The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts 05

Last time on The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts: Dig into it and there is actually very little in common between the two [versions of the Thor Corps] [...] Why reuse the name at all? Aside from the commonality of a collection of Thors (and the presence of Beta Ray Bill), the original Thor Corps and this version are practically opposites on every level. Why would Thor specifically call the group that name? And, now, the continuation...

In Thor Corps #4, the main antagonist, Demonstaff, is defeated not through the strength of two Mjolnirs, a Stormbreaker, and a Thunderstrike, but through regaining his lost humanity. Demonstaff was a scientist whose obsession nearly drove his wife away prior to an accident that transformed him into a being of dimensional energy that he tried to shape and cage to look human. The thrust of the story is him trying to destroy all alternate realities into a single version, while also taking revenge on his wife, who he thought caused the accident. He’s finally defeated when, first Dargo Ktor, the future Thor, resists every temptation Demonstaff can put in front of him in order to get his own wife back from the villain and, then, Demonstaff’s wife goes to him and gets him to both believe that she never did anything to harm him, and to finally see that this path was his own making. He ultimately regains his humanity and the two are sent to a limbo-esque dimension as punishment for his crimes (she willingly goes with him). Basically, the Thor Corps wins through love and empathy and just giving a shit about others.

And how exactly does Thor defeat Toranos in The Immortal Thor #5? He makes him feel love and empathy and give a shit about others.

Beyond its echo back into a previous version of the Thor Corps, Al Ewing isn’t exactly original in this approach, one that we’ve seen at least twice this century and, oddly, both drawn by Frank Quitely: The Authority #20 written by Mark Millar where an evil version of the Doctor is defeated when the full extent of those powers kick in, including global overwhelming empathy for all; and All-Star Superman #12 written by Grant Morrison where Lex Luthor, having stolen Superman’s powers, is defeated when the full extent of those powers kick in, including global overwhelming empathy for all. I’m sure there are other notable examples and I don’t raise them to criticise Ewing for being unoriginal, more to acknowledge their existence as well-known comics that Ewing and many readers no doubt have knowledge of.

While they clearly weigh as influences to the scene where Toranos experiences the caring that comes as part of Thor’s power, particularly the horror that comes with it as an experience so foreign and different, forever altering his very being, the idea that Thor’s plan always rested upon a feign of strength being the path to victory when it’s really love truly does echo the way that the Thor Corps mini-series plays out. A story seemingly about a group of Thors coming together to travel across time and save all of reality through hammers and muscles and lightning... yet, the solution is genuine human caring. There, it was a trick played on readers by the creators of the series; here, it’s a trick played by Thor on Toranos.

The epigraph that Ewing uses for this issue is a clever foreshadowing of what happens to Toranos, one that he doesn’t telegraph by presenting it in Latin rather than English. Coming from the Carmina Burana, it’s fairly well known in Latin when set to music, so it’s not quite so unusual to present it that way. Set next to the quotes from the Poetic Edda, though, which are always translated into English (and so are any future epigraphs from sources not originally in English), it’s a purposeful choice. In a work about language, the meaning of words, and translation, this is the one quote presented where the reader needs to work to understand it on even the most basic level. Once translated, the meaning and connection to the issue is immediately clear, but so are other epigraphs. My best guess is that it’s meant to echo the experience of Toranos holding Mjolnir and receiving the power of Thor in full. At first, it’s impossible for him to understand who Thor is and what his true power is; but, once it’s ‘translated’ for him, it’s so obvious and overwhelming in its true meaning.

The translated epigraph (taken from here):

The wheel of fortune turns;

And I descend, debased;

Another rises in turn;

Raised too high

The king sits at the top

Let him fear ruin!

It seems almost pointless to actually analyse/discuss that epigraph given how literally you can apply it to Toranos (who holds the wheel), Thor (who lowers himself by giving his power away), and the result of Toranos gaining Thor’s power only for it to cause him to flee in horror. There’s also the opposite meaning, that the wheel turns, Toranos falls, Thor rises higher and must fear his future death (as sensed/seen by Jane Foster near the end of the issue). Or, to take it further, it’s the cycle that Gaea begins to plan in the short sequence at the beginning of the issue. Endless rise and fall, endless renewal, the wheel turns.

The revelation that Gaea is the one that set the Utgardians loose is shocking, yet telegraphed at the beginning of the issue. The idea that she would attempt to create a break in the war of the Ur-gods by introducing something new, thus spawning, eventually, the various pantheons, each with their peak, each variations on one another. The caption “A wheel that turned... yet, with each turning made new,” also relates to the manner in which Toranos is bested by Thor. They are both storm gods, Thor meant to be ‘weaker’ than Toranos in raw power, yet Thor has a strength that Toranos lacks: restraint. The judicious use of his power. While set upon Earth by Gaea, there’s also a sense that Toranos would simply do this anyway. He only knows destruction under the punishment of the superstorm. When the wheel turned enough times to produce Thor, while there is overlap with the elder god, there’s enough new to be foreign.

Which returns us to the Thor Corps and the way that this new version is a reversal/variation. As I said last week, the original iteration gathered twice and, each time, took on a threat from the future that threatened all reality, backwards through time. Toranos is literally the oldest (ish) sort of threat from the past, come to threaten the future, merging the two once he gains hold of Mjolnir, as he notes, “THE ANCIENT STORM MEETS WITH THE NEW! THE PAST AND THE FUTURE ARE ONE IN ME!” However, the past is quickly swept over by the future with modern ideas and considerations basically unstoppable. The wheel turns and, if this weren’t a Marvel comic, you can picture a world where the epigraph was simpler, taken from Deadwood:

“You cannot fuck the future, sir. The future fucks you.”

*

Essential Read Number One: Avengers Inc. #3

As we progress through the course of The Immortal Thor, I will sometimes have to flag so-called ‘essential’ comics that fall outside of the 25 issues of the monthly serial. Full disclosure: none are actually essential. You can read The Immortal Thor #1-25 from beginning to end without going outside of those issues and never fail to understand what’s going on. But, sometimes, Al Ewing wrote other comics that are as close to ‘essential’ as you can get without actually, you know, being that. Many will bear the name Thor on their cover, but not this one. Avengers Inc. #3 provides the answer to the unsaid question at the end of The Immortal Thor #5: how is Skurge alive and in Dario Agger’s office with Amora? Isn’t he meant to be dead?

Well, funnily enough, the issue begins with Skurge in Valhalla... dying. His own axe, the Bloodaxe, somehow flies at him and kills him. This is a seemingly impossible sort of murder given that Valhalla is full of the honoured dead and how can someone who is already dead die again? Jane Foster, in her role as the new Valkyrie, enlists Janet Van Dyne and Victor Shade to come to Valhalla and solve the mystery. In the course of their investigation, they figure out that the only way for Skurge to have died was with his own permission as a ruse to help him escape Valhalla and return to a mortal life. And only someone with an intricate knowledge of Valhalla and the rules governing it, including ways to leave it, could have assisted. Namely, another resident, Odin. He reveals that Skurge had had visions of Thor’s death and sought to return to Earth to take that death again, even if it meant never returning to Valhalla.

All of this is eventually revealed in the pages of The Immortal Thor, so this issue acts as a bit of a revelation sooner than you’d get otherwise. As such, I do wonder if it’s best read around this point in The Immortal Thor or left until after issue 21 when the story is retold (minus the mystery elements). There’s something to be said about leaving the mystery in the pages of the main story where Skurge’s references to Thor’s death and trying to take it on behalf of the Thunder God as he did the first time he died, and it’s not made completely explicit what happened until the fight outside the gates of Utgard. It adds a bit of edge to Skurge’s actions with Amora and Dario Agger, I find.

Yet, I can’t pretend that I didn’t read this issue around this point of The Immortal Thor as it came out. It came out October 23, 2023, while issue four of The Immortal Thor came out November 15. So, it pre-dated this two-issue Thor Corps story, making it known fairly early in the run. That means Skurge showing up at the end of issue five isn’t a complete shock for those of us who read Avengers Inc. #3. We knew Skurge was back and would run into Thor at some point. I wouldn’t say that that diminished the reading experience any... and yet...

