Johnson, Mike Spicer and VC’s Joe Sabino with Johnson, on sale now.
Beta Ray Bill has been on a heartbreaking journey across the cosmos and through dimensions in the pursuit of a new weapon capable of bringing him back to his true form. Since an enraged Thor destroyed his hammer Stormbreaker, Bill has found himself in the company of good friends, enthusiastic wingmen, and his oldest friend, his ship Skuttlebutt, in a brand new body. It’s a good thing that Bill has all the support he does, too, because his quest for the Twilight Sword just sent him on a very painful trip down memory lane.
Beta Ray Bill and his crew have found themselves thrust into the darkest pits of Muspelheim following their shaky entrance. Something has found them in the dark, however, and it has infected every part of Bill’s ship Skuttlebutt, including the crew. When Bill awakes, he has to rip himself free from the deep purple tendrils that have enveloped him. Once he has reunited with Skuttlebutt’s humanoid form, they find that the records she’d been keeping of their time together have been weaponized by the creature tormenting them. As they venture deeper into the ship, they quite literally step through Bill’s worst memories, beginning with his very first appearance battling the God of Thunder in the pages of 1983’s Thor #337 by Walter Simonson.
Bill’s history goes back much further than his initial encounter with Thor, and it connects him to Surtur much more than his current quest to steal the Jotunn Fire Giant’s sword. Bill’s homeworld of Korbin once rested among the stars of the Burning Galaxy, until the day that Surtur set it all ablaze. To craft the Twilight Sword with which he would begin Ragnarok, Surtur destroyed the entire Burning Galaxy, and the few Korbinites who survived chose Bill as their champion. He underwent brutal operations to become the superpowered warrior he is today and lost his humanoid form in the process.
Not only is Bill forced to relive the trauma of seeing his new face for the first time, he has to go through the equally painful experience of seeing his mother’s face for the last time all over again, too. Hearing her tell him how much she loves him, how proud she is of him, all with the knowledge that she is already gone, and that he could have never saved her from her fate, is a powerfully depressing scene. That it comes before re-witnessing the same deaths of thousands and thousands of people he once knew doesn’t help matters, either. The fires burning in the sky before him are as haunting as they are epic in their scope, but these are, of course, all moments that Bill has lived through before, and they aren’t going to be the moments that stop him now.
The realization that it was Skuttlebutt who recorded all of these moments reminds Bill that she has been there with him all along, to which she also reminds him that she intends to be by his side forever. No matter how horrifying the scenes that play out before him are, they ultimately serve as a reminder that he is not alone now nor has he ever been. It is that reassurance that drives him to soldier forward and kill the beast that has tortured him with his own memories.
Even though Bill hasn’t found the weapon he is looking for yet, he has found a renewed sense of self worth. It might have even been one of the proudest moments of his entire superhero, if only it hadn’t been born out of a series of utter tragedies.
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