"The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill" is a 1983 storyline that took up four issues (#s 337-340) of The Mighty Thor. It was the first work of Walt Simonson on the title, and the first appearance of Beta Ray Bill.
S.H.I.E.L.D. detects an alien ship heading towards Earth, and sends Thor to deal with it. Thor finds a powerful alien in it, and is defeated when he becomes the human Donald Blake again. The ship crashes on Earth and SHIELD surrounds it. Seeking Thor's hammer to use it in his defense, the alien finds just a stick, and knocks it against the wall in anger... and since that stick is Mjolnir, he gains the power of Thor. But after defeating SHIELD Odin has urgent need of Thor, and teleports him to Asgard... not realizing, in the rush, that the guy with Thor's hammer and costume is not actually Thor. Beta Ray Bill is imprisoned and Donald Blake is turned to Thor and taken to Asgard, where things are clarified: Beta Ray Bill is the protector of his people, and has confused Thor and Odin with the demons that are chasing him.
But there's another problem: for the first time, someone other than Thor has been worthy enough to lift the hammer, and he claims that he won it in battle. They try to settle it in a fight to the death: Beta Ray Bill wins, but won't kill his opponent. So Odin tries another approach: he makes a new hammer, Stormbreaker, specifically for Beta Ray Bill. Both of them and Lady Sif return to the ship, and destroy the demons. Before leaving, Odin moves one enchantment from Mjolnir to Stormbreaker: Bill is now capable of turning into his normal self, which he had lost after so many modifications to turn him into a super soldier. Meanwhile, Thor loses the power to become Donald Blake.
The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill provides examples of:
- Aliens Speaking English: Skuttlebutt automatically decodified Thor's language and loads it into Beta Ray Bill.
- Animated Adaptation: An episode of The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, with the same name, made an adaption of this story. S.H.I.E.L.D. is removed (and all planet Earth, for that matter), Thor doesn't have a Donald Blake identity in that series, there's no death match for the hammer or negotiation with the dwarves and they move directly to forge a new one (hey, it has to be told in nearly 20 minutes!), and incorporated the Enchantress as a slave of Surtur, a subplot absent in the original work.
- Batman Gambit: The dwarfs' leader Eitri tells Odin that they won't make a new hammer for free: the Asgardians have to send a goddess to fight against their champion first. If she wins, they'll make the hammer for Odin; if not, their champion gets to keep the goddess as a love slave. But this request isn't what it seems. The dwarfs' "champion" is the freakishly huge dwarf Throgg, who has been using his great size and strength to bully and dominate the other dwarfs. Eitri knows that Odin will send Sif and she'll defeat Throgg easily, humiliating him so badly that he'll never bother the other dwarfs again.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Played with. Thor begins the story longing to be a mere human, at least for one day. At the end of that issue, Bill has claimed Mjolnir and Thor is left stranded on Earth as Donald Blake. Then by the end of the story, Thor has completely lost his human identity.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lorelei helps a Troll being chased by hunters... then she captures him, and gloats about it to the hunters.
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Lady Sif, a warrior-goddess with a sword, against an endless wave of demons. Who wins?
- Didn't Think This Through: Thor was once an arrogant jerk. Odin had once turned him into a mere mortal, who could turn into Thor with an enchantment on the hammer. The idea was to make Thor appreciate patience and helping the weak. The enchantment was that "Whoever holds this hammer, if he's worthy, shall possess the power of Thor". It seems that Odin never considered the chance that someone else other than Thor may be worthy.
- Duel to the Death: Thor and Beta Ray Bill fight in a wasteland for Mjolnir. They both fall unconscious over a piece of rock, in a river of lava, heading to a fall. Beta Ray Bill wakes up first: he just has to jump to safety and win. But he breaks the rules, and jumps with Thor. He wins the fight, but nobody dies.
- Glory Seeker:
- Lady Sif can't stand the easy life, and wants battles and adventures.
- Also for Agnar, who wants to kill Balder simply to check if he's a better warrior or not.
- I Just Want to Be Normal:
- It begins with Donald Blake in the park, thinking about this.
- Odin and Sif realize that Beta Ray Bill no longer looks like his fellow Korbinites because of the enhancements made to turn him into a soldier capable of defending his entire civilization, leading to him feeling isolated from them. Odin transfers Mjolnir's enchantment to Stormbreaker, allowing Bill to turn back into his old, normal form by tapping Stormbreaker on the ground.
- Improvised Weapon: Neither Thor or Beta Ray Bill can use Mjolnir during the duel. Thor begins to throw rocks as a replacement.
- It Amused Me: Loki helps Lorelei seduce Thor, simply because it's fun.
- Lethal Lava Land: Where the Thor-Bill fight takes place. Thor correctly guesses that Odin chose this wasteland precisely because it was similar to Bill's native planet, giving him a slight advantage over Thor.
- One-Steve Limit: The new character was meant to be named "Beta Ray Jones", but Walt Simonson changed his mind: there were already too many guys named "Jones" in the Marvel Universe.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Odin, "disguised" to visit the dwarves. He's immediately recognized.
- A Rotten Time to Revert: Thor falls victim to this in his first fight with Bill, aboard Bill's ship. During the fight, Thor gets separated from Mjolnir. He also doesn't notice that the ship is entering Earth's environs — which means he's now subject to the enchantment that transforms him to Donald Blake if he doesn't at least touch Mjolnir once every sixty seconds or so. When the sixty seconds are up he promptly transforms, so the crippled Don Blake is now facing a furious, super-strong alien cyborg who was able to fight Thor himself to a standstill.
- Super-Soldier: Beta Ray Bill was improved as such by his race.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Volstagg tells Agnar that if he kills Balder, he may eventually forgive him, because he was also young and arrogant once. Thor and Fandral may also forgive him, they have also been young and arrogant. But... what about Hogun the Grim? He has never been young. He will never forget... nor forgive!
- Women Are Wiser: Subverted. Even all-wise Odin can't figure out why Bill seems so melancholy, so he asks the Lady Sif for her opinion. He hopes that "a woman's heart" might be able to figure out what he can't. She does know the answer — but it's not because she's a woman. Rather, it's because she has talked with Bill's ship and friend Skuttlebutt, so she knows a secret Bill never mentioned: that the procedures Bill underwent to make him into a super-soldier permanently changed him inside and out, so he will forever be an alien and a monster to his own people.
- Wowing Cthulhu: Beta Ray Bill is the first character other than Odin and Thor himself to lift Mjolnir.