This is the sort of debate I have with myself at times when constructing reading orders where the spine is set and you need to decide where best to place ancillary issues. While the original release date meant that you could read it at X, does it maybe work better narratively at Y? When I did my Brian Michael Bendis-focused reading order for Secret Invasion, I very much ignored release order in favour of what I thought was the optimal reading experience. In the case of Avengers Inc. #3, I remain somewhat undecided. It’s clearly a direct tie-in to The Immortal Thor with the way it gives even Leonard Kirk the chance to draw the flash-forward image of Thor bloody with Mjolnir and Tormod in hand, ready to fight and die. It’s hard to ignore it.

Its placement here, after issue five, seems as good as any place. It doesn’t disrupt the flow from issue-to-issue, which it would a bit more following issue three, which ends on the tease of Thor going to meet Storm. And it follows up on that final page reveal where Skurge is there with Amora. The idea that Skurge returns from the dead due to a prophetic dream, in an effort to stave off that future, also ties in nicely with some of the ideas discussed above about the confrontation between Thor and Toranos. Skurge is rushing from the past toward a future, doing his best to change it, to overcome it... but, as we’ll see, it’s not possible. For the second time:

“You cannot fuck the future, sir. The future fucks you.”

Next week, The Immortal Thor #6, which shows how you can change the past, if you want, along with Thor #159, the first big retcon in Thor’s history.

The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts 04

Ah, the Thor Corps. I was actually a little surprised when they brought back that name in The Immortal Thor #4 after it was passed over during Secret Wars when the Thor­-replacement series was titled Thors instead, despite featuring a group called the Thor Corps and the habit of reusing old titles for those series. I figured that there had to be a reason why they wouldn’t call the comic “Thor Corps” and use the original mini’s logo like the rest of the Battleworld minis during that event. It’s always baffled me and the inclusion of the name again here in The Immortal Thor only adds to that bafflement. Although, they don’t use the original logo in this issue when Thor says the name and it gets a logo-esque treatment (nor on the cover of issue 5). A little respect and homage paid, not in full, alas.

Prior to The Immortal Thor #4 and Thors, the Thor Corps originally appeared in Thor #438-441 and Thor Corps #1-4 by Tom DeFalco, Ron Frenz, and Patrick Olliffe (DeFalco and Frenz co-plotted the issues of Thor with DeFalco scripting and Frenz pencilling, while DeFalco wrote and Olliffe pencilled the followup mini-series). The first story where the group came together was actually titled “The Thor War” and had Zarrko the Tomorrow Man pit then-current Thor Eric Masterson again possible-future Thor Dargo Ktor to fuel his efforts to conquer time. The battle of two wielders of Mjolnir summoned Beta Ray Bill and, soon, the trio were teaming up to stop Zarrko, which meant fighting through an army of Thor enemies plucked from various points in time until they finally managed to win. Thor Corps reunited the trio, though Eric Masterson had given up Mjolnir for Thunderstrike by that point, trying to stop all of time and realities from being destroyed by Dargo’s enemy Demonstaff. At the end of the third issue, they use the collective power of Mjolnir, Thunderstrike, and Stormbreaker to summon Thor to aid them in their fight. Basically, the idea is exactly what it sounds like: multiple Thors (of sorts) teaming up.

What I’ve found interesting, in retrospect, is that Thor Odinson was barely involved. The first iteration of the group was during the period where the Odinson was thought dead and Eric Masterson wielded Mjolnir (and was still somewhat of a novice at it). The core trio of the Thor Corps was Masterson, Dargo Ktor, and Beta Ray Bill, who, as the most experienced hammer-user and warrior, settled into the role of leader (and peacemaker for the other two). While Masterson took the spotlight as far as perspective in the initial series since he was the star of Thor, the group was a bit of a Bill showcase. In both iterations, he was the calm, collected veteran Thor who could keep his head and come up with a plan of attack. In the first story, he became an example for Eric to follow as he learned how to be Thor – and, in the second, he was already established with the other two as the clear best Thor of the trio. One of my favourite moments is when Bill first arrives and Masterson is immediately awed, thinking “HE’S SO ALIEN--! AND YET, NOBILITY CLINGS TO HIM LIKE A SECOND SKIN! / HE REMINDS ME SO MUCH OF THE ORIGINAL THOR!”

In the final issue of Thor Corps, the Odinson is seen as a bit of a last resort for the group, calling upon the ‘real’ Thor. Yet, despite his central role that places him above the others to an extent, much of his purpose is to give the other three moral support and inspiration. He doesn’t show up and take the attitude that they should fall in line behind him. He talks them up, treats them as equal, and takes the attitude that, if they’re all worthy, then they’re all worthy. There’s no worthier. There’s a trust among those that can lift Mjolnir. It’s that idea that carries over the most to The Immortal Thor #4 where Thor gathers together various trusted allies who’ve all held Mjolnir at some point (Beta Ray Bill, Storm, Jane Foster, and Loki) to stand against Toranos in a plan that requires absolute faith in each of their abilities to work together. The composition of the group is quite different from the original version(s) where Thor Odinson the All-Father is clearly the Thor in charge and he’s assisted by a group of veterans.

Save one.

The recruitment of Storm is the focus of the issue and her position in the group stands out, as she was not an experienced wielder of Mjolnir. (You can also question Loki’s time holding the hammer, but, as an Asgardian, he kind of gets a pass. Actually, as a side note to this side note: Loki is the final Thor villain that Zarrko plucks from the timestream and much of his fight with the Thor Corps has him absolutely bodying Eric and Dargo. It’s a rare instance where Loki’s enhanced Asgardian strength and warrior upbringing are given the spotlight to see him out-fight opponents, not just trick them or rely on magic.) Yet, her experience as an X-Man and her mutant powers give her a certain prestige. The confrontation between her and Thor as Thor interrupts her involvement in the war on Arakko is one that establishes her, at first, as Thor’s equal or better. Al Ewing relies on some very specific wording to seemingly give Storm the (temporary) edge by emphasising that she controls the weather while Thor only commands the storm (ironic given her name). It’s a clever bit of parsing of their particular skills, following up on a similar instance in the first issue where Thor commands a blizzard (a snow storm). So, while she’s a novice Thor, she brings her own formidable power to the table. In fact, every member of this iteration has their own abilities/powers outside of those bestowed by Mjolnir. It’s a bit of Thor Corps Supergroup version, you could argue.

The makeup of the group, both in members and conception isn’t the only change. Unlike the threats of Zarrko or Demonstaff, Toranos is not from the future. While he poses a threat to the future of the world or, as the holder of the Wheel, represents the idea of a future threat coming to pass, he’s more a relic of the past. As we’ll see in the next issue, the idea isn’t to defeat him either, but to change an old idea into something newer. The triumph of this Thor Corps is a triumph of the future over the past, a reversal of the previous version.

Dig into it and there is actually very little in common between the two (another change: the original all had their respective hammers, while this one shares a single Mjolnir). Why reuse the name at all? Aside from the commonality of a collection of Thors (and the presence of Beta Ray Bill), the original Thor Corps and this version are practically opposites on every level. Why would Thor specifically call the group that name?

That answer comes next week as I discuss The Immortal Thor #5 and the first comic that I’d call an essential read outside of the 25 issues of The Immortal Thor, Avengers Inc. #3.

The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts 03

The epigraph for The Immortal Thor #3 still comes from The Elder Eddas per the citation, which, for me, is The Poetic Edda, specifically, the “Sayings of the High One,” which Al Ewing sometimes lists as “Odin’s Rune-Song” Fittingly, this section of the Edda is a mixture of elements, including general wisdom/advice, as described by Carolyne Larrington: “Human social wisdom, teasing allusion to runic mysteries, spells, and charms combine in this poem to give a conspectus of different types of wisdom.” Where else would you look for a nice, tidy quote to kick off a story about Thor seeking the wisdom needed to meet Loki’s trial?

