Thor #318
A Kingdom Lost
When Loki overhears a storyteller entertaining the children with tales of Thor’s victories over him, the trickster god decides to hatch a new scheme against his half-brother. First, he pays a visit to Karnilla, Queen of the Norns, and gets permission to borrow her Norn Stones for part of this plan.[1]
With the Norn Stones in hand, Loki ventures the the land of Nastrond, domain of Fafnir the dragon. There he convinces Fafnir to join his cause by appealing to the dragon’s desire for revenge against Thor.[2] With that, Loki teleports himself and Fafnir to Earth. While the dragon crashes into the the ocean causing a massive tsunami, Loki goes to Easter Island where he drops the the Norn Stones near the giant stone heads that reside on the island.
Meanwhile, in America, Doctor Donald Blake hears a radio report about the evacuation efforts on Easter Island. Deciding to go and see how he can help, Blake transforms into Thor and heads to the island. There he discovers that there are not many people who live on the island, so the evacuation is actually fairly easy. However, one of the rescue workers wishes something could be done to protect the island’s iconic stone heads. Thor decides to do just that and uses Mjolnir to dig a massive trench in an attempt to shield the stone carvings from the destructive tsunami.
While this doesn’t work as planned, the statues are unharmed, but end up getting pulled free from the ground. Thor is surprised to see that the carvings are actually full bodied as they were buried from the neck up. Suddenly, the nearby Norn Stones begins crackling with energy, bringing the stone heads to life and they begin attacking Thor.[3] The thunder god finds these statues sluggish and hardly much of a threat. Knocking the statutes into their proper positions, Thor hammers them into the ground, rendering them harmless. With the threat over, Thor recovers the Norn Stones.[4]
When the rescue crews return to bring back the island’s population they tell Thor that the tsunami raised an island from the ocean floor. Thor goes there to investigate and is attacked by Fafnir. During the battle, Loki appears and reveals his part in the plot. When Thor goes to use the Norn Stones against his foes, Odin suddenly appears before them and orders the battle to cease. Odin then chastises Fafnir for conspiring to Loki to attack Thor, saying that he could have easily petitioned Odin for a rematch. As punishment, the All-Father banishes Fafnir back to Nastrond. He then scolds Loki for this latest scheme and sends him back to Asgard for punishment. Odin then leaves Thor to resume whatever destiny awaits him on his adopted home of Midgard.
Returning to Easter Island as Don Blake, Thor offers his medical skills to help those injured in the evacuation. As he works, the rescue team muses over how Thor defended the island to preserve its culture. They also wonder how Blake, who claimed he was vacationing on the island, got there since none of them saw him previously. He’s amused when they comment how a guy who walks with a limp is doing three times as much work, making him the strongest of them all despite his disability.
Recurring Characters
Thor, Odin, Loki, Karnilla, Fafnir, Lithodia Rexians
Continuity Notes
Karnilla mentions how her last alliance with Loki fell apart. This happened in Thor #308.
Mention is made of how Thor battled Fafnir centuries earlier and that Nastrod was a wasteland until Odin re-revived the region. See Thor #134-135.
Thor recounts how the Norn Stones were once used by a witchdoctor who called himself the Demon. This was in Journey into Mystery #123.
For years there has been question if these stone heads were the Lithodia Rexians, aliens who according to Tales to Astonish #51 were aliens who posed as the Easter Island statues while waiting for an invasion force. The Lithodia Rexians were then depicted in Deadpool (vol. 5) #50, Ultimates (vol. 2) #8, and Marvel #4. One could assume that these are the same aliens and that the Norn Stones briefly revived them from their inert state.
Topical References
In this story, it is stated that there are only a “handful” of people who still live on Easter Island. Not sure what the population was when this story was published in 1982, but according to a 2017 census there was about 7750 people who lived there at that time. I think the writers were underestimating the population. At any rate, any hinted number should be considered topical because populations grow over time.
