WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for The Mighty Thor #704 by Jason Aaron, Russell Dauterman, Matthew Wilson and Joe Sabino, on sale now.


If you think superheroes and protagonists have a rough go of it in monthly superhero comics, they’ve got nothing on supporting characters. Over the decades, those who stand on the periphery have been made to suffer through some of the most traumatic, dangerous and deadly experiences, usually as a means to get to the hero. Whether it’s Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend being shoved in a fridge, Peter Parker’s girlfriend being thrown off a bridge or Wolverine’s many, many girlfriends killed in increasingly elaborate and heartbreaking ways, it just isn’t safe to be a supporting character -- particularly if you're female.

This week’s issue of The Mighty Thor revisited an old dangling plot thread that hasn’t been revised since 2008 in order to address a major absence in Jane Foster’s life since becoming Thor. Unfortunately for her, the only thing in more danger than a supporting character is a supporting character that hasn’t been seen in a decade, and this particular plot thread is tied up by a death in the family.

Family Matters

Jason Aaron has been helming the Thor titles for nearly six years, and a good chunk of that time has been spent with Jane Foster as Thor. Despite his lengthy run, though, he hasn’t referenced the fact that Jane has an ex-husband and young son that have been around for decades, going back to when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were still on the title -- until now. All the way back in 1967’s Thor #136, the God of Thunder brought Jane Foster with him to Asgard in order to introduce her to Odin and hopefully win his approval. Unfortunately, Jane failed to do so and was cast back to Earth without her memories of Thor and was assigned a nurse to Doctor Keith Kincaid, the man whom Odin based Doctor Donald Blake on.

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Decades later, an aspiring screenwriter was researching the God of Thunder which led her to Jane Foster, happily married to Keith Kincaid and young mother to Jimmy Kincaid, who was a toddler at the time. Jane and Keith remained background characters in the Marvel Universe for sometime; Keith later became a consulting doctor for The Avengers and was used by Hela as a vessel for one of her demons to strike at Thor, but the characters slowly drifted more and more into the background and that particular plotline was never fully addressed.

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In 2007, when J. Michael Straczynski and Olivier Coipel revived Thor and reunited with him with Doctor Donald Blake alter-ego, it wasn’t long before Blake sought out Jane Foster. Jane revealed to Blake that when she heard rumbling that Thor had returned from the dead following Ragnarok, she asked her husband for a divorce and was currently in a custody battle for their which she believed he would win. That was the last time anyone made any reference to Keith or Jimmy Kincaid, until this week, when Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman revisited the characters, with tragic results.

The Mighty Thor #704 splits its time between the present day fight between the forces of Asgardia and The Mangog in the present day and flashbacks to the most traumatic days in Jane Foster’s life. As a child, she watched her mother slowly die of cancer, as a young adult her father passed away from complications with his heart and not too long ago, her ex-husband and son died in a car accident. In the flashback, Jane blames Thor, Sif, Odin, Hercules and any of the other gods who routinely meddle in Earth’s affairs and in particular her life, for not being there to save them. According to Jane, Keith fell asleep at the wheel with Jimmy in the backseat and the car went through the guardrail, with no survivors.

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Though she blames Thor in the abstract, there’s also the sense that she blames herself; maybe if she didn’t leave them to chase the fantasy of Thor, Keith wouldn’t have fallen asleep at the wheel and her son would still be alive. The death of the Kincaids is also reminiscent of the death of Donna Troy’s ex-husband and son’s deaths, who also died in a car crash to show that sometimes bad things happen to ordinary people and that the gods aren’t always there to inverne.

With the imminent conclusion of Jane Foster’s story, it was important to revisit her forgotten family. And while it may seem dismissive to say, “They died off-panel, years ago,” it also speaks to the kind of god Jane strove to be; someone who was there for the people that needed her, whether they knew it or not.