While not always the case, I think the translation that Ewing uses for the epigraph is more fitting than the one in my translation. Specifically, Ewing’s quote ends with “But he knows not what to answer, if to the test he is put,” while the Larrington translation ends with “he doesn’t know what he can say in return if people ask him questions.” The latter makes more sense within the context of the poem where a big chunk of the first half or so are stanzas that act as little pearls of advice for living life. In both quotes, it’s about a foolish man thinking himself wise until actually pressed, at which point he reveals his foolishness. Ewing’s quote makes more sense within the context of the comic where it’s not so much a social situation where a foolish speaker is finally made to confront his true self, it’s a larger trial, one where having the wisdom to escape is the difference between life and death.

Beyond the obvious aptness of the epigraph, Ewing selecting a bit of an advice column basically but with dressed up language connects to the purpose of these stories, at their root. They may have involved giants and trolls and life and death, but they were meant, in part, to teach lessons about life, and how to live it. “Sayings of the High One” transitions between stanzas of social advice and magical runes with ease, all meant to be part of the wisdom of Odin. While he’s the king of the Aesir, ruler of Asgard, Odin One-Eye who gave it as sacrifice to gain knowledge beyond knowledge, wisdom beyond wisdom, he’s also the face you give a collection of social instruction because he’s All-Wise and would know things like this just as easily as he knows rune magic. The mundane and the fantastic rubbing up against one another, feeding into one another... the world outside your window, albeit with a muscular man flying with a hammer...

The mixture of ‘high’ and ‘low’ shows up in the issue, like the scene where Thor, having crafted Tormod, the ax-head meant to represent his wisdom, tests the sharpness of the blade by shaving the beard he grew during the All-Sleep. While the wisdom usually represented by a weapon like Tormod is the brutal kind, if it is meant to be a practical sort of wisdom, it needs to solve any problem that requires a sharp point, like a face full of whiskers. Even the solution to Loki’s trial comes at the other end of a walking stick... the riddle solved via a tool to assist in a journey... that takes Thor back to the moment he left the moon. At its core, this issue is about direct, practical knowledge – lateral thinking.

The solution to Loki’s trial isn’t particularly clever or hard to figure out. When Thor crafts the walking stick with the rune at its head, it almost seems foolish that the entire thing rested upon an answer so basic. But, that’s how these stories go. Big life and death stakes resolved with a ‘clever’ twist that any of us could have thought of. Because these gods are just like us. They may learn these lessons in fantastical realms like Skornheim, Skartheim, Utgard, or the unnamed world of this issue but the lessons are, at their core, the same.

This wasn’t the first (or second...) time that Thor had found himself in a far off realm, put to the trial to prove himself. Beyond it being a common trope in myths and stories for the hero to venture into the wilderness to prove himself against nature or another or simply himself, it’s an idea that’s popped up from time to time in Thor comics. The one that immediately sprang to mind was Thor #338 where Thor and Beta Ray Bill are sent to Skartheim to battle to the death to determine who is worthy of Mjolnir. A more fitting comparison for The Immortal Thor #3, though, is Journey into Mystery #116 by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Vince Colletta. “The Trial of the Gods!” has Odin sending Thor and Loki to Skornheim, a place where gods can die, in a race through a treacherous wilderness where the winner will be proven to be honest and right before the All-Father. It’s a patently stupid way to determine which of the two is being honest, particularly at this point in Thor history where, obviously, Loki was lying. He was always lying! But, that was the odd frustrating experience of Odin during this time, meant to mimic the unfair ‘fairness’ of a typical dad who never seemed to notice that one sibling always started it.

Where the Thor/Beta Ray Bill trial was one of straight combat, the Thor/Loki one is a race through a deadly obstacle course where Loki smuggles in Norn Stones to cheat his way along. Despite that, Thor always keeps up through his strength, agility, and smarts. The practical lateral thinking is on display best when both encounter these hard, spiky crystalline trees. Loki uses the Norn Stones to make himself intangible and walk through the forest unscathed. Thor, with no way to safely sneak through, puts his helmet on his hand, wraps his cape tightly around it and up his arm, and runs, smashing his way through, using the helmet fastened tight to his arm. It may not be exceedingly clever, but it’s the closest we get to solving a riddle in that particular trial.

There’s a bit of mirroring between the two stories in Thor’s lashing out in anger. In The Immortal Thor #3, it happens at the beginning; in Journey into Mystery #116, it happens at the end as Thor bursts through a host of carnivorous plants. In both cases, it’s frustration over the actions of Loki and their trickster ways that could leave Thor dead on some far away world. (Fittingly, that early story also has a subplot about Skurge and Enchantress causing mischief on Earth... though, we haven’t gotten there quite yet.)

In a broad sense, this sort of story recurs throughout The Immortal Thor, playing off the idea of the Ten Realms, and far away lands, and these self-contained story boxes. Like panels on pages in issues... Or stanzas in poems in Eddas.

Next week, The Immortal Thor #4 and a brief history of the Thor Corps (Thor #438-441, Thor Corps #1-4, and maybe even a word or two on Thors #1-4).

The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts 02

It’s the second issue of the new Thor series. Thor faces a threat more powerful than he alone can handle. He tries the storm, it doesn’t work. He tries his physical strength, it doesn’t work. He tries the might of Mjolnir, it doesn’t work. In desperation, he gathers the last of his strength to create a dimensional portal to send away this enemy too powerful to defeat. The best that the Thunder God can hope for is a draw, of sorts. Send the threat away and hope that, if/when it returns, he’s able to muster the strength to defeat it.

In 1999’s Thor #2 by Dan Jurgens and John Romita, Jr., the threat was the Destroyer powered by the spirit of a US Army Colonel. In 2023’s Immortal Thor #2 by Al Ewing and Martín Cóccolo, the threat is Toranos, the Utgard-Thor, the god of the superstorm, the holder of the wheel of fate. Cycles repeat.

The 1999 Thor relaunch by Jurgens and Romita came after a period of no Thor comics. The previous series had ended during the Onslaught event that took the non-mutant/non-Spider-Man heroes off the board for the Heroes Reborn line by Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld where Thor was simply a character in Avengers with no solo series. Thor became Journey into Mystery and followed the plight of Asgardians as mortals on Earth while Asgard sat in ruins. When Heroes Reborn became Heroes Return, the four title of that line were relaunched, but Thor remained without his own series. This was partly to not launch more than four new titles at the same time, partly to build up anticipation and demand. To make people want a Thor series more. It would follow around five or six months later (an eternity in mainstream superhero comicbooks) to make its own big splash free of any other launches.

The first year of the title revolved around two plots: Thor trying to balance his life with that of a human, Jake Olsen, whose soul he’d been bonded with to return both from the dead; and the destruction of Asgard and missing Asgardians. I won’t go too in-depth into the former, except to say that it never really worked. It seemed to be an attempt to recreate Donald Blake, while also doing an inversion of Eric Masterson’s time as Thor where, instead of Masterson retaining his mind when he transformed into Thor, Thor retains his mind when he transforms into Olsen. It’s an idea with some legs, but never really cohered. It made for a lot of Parker-esque mishaps that didn’t go anywhere.

The second main plot of that first year wasn’t just about the destruction of Asgard and its missing citizenry, it was about the threat of the Dark Gods. A forgotten threat from Asgard’s past, the Dark Gods are presented as a pantheon that’s the opposite of Asgard’s shining golden city and its supposed code of honour. A destructive, greedy, evil pantheon that nearly defeated Asgard in war until Thor’s childhood determination inspired Odin to rally for victory. The trauma of their threat was so great that Odin erased them from all memory save his own, and this threat was now returned. They had Odin in chains and were using the other Asgardians as slaves after they transformed Asgard into their new home. There isn’t much more to the Dark Gods, no real depth or underlying motives beyond being evil, the opposite of Asgard. They’re eventually defeated via Thor’s determination and planning, along with the always lamentable Deux Ex Odin finish where the All-Father regains his power and uses it to finish off the matriarch of the Dark Gods and restore Asgard to its former glory.

The Dark Gods were far from the first rival pantheon to challenge Asgard in one way or another – and far from the last. Up until the Dark Gods, most rival pantheons had a basis in other human mythologies, like the Olympians or the Egyptian and Celtic gods. In the first arc of the Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry run, they created a threat somewhat like the Dark Gods, a rival evil conquering pantheon that had no basis in existing mythology and was similarly dismissed. It’s an appealing idea, these variations on our heroes, challenging them in ways that only other gods truly can. And, as is always the case in superhero comics, the threat is best when greater in power than that of the hero. Thor only defeats the Dark Gods by allying himself with the exiled Destroyer, using his ability to transform between himself and Jake Olsen’s forms to rescue some Asgardians, and even use another threat he faced earlier in the run as a tool to free Odin. He has to go beyond himself and his capabilities, just as we will eventually see him do when he travels to Utgard, armed with two new mystical weapons and Skurge the Executioner at his side. Because the threat of Utgard is presented as incredibly large, well beyond Thor’s abilities, even as the king of Asgard.

It’s all variations on the same ideas. Al Ewing isn’t shy about that in The Immortal Thor, purposefully referencing old stories and characters, explicitly setting up the Utgardians as the Ur-gods with everything that follows flowing from them. The best trick Ewing pulls is treating the Utgardians like they have a strong basis in Norse mythology when, really, they’re just as much his and his collaborators’ creations as the Dark Gods were of Jurgens and Romita. From the epigraphs that pull from the Eddas, to the use of names like “Utgard-Thor” (in opposition to “Asa-Thor,” which does come from the Eddas), there’s a sense that Ewing is pulling on some mostly ignored elements of the mythological roots of Thor. He isn’t, though he does a pretty good job at covering his tracks by merging elements from mythology and Marvel history and past Thor comics and simple allusions. For Utgard, Ewing mashes it all up to create these older gods that can play the role of the Dark Gods. A new threat to Asgard and Midgard and the rest of the universe, forces of power and destruction that will require Thor to gather new resources and allies to stand a chance. Cycles repeat.

*

The Immortal Thor #2 opens with a three page representation of Odin sacrificing his eye before Yggdrasil, the World-Tree, to gain knowledge. It’s an odd scene for the issue, which is not one that deals with sacrifice to gain knowledge. To delay/deter Toranos, Thor doesn’t sacrifice anything. He gains no knowledge save that he is not up to the task of actually defeating Toranos. Nor does it specifically relate to the final scene of the issue where Thor, on the moon, is confronted by Loki who discusses trust and reveals the new form of Loki the Enemy. It’s a scene that stands apart from the issue, although, I have to admit, that Loki’s narration ties it into the idea that Thor letting loose with the Thor-Power against Toranos, requiring the All-Sleep as a price paid for that power, but that’s a tenuous link. One that justifies the inclusion in this issue, but distracts from the larger picture.

It’s not uncommon for issue of The Immortal Thor to begin with short scenes that tie into the larger story more than the issue they begin. Little bits of thematic foreshadowing that Ewing drops in. That this is the first of such is meaningful as it points to the most obvious idea that The Immortal Thor revolves around: the idea of sacrifice for knowledge, power, freedom... The words of Yggdrasil could form the epigraph for the entirety of The Immortal Thor, to be honest:

YES

THIS IS THE LESSON

THIS IS THE PARABLE

THE STORY ALWAYS CHANGES

THE MEANING ALWAYS REMAINS

THERE IS ALWAYS A SACRIFICE

ALWAYS A COST, BOR-SON

FOR THE WINTER TO END

FOR SPRING TO COME AGAIN

YOU HAVE MADE YOUR SACRIFICE, BOR-SON

AND IN TIME TO COME

YOUR CHILDREN WILL MAKE THEIRS

These are words that will be repeated throughout The Immortal Thor in different combinations by different characters. And, as Ewing will reminds us, Thor has already made his sacrifice beyond Odin, back in the “Ragnarok” story where he sacrificed both eyes for the knowledge and power to end the cycles of Ragnarok, freeing Asgard from the endless birth and death pattern where they always stormed towards the same story. Yet, underlying all of this is a simple fact: that didn’t end the rebirth of Asgard. The story is different. But, here we are, with echoes of the past, repetitions and variations, and is the story actually different in the ways that count? Do the sacrifices ever truly end? Winter always comes anew, after all...

*

In rereading the first year of the Dan Jurgens/John Romita, Jr. run, I’ve been thinking about the choice of line artists for these books. The Immortal Thor is headed up by Martín Cóccolo, an artist that I’ll admit I wasn’t too familiar with prior to this comic. He’s got a clean line and actually, together with colourist Matthew Wilson, manages to pull off the visual design of Toranos really well, capturing the look and feel of Alex Ross’s design/art. Ross is the other element of The Immortal Thor’s art by providing the main covers (of which I’ve got most throughout the run, but did have the odd variant given to me as my copy, alas) and some of the character designs, as shown in the back of this issue. He did the redesign of Thor along with designs for Utgard-Loki and Toranos, and I’ve been thinking about that within the context of a new volume of Thor and excitement over the visual element of the book.

As much as I’m a writer-focused critic and struggle with the visual side of things far too often, the artist on a book can be more appealing than the writer. When the Jurgens/Romita Thor comic was announced, I was far more excited about Romita’s art than Jurgens’s writing. I was fond of Jurgens, going back to his time writing and drawing Superman (I made an effort to get as many of those issues during “The Reign of the Supermen” period), but John Romita, Jr.’s Thor was epic. There was a cover of Wizard magazine that he did that I had a poster of on my wall and even used as the basis for this math assignment where you needed to take a drawing, trace it onto a grid, and plot its coordinates so, theoretically, someone could use your list of coordinates to draw it themselves. I was obsessed with the idea of Romita drawing this title, going back to his work on the Amalgam comic Thorion of the New Asgods #1 where he drew the mashup between the Asgardians and the New Gods. He was so good at having one foot in the aesthetic world of Kirby, even if I didn’t fully get that then, and giving a Thor that look like he was partly made out of rock, a being older than we can imagine, but solid and powerful. At that point, Romita was a solid veteran, someone proven, pretty much entering the period where he kind of became the Marvel artist where his presence on a book let you know that it was important in some way.

And meaning no disrespect to Cóccolo... he isn’t that. I really enjoy his work on The Immortal Thor and wish he’d been able to stick around longer. As I said, I look at the work he and Wilson did on Toranos and it’s stunning. But, going into this book, there’s nothing like the ‘Romita hype’ of 1999. I’ve been thinking if there is an artist that can produce that sort of excitement on a book like Thor at this point. Maybe it’s me, a quarter century on, and unable to recapture that excitement. I don’t know... 

But, if you do go back and read the first year (or two!) of the Jurgens/Romita Thor run, the time without a Thor comic definitely helped hype the book up, but the inclusion of Romita as artist did so much heavy lifting. 

* 

Next week, I’ll be discussing The Immortal Thor #3 along with Journey into Mystery #116.

The Immortal Thorsday Thoughts 01

I used to write about comicbooks online. I guess I still do as evidenced by you reading these words about comicbooks on a website. What I meant was: I used to write about comicbooks online where lots of people would see and, hopefully, read what I wrote. While it’s turned into more of a generic popculture site full of listicles and random dives into history and trivia care of my friend Brian Cronin, CBR (Comic Book Resources) was once the most well known and trafficked site in comics. And I wrote for it in a few ways. Firstly, I had free reign to do as I wish at a sub-blog called Comics Should be Good (thanks to the aforementioned Mr. Cronin) where my main two ongoing pieces of writing were something called the Reread Reviews where I reread stuff and wrote about it, and a weekly bit of nonsense called Random Thoughts! where I (as you can guess), wrote down my literal random thoughts any given week. After a year or so, I got on as a reviewer for the main site and spent the next few years writing four to seven reviews every week of new comics. Most folks stopped at the star ratings posted at the time, but, sometimes, they’d actually read what I wrote and, even rarer, they’d let me know what they thought about my review. This was mostly well intentioned feedback, to be honest. People genuinely wanting to engage with what I wrote to agree, disagree, or just tell me I’m dumb. The comment I’d sometimes get there and in other places that always bugged me was when someone would respond with “That’s just your opinion.”

Yes. And?

It was all my opinion. Virtually everything I’ve ever written about comicbooks online has been exclusively and entirely my opinion at that moment. Maybe with a few facts sprinkled in (like who wrote or drew the comic, or the literal plot), but all in service of my opinion. Because that’s what this is about: my opinion, my interpretation, my translation. You come here to get my version of the work, how it hit me, what I think of it, how I view it, my insights, my thoughts... my opinion. As I’ve prepared for this series of writings, where I’ll be looking at The Immortal Thor issue by issue every Thursday, I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of translation and interpretation. The Immortal Thor is a comicbook very much concerned with that idea. About point of view and meaning and who tells the story and why.

Let the show begin.

The Immortal Thor #1 opens, as all issues of the series do, with an epigraph. Most of them are attributed to coming from some part of The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson or, as my copy is titled, The Poetic Edda (Oxford World’s Classics edition translated by Carolyne Larrington). This is in contrast/complement to The Young Eddas by Snorri Sturluson or, as my copy is titled, The Prose Edda (Penguin Classics edition translated by Jesse Byock). These two volumes make up the source for a large amount of the Norse mythology by which we get Thor, Loki, Odin, and Asgard. The Marvel Comics version is inspired by these stories, sometimes quite literally and mostly only through the use of broad ideas. It’s an interpretation, a translation...

The epigraph to The Immortal Thor #1 comes from The Elder Eddas:

He is sated with the last breath of dying men.

The god’s seat he with red gore defiles.

Swart is the sunshine then for summers after.

All weather turns to storm.

Understand ye yet, or what?

The text here is meant to relate to the coming of Toranos, the elder storm god from Utgard; the Utgard-Thor, as it were. He kills, he brings destruction to New York, which is on Earth, one of Thor’s homes. He blots out the sun, he brings the storm, and Thor sees that there are larger gods. That’s how it seems to relate to this issue. Pretty easy to see (Al Ewing starts us off with kid gloves) and understand. But, this is, of course, not what this text actually means. It may surprise you to learn, but The Elder Eddas do not tell the story of the Utgard gods coming to destroy the Aesir and the Earth. It may surprise you to learn that there are no ‘Utgard gods’ in so many words. It may surprise you to learn that my copy of The Poetic Edda has a slightly different text:

It gluts itself on doomed men’s lives,

reddens the gods’ dwellings with crimson blood;

sunshine becomes black all the next summers,

weather all vicious––do you want to know more: and what?

Same basic idea, yet different. ‘Gluts’ is not ‘sated;’ ‘doomed’ is not ‘dying;’ ‘reddens’ is not ‘defiled;’ ‘crimson blood’ is not ‘gore;’ ‘black’ is not ‘swart;’ ‘vicious’ is not ‘storm;’ ‘do you want to know more; and what?’ is not ‘understand ye yet, or what?’ It’s all translation, interpretation, read and thought upon, and put to paper with a specific intention and audience. Is one better? More accurate? Do you know which?

It’s from the first text in The Poetic Edda, titled “The Seeress’s Prophecy” in my edition and is the words of a seeress telling Odin the history of the world before the gods and, then, into the future of Ragnarok and beyond. It’s a quick summation of the broad strokes of the entire story of the Aesir and the world. Other stories in The Poetic Edda fill in details and the same into The Prose Edda. You can ignore most of the differences as, while they have different meanings (synonyms are, of course, no synonymous), the general idea is the same throughout the passage. What caught my attention was the difference in the final line, as Ewing repeats it at various times during the run of The Immortal Thor and, in fact, before the run, uses a variation.

The story of The Immortal Thor actually begins in Thor annual #1 from the previous volume of the comicbook with a five-page prologue done with the full team of Al Ewing, Martín Cóccolo, Matthew Wilson, and Joe Sabino that begins with the line that’s also the title of the story: “Would you know more?” That’s very close to the final line of the translation of the epigraph from The Poetic Edda “do you want to know more: and what?” and a bit of a jump from Ewing’s Elder Eddas line “Understand ye yet, or what?” Put them next to one another and it’s easy to see the difference...

“Would you know more?” is a question posed somewhat gently. It’s an invitation almost, teasing you into stepping deeper to gain knowledge. It places the emphasis on the action and the taking of said action to learn more, even if it’s turning a page – or buying the first issue of a new series.

“Understand ye yet, or what?” is a question posed somewhat condescendingly. There’s a sneer behind it. Maybe a playful one. Maybe not. It’s a challenge for you to grasp the meaning of what you’ve already learned. It’s inward-looking, contemplative. It suggests a riddle to be solved.

“Do you want to know more: and what?” is a question posed somewhat directly. It fits with what we know of “The Seeress’s Prophecy” where the seeress is telling Odin of what she sees with his questions directing her focus. It’s not just about gaining more knowledge, it’s about specific knowledge. Ask and you shall receive.

The second is where Ewing chooses to rest his rhetoric, even if he uses the first to first entice us all. I don’t know what edition(s) of the Edda he’s drawing upon. I don’t know if he knew the third version was available, the one that walks the middle ground between the two. You may want to get yourself a copy of “The Seeress’s Prophecy” as it is the broader structure of these 25 issues. Thor learning about and dealing with what came before the beginning of the Aesir and the world as he knows it... forever moving closer and closer to his personal Ragnarok... and, then, the world after Ragnarok...

“The stories have their patterns. The Gods have their Ragnarok. Even Thor has a Black Winter hanging over him.”

*

I would direct you at this time to my first piece on this issue, made available on this very blog.

*

As I didn’t discuss what’s up with Loki two years ago, let’s begin there. I’m not always a good or careful reader. I miss a lot. It’s one of the reasons why I write – to figure things out. It’s, as I said, a form of translation. Often, when I’m writing about something, I’m thinking it through in real time, figuring it out, letting all of this information that sits in the back of my head, just below the surface, to come out in a, hopefully, organised manner. Which is to say, I’m not convinced that I knew Loki is the narrator right away. Embarrassing, eh?

What puts the three quotes I discussed into a slightly different light. Loki would phrase that line in a manner that is teasing and somewhat condescending. It’s a game, a trick. A story with a purpose. As we’ll see in future issues, Loki the Skald is also not above altering the story to suit their needs, some of which seems to be laid out in this issue. Much of what proceeds from this issue is Loki pushing and prodding Thor in various directions, seemingly for his own good, even if in the moment it does not appear that way. Rereading this issue in light of the entire 25-issue series and knowing where things go, particularly with the Bifrost, the scene where Loki remakes the Rainbow Bridge seemed of heightened importance. One bit of Loki’s narration caught my eye:

“What if were free? / All of us. Gods and mortals. Me and you. / What couldn’t we do, on the day all our cages open? What would that look like? Tell me, if you can. / What does the bridge to anywhere look like?”

Once upon a time, Loki sought freedom. Freedom from himself, from his past, from the story that hung around him like an albatross. And he did the most diabolical things to break free from that story, moving past the God of Lies, becoming the God of Stories, free to write their future as they see fit. They first show up in this issue by breaking free from the previously defined role of ruler of Jotunheim, declaring themselves as the official Skald of Asgard, and offering to repair the Bifrost that Thor broke while Hulked out during the previous volume of the title. A new story to tell... And this comes after Thor seemingly changes his story in the annual short by returning to his former garb and restoring Mjolnir to its previous state. These are normal events in superhero comicbooks when a new creative team relaunches a title, so they don’t seem out of place and, yet...

In retrospect, it’s apparent that Loki not only sets the story into motion, they explain a possible motive. Having obtained their freedom, do they now see the bars that cage everyone else? Do they look upon the trapped with pity and seek to free them all? Thor broke the cycle of Ragnarok once, but, lurking out there are older gods whose own cycles still cage the Ten Realms. So, why not turn the wheel a little and push Thor in the direction of breaking another cycle?

At the end of the issue, Utgard-Loki mentions the various characters that use the Utgard-gods as talismans and act as ‘understudies’ to these ancient beings, positing them as greater, more powerful, more true versions of the ideas that came after them. But, let me ask you: in our current world, what versions of Thor and Loki hold the most sway? Not the versions that appear in the Eddas, not even the versions that appear in the comics. No, that honour belongs to the versions portrayed by Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston on screen. What came first is not necessarily what matters most, not with stories. You can see the influences the works of Kirby and Simonson had on Thor: Ragnarok if you know what you’re looking for, but there’s no doubt that the majority of people just saw the movie and nothing more.

Utgard-Loki thinks being first means being more powerful. This is a story about influence and translation and that what comes later can be a more potent story. And that’s what matters most here: the story. The irony is twofold in that Utgard-Loki cannot see that they are a part of the story and bound by its rules... For, as much as Loki wishes to free everyone, they first cage them in the story. Bound by words and pictures, panels and word balloons... In becoming the narrator, the Skald, Loki becomes the new jailer. It is them who rebuilds the bridge to Utgard, them who turns the wheel...

*

Ever week, I’ll discuss the next issue of The Immortal Thor along with another work of some kind (which was the short story in Thor annual #1 here), maybe also dive into the epigraphs a bit. We’ve got 25 weeks of this ahead of us. Next week, in addition to The Immortal Thor #2, I’ll be discussing, in some manner, Thor (1998) #1-12. That’s the first year of the Dan Jurgens/John Romita, Jr. run.

Monsters Who Will Never Die: On Godzilla vs Thor #1, Possessiveness, and Legacy

Aside from King Thor for the final ThorsdayThoughts, I haven’t reread Jason Aaron’s Thor run since it finished. At the time, I was pretty quick to enthusiastically put it into conversation as a contender for the best Thor run of all time. Right up there with Kirby and Simonson, and I’ll stand by that until the eventual reread that either validates my in the moment proclamations or reveals them as nothing more than overcompensation to allow me to have experienced the best Thor run in real time. I’ll be honest, the holes in the concept have already been made, the edges frayed, as it were... mostly by Aaron himself. Or maybe my expectations of him, ones that I don’t think anyone else is held to in mainstream superhero comicbooks.

When he finished his run on Thor, I immediately wanted to lock off the character from everyone. That you had this massively successful (critically and commercially) run and it just went right into another Thor run (the ill-fated Donny Cates/Nic Klein run) seemed wrong somehow. It felt wrong to not give the story that had just finished some time to breathe and settle. Like, we just read one of the best Thor runs of all time and I thought that respect was owed, for a moment of silence or something. Unrealistic when the spice must flow, of course. I didn’t think going right into a new creative team was doing them any favours by having to immediately follow King Thor #4. It was an unjust comparison and standard to have to live up to. But, you know, the month after Kirby left, Thor still came out. The month after Simonson left, Thor still came out. The churn is real and there’s always someone ready to step up and keep that train moving. The periods where the character didn’t have an ongoing title (and subsequently launched huge) were both fallow periods, in a sense. Moments where things had slid into apathy and the break was, in part, a way to generate interest. Interest, both creatively and commercially, isn’t low at the end of an historic run... that’s when all eyes are on the book and you strike while the iron is hot. Or, you feed some folks into the grinder to make way for the next run that no longer has quite as many lofty comparisons to meet...

It was more than that, though. I thought that the character should be locked off from Aaron, specifically. That he should be somehow prevented from writing Thor for a long, long time, to let the run sit untouched in another way. To not let him tarnish his achievement due to later, lesser work. Completely unfair and possessive in a weird, kind of creepy way. It’s a bit of the opposite of what superhero comicbook fans want, though. Usually, there’s strong demand for successful creators to return to their most beloved work – and, quite often, they do. Sometimes it pays off, as I’d argue it has for Jim Starlin’s periodic returns to Adam Warlock and Thanos; sometimes, it doesn’t, as it has for Chris Claremont’s periodic returns to the X-Men; and, usually, it’s a mixed response or an apathetic one, as we’ve seen in Frank Miller’s return to Batman and countless creators’ returns that appeared to some hardcore fans while everyone didn’t even notice. Hell, Walt Simonson has returned to Thor and his world numerous times since he departed the book and that hasn’t tarnished a thing.

But, the feeling persisted – the desire that Aaron remain at a remove from Thor, that he not fuck with the run he wrote... And that desire was almost immediately crushed by his still in-progress Avengers run, of which Thor was a central member of the cast along with Loki. I’ve made my feelings on that run (particularly the final year or so) pretty clear elsewhere. You’d think that would have been enough for me to get over myself. It wasn’t. It was easy to write that off as already in motion or evidence that I was right. Then, he did a story in Marvel Age #1000 that revisited the Jane Foster Thor and it was fine. Nothing amazing, nothing special, but not bad either. Almost akin to a lot of Simonson’s return to that world where he’ll come back for a short story that tells a nice little tale before moving on... It was easy to live with this and sigh in relief that the case around that Thor run was still intact.

Until.

Joined by his Avengers Forever collaborator, Aaron Kuder, Jason Aaron was doing Godzilla vs. Thor as part of a series of one shots of “Godzilla vs. [Marvel hero/team].” You can imagine my internet reaction. I don’t think I said anything online as I’m pretty good, at this point, about keeping my more obnoxious thoughts private (oops). I was not pleased, I was fearful, and I, of course, told my shop to order me a copy, because, like so many superhero comicbook readers, I am broken and dumb about this stuff.

The idea of the comicbook kind of offended me. It lends itself to all of Aaron’s worst sensibilities, the sort that I saw run rampant over the final year of his Avengers work (and dip in an out of his Thor work, admittedly). He is one of those lingering writers from what I’ve long dubbed The Age of Awesome in mainstream superhero comicbooks. The hallmarks of that period are still with us, sometimes for good, often for ill. The overreliance on the multiverse is one such trait; the inclusion of dinosaurs whether it makes sense or not is another; the odd obsession with Groot and MODOK and Deadpool... Thor as fucking Iron Fist... You know it when you see it and, after a period, I grew weary. Godzilla fighting Thor as written by Jason Aaron seemed, immediately, like the entire concept of The Age of Awesome taken to its logical conclusion in the worst way...

And, on my first read of the issue, that’s what it read like. Spinning out of his most recent Punisher book – which was itself an unneeded return to a character he has great creative success on (his Punishermax run with Steve Dillon is fantastic...) and, in conversation with that earlier work, diminished it, I’d argue – did not endear me to the comic at all. Culminating in Godzilla absorbing part of Gorr’s Necro-Sword to ravage Asgard only confirmed my worst fears. It was a fluffy bit of nonsense that took meaningful art for inane ideas that held nothing more than a shiny thrill with no substance. This is what he wants to add onto his Thor run’s legacy?

A couple of days later, I read it again. And it’s fine. It’s not a great comicbook. I wouldn’t call it fun or awesome or any of the superlatives I could find said about it elsewhere if I looked. But, it’s not terrible. It’s a dumb crossover licensed book that delivers on the title. What else could it be. It doesn’t tarnish anything. As I myself told many people when they were upset at The Dark Knight Strikes Again for ruining The Dark Knight Returns: “The original is still there!” It was unfair to hold on so tightly and personally.

I do think that there’s a conversation to be had about the legacies of great runs in an age where those runs don’t fade into back issue bins anymore. Of writers and artists maybe taking a beat before returning to characters and titles that they did their best work on. But, I also know that schmucks like me are not the people to decide that. We get to read the work (or not read it), be affected by the work, and decide where it sits for us. That’s it.

Notes on the cruellest month

Not only the title, but the underlying ideas and structure were inspired by The Waste Land by TS Eliot. The quotes were heavyhanded at times, forced at others... usually, the poem was meant to sit underneath the project or in the back of my head as I wrote. I honestly can’t remember what spurred the connection. Sometime in March, I was thinking about Uncanny X-Men #394 and the poem and something clicked and I went for it. The entire month-long project was not meant to be a replication of Another View despite being in the same mould. It was a bit more serialised, a bit more freeform. The eventual shift into other issues from the run was unexpected/unplanned and, really, if I were to actually adhere to the structure of The Waste Land, it would have been five issues. I realised too late that doing a fifth issue, either issue 400 or the annual, would have rounded things out a little more and not left, from my perspective, a bit of a gap.

Despite my education in English literature (four years of undergrad, two of grad school), I’ve never been a big poetry person. I’m too literally minded. I struggle to think in metaphor at times. I don’t always have the patience. And, yet, I’m very quite fond of TS Eliot. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” is my favourite poem and the first one that I encountered, which is probably a little unsurprising. Upon doing that poem in a first year class, I went out to the campus bookstore and bought a nice little Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets edition dedicated to him. “Prufrock” remains my favourite, though I’d concede there’s more to The Waste Land, obviously. Some of the connections I found as I went...

1. While I loved the title, I loved the little graphic that I made with some pencils by Ian Churchill from Uncanny X-Men #394 and a snippet from The Waste Land from a picture of one of the early printed editions. I never did go back to find where that “listen until you figure the song out” theory came from. This was a purposefully unusual (for me) to start the project.

2. The theory that Joe Casey’s work is about what comes “after” has been a personal contention for years.

3. I never saw it through, but it was here that I considered really focusing in on the influence of Casey’s Uncanny run on Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, and the way that Casey seemed to set up a number of story/plot/character beats for Morrison. That could be a coincidence, Morrison being quite good at taking existing ideas and integrating them (like X-Corps), or even Casey aware of Morrison’s plans and foreshadowing some of them. In the end, I chose to shy away from an in-depth comparison, preferring allusions and snarky insinuations that Morrison ripped off Casey, because that amused me.

4. Karl Jirgens.

5. Aside from attacking Cape Citadel, I was struck by how little similarities between Uncanny X-Men #394 and The X-Men #1 actually were present. Given the time period, unless Casey had a copy of the first X-Men Marvel Masterworks, there was a very good chance he had no actual reference material to that comic. He had the equivalent of what Warp Savant has: a new report/summary of events taken from a distant point. Casey seems to use the very broad framework of the idea of Magneto attacking the base and goes from there.

6. Most of the quotes from Casey or anecdotes about the making of the run were taken from his newsletter. In the lead-up to Weapon X-Men, he did a multi-part breakdown of his run, going issue by issue (or by chunks) to give some context and insight – and backwards perspective. He’s pretty honest about the run’s failings and I’d say a bit too hard on himself. Despite the good humour he writes the ‘recolleXions’ with, you can tell that this run is still a sore spot, both creatively and professionally. It was a pretty spectacular failure on both fronts. An interesting failure, I’ve long contended and full of more depth than people give it credit. After a while, I gave probably a bit too much attention to advocating for it, I suppose.

7. Casey mentioned the ‘penis arm’ on Wolverine on the cover and I’m not sure if I’ve ever quite seen it. I think I have?

8. Logan is kind of a shitty dude in this issue.

9. The inclusion of Warren in the first issue was a bit fortuitous and possibly an indication of some ideas bubbling under the surface for Casey. I think I found some compelling reasons for his inclusion – his past crush on Jean was one of those ideas that I thought of as I was writing the piece.

10. It’s definitely possible that Unreal City was the connecting point between the comic and the poem. Unfortunately, the label on the fence is City Hell. I wish my note for 5 was something I thought of to include here. Alas...

11. Was Warp Savant Bugs Bunny or more like Daffy Duck? I mentioned Bugs because of the kiss, but Daffy was always the more antagonistic of the two. If you had to pick a ‘villain,’ that you root for in Looney Tunes, it’s Daffy Duck. Later, when I made this reference again, I made sure to include Daffy as a result.

12. Whenever I’ve done a project like this, there inevitably comes the piece where I think I’ve completely wasted the day. By the end, there are several. This was the first one. It’s not only that my mindset is so far removed from these hypothetical new readers, it’s that I don’t respect the concept. I can’t even pretend. I set myself up for failure – and wound up making a point that I thought was much needed about the issue. There have been too many movies at this point for anyone to care, but the idea of making comics to appeal to ‘regular’ folks who saw the movies was such a prevalent idea at one point and it always frustrated/infuriated/disgusted me. I grew up with comics in my house and was a newsstand kid who’d pick up whatever looked interesting. I always followed along just fine. These ideas are, at their core, insulting. They assume that non-comics readers are too stupid to understand most comics and that most comics are too impenetrable for non-comics readers. It’s basically a “comics suck, but people are too stupid to get them anyway” mentality that I never understood. You literally didn’t need to have read any past X-Men comic to understand Uncanny X-Men #394. Liking it was a whole other idea...

13. “starless inscrutable hour” is from “Whoroscope” by Samuel Beckett. On the bookshelf next to my bed, right near my pillow, I have the four volume Grove Centenary Edition of the complete Beckett, edited by Paul Auster. While waiting for my wife to get ready for bed, I often pick up volumes and I had picked up the fourth volume some time before this piece, which contains the poems, short fiction, and criticism. “Whoroscope” is a poem clearly influenced by The Waste Land and seemed like a suitable place to take the title as I jumped to a new issue. I had the idea for a few days before doing so and I think the twelfth edition pushed me over the edge to do it. It meant finding a suitable line to use for the title, a suitable image, and to do another graphic. I don’t recall if I knew right then that I would do more than this. I don’t believe so. I remember wanting to discuss Chamber since he was, initially, a big part of Casey’s conception of what his X-Men run would be about... and, then, he wasn’t...

14. I always thought Chamber was from Australia for some reason. He’s actually British.

15. I tried to address issue titles, but found them oddly worthless (aside from “Rocktopia Part 8 of 5” of course). I worked in the title to issue 395 in this piece rather hamfisted. I did like the idea of mutants as God’s nepobabies as the real reason why they’re so hated.

16. 

17. I don’t like the title “Playing God.” I don’t think it suits the issue at all. I tried to make it work. What I never found a place for and did want to discuss at some point was the title page of the issue. I really hate that page. The text choices and layout are both terrible. The visuals are fine with the blood cells making a double helix and the little circle headshots. But, the title over the X-Men logo followed by the combining the name/bio of each character with a creative credit was clunky and confusing. Easily the worst part of the comic.

18. The Waste Land lines 128-130.

19. “Whoroscope” lines 66-67.

20. Part IV of “The Waste Land: FiveLimericks” by Wendy Cope. I was oddly proud of the idea of discussing the influence of Chris Claremont on these issues by rewriting parts of the poems that I took the titles from. At whatever point I decided to do more than the two issues, I went looking for further Waste Land-influenced poems and came across Cope’s Limericks, where she does five limericks, summarising each part of The Waste Land. Hilarious and clever, I love them. “In April one seldom feels cheerful;” is how she begins the first Limerick, so it seemed like a natural choice to play off “April is the cruellest month.” The text over the eyes was harder to find here and was taken from some project where people wrote out poems by hand. Sizing was an issue, but I figured, by this point, clarity wasn’t essential.

21. Settling old business.

22. I was initially unimpressed with Warren’s speech and this piece was me talking myself into thinking it was actually really clever and well done.

23. Why Adventures of Superman #612 and the rest of Casey’s final year on the book matters so much.

24. I shied away from Jean’s privilege and the ways that she may or may not encourage Logan’s feelings towards her. I had a paragraph half-written that touched on the Susan Richards/Namor thing, too, another trope that I’ve always hated. I took it out because it didn’t feel right, particularly in what happens this issue – and how the issues between her and Scott actually play out in New X-Men.

25. I was never prouder than discovering the line “April is the coolest month” in “The Waste Land” by John Beer. His poem is part parody, part sequel, part its own thing. It’s much larger and funnier than Eliot’s poem. I couldn’t find a great image for the text, so I highlighted it and used that, giving the fourth graphic a bit of a pop. I really do love the title “Rocktopia Part 8 of 5,” but discovered something odd: when Casey wrote about the issue in his newsletter, he referred to it as “Rocktopia Part 5 of 8,” and had a picture from the comic showing that. I had to doublecheck the issue for myself and mine shows 8 of 5. I think that I gave a pretty good explanation for the numbering, too. 8 of 5 is far superior. I guess it was meant to be 5 of 8 and was corrected after the fact or someone changed it thinking the numbering was a mistake, and Casey doesn’t remember the original.

26. Jack Kirby and Sean Phillips, fuck yeah.

27. I fully intended to push the idea of Nightcrawler as the mutant missionary in Casey’s run and the way it prefigured his role in Krakoa and it never felt right.

28a. The Waste Land lines 27-30.

28b. The Waste Land lines 108-110.

28c. The Waste Land lines 301-302.

28d. The Waste Land lines 385-390.

The idea of doing a single post jumping between the four came earlier and it seemed like a logistical nightmare to pull off well if kept in a single post. Doing four posts, all with the same number, based around a singular theme was much better. I wrote these somewhat as a single piece, albeit more like parts of a single piece. As always, I ignore the art and that seemed like a logical place to bring the four issues/titles together, particularly under the argument of how the art impacted the idea and execution of Casey’s run. Ian Churchill is so associated with the run, but he didn’t do three full issues. Ron Garney only did two. Sean Phillips did the most and, yet, he’s not really thought of as the artist of this run for obvious reasons.

29. I used the term ‘comicbooks’ throughout the project, because that’s Casey’s preferred way to write it. The idea that this run was actually part of a larger tapestry/tradition came late, well after the idea that it was the precursor to Krakoa in many ways. I almost leaned into that idea hard, but eased off for whatever reason. I referred in passing at some point to misquoted lyrics because Warp Savant quotes from the song “Black Diamond” by Kiss (off their eponymous debut) but gets words wrong. He sings “Darkness will fall on the city... seems to fall on you, too,” but the lyrics is “seems to follow you, too.” I debated writing about that for an edition at one point. It seemed a little unseemly to focus on Casey shoving in a line from another piece of art somewhat randomly and incorrectly...

I don’t know if this piece – or the project as a whole – works. It did what it need to for me. But line 252 from The Waste Land does sum it up nicely.

the cruellest month 29

X-Men comicbooks are about X-Men comicbooks are about superhero comicbooks. Uncanny X-Men #394 is an X-Men comicbook and a superhero comicbook and a Joe Casey comicbook and an Ian Churchill comicbook and. The intersection of multiple. The shadow of Claremont and the shadow for Hickman. Another brick in the wall. Modernist and postmodernist and oh what’s the difference anyway. Did I? Did it?  Too cruel, too cool.

A perfect piece of popart that speaks to me because the process of creating the comicbook is the process of reading the comicbook. “Reading and rereading and pondering and rereading and pondering on and on for decades has not been an effective process, so I will attempt to write my way into insight. All of my best ideas come at the keyboard.” Go in with a vague idea, sit down, bang away, come away with a chunk of something and keep going until you get somewhere. Casey kept writing until he figured it out; I’ve kept writing until I figured it out. Did I? Have we arrived at the elusive insight? And so, declarative statements:

Uncanny X-Men #394 was a misstep. Uncanny X-Men #394 was a mismatch. Uncanny X-Men #394 was a misfire. Uncanny X-Men #394 was not a mistake. Uncanny X-Men #394 was not a mistake. Uncanny X-Men #394 was not a mistake.

You can’t just reach in and pluck these comicbooks out, you know. You may or may not have read them, but they’re part of the linear progression of the comicbook. Davis, Claremont, Casey, Austen... you don’t get one without the one before. And so it goes until you eventually land upon Hickman or Gillen or whomever and you don’t get there without here. You don’t get Quentin Quire without Warp Savant. You don’t get Hickman mutant economics without Casey mutant economics. The emphasis in Uncanny X-Men #394 is on interpersonal soap opera, because that’s what matters. It doesn’t matter that Casey wouldn’t continue that particular soap opera subplot, because it’s a river and you jump in, you jump out. I must have mentioned somewhere why I love taking the bus (aside from its cheap convenience): the bus does not care about you. There’s no monetary privilege of a cab or an Uber where you take me where I want because I pay you. The bus does its route and how many people get on and off does not matter because the bus does its route. Mainstream franchise superhero comicbooks are the bus. Casey got on the bus at stop 394, got off at stop 409, and it kept going. Not everyone understands that they’re riding a bus when they take on a project like this. Casey understands. He drops the Scott/Jean/Logan stuff into his issue and never touches it again, left for another passenger. He leaves a Nightcrawler plot behind, on the seat, purposefully. He gets it.

Uncanny X-Men #394 prefigures “Rocktopia Part 8 of 5” by being a single issue. Decidedly not for the trade. It is in the Poptopia trade, because I own that. It and issue 399 sit somewhat awkwardly on either side of the four-issue storyarc, settling into a typically-sized six issue package that doesn’t end neatly or nicely. Casey tries to be commercial, because it’s his career and he wants to have it last and make money to live and pay bills and all of that... but the dude cannot help himself. It’s a constant push and pull with him. Take the big gig, have no real desire for it. Need to kick it off with a bang, don’t use any of your book’s characters. Get paired with the flashy artist, deliver mopey shoegaze scripts.

You know Reveal? Sure y’do. If you know Casey and Sean Phillips, then you know Reveal, because it has “Autopilot” in it, the short comicbook stab at autobiographical fiction by Casey. Each of his three major gigs from this period get a page with Phillips going all out with visual allusions. And I quote:

The FIRST movie was successful. The SOURCE MATERIAL, on the other hand...

It’s the big FRANCHISE team. The heavyweight champs. Another rung on the career ladder...

Okay, you admit... there are some underlying ANALOGIES involved that interest you. The FREAKS who inherit the Earth. The OUTCASTS that find solace amongst themselves. What was UGLY has become BEAUTIFUL.

Whatever.

They offered you the gig. You took it. You did your job. Big sales. Big royalties. Big heat. Okay, not your BEST work, but you don’t regret these things when you’ve just bought a HOUSE...

You think it MEANS something to work on the top-selling franchise. You think you’ll feel DIFFERENT...

...until you GET there and discover the editorial office is more CONFUSED than the thirty years of FICTIONAL CONTINUITY you don’t really want to reference anyway. You’ve got your OWN convoluted continuity to deal with...

Typical, in its way. That final paragraph/caption rings false, to me. Casey reveled in referencing “the thirty years of FICTIONAL CONTINUITY.” He loves that shit. He began his run by referencing the oldest bit of continuity, going back nearly FORTY years to do so. One of the big visual beats is an allusion to the first cover. As I always round my way back to: Wizard named him the next Kurt Busiek for a reason. Hell, he’s been annotating his current Weapon X-Men series in his newsletter with the various references he’s managed to pack in. There’s a bit of know-it-all punk kid to this impulse. That “look at what I’ve read” sort of thing. Certainly nothing that I relate to. Let us go then, you and I...

Warp Savant – Warps Avant

Casey does a great little verbal bookending to his run. Issue 394 ends with Cyclops saying, “LET MOVE, PEOPLE. / NO ONE EVER CHANGED THE WORLD BY JUST STANDING AROUND...” Issue 409 ends with Wolverine saying, “LIKE, I SAID, PAL... IT’S A NEW WORLD. / WE’VE CHANGED IT MORE THAN ONCE. WE’LL CHANGE IT AGAIN.” Change or die. That’s all Warp Savant is trying to do. Change something. Change himself. Change his world. Sometimes, you do that by giving it a kiss on the head before you disassemble it. Sometimes, you do that by taking away the toys. He removes some weapons of death and destruction; Warren Worthington III removes some chemicals of death and destruction. Why is one acceptable and the other not? There’s a certain privileged hypocrisy baked into superhero comicbooks – and X-Men ones in particular. A sense of superiority, not of mutants over humans... Xavier mutants over non-Xavier mutants. It’s about the school, the club, the team... when you’re in, you can do as you wish; when you’re out, you’re cannon fodder. You ask some and they’ll say to dismantle the military base and let the drugs flow freely. They don’t know what the master of them that do did, if you jump ahead to your Gillen and Xavier keeps the world on even keel. In a comicbook about evolution and survival of the fittest, there’s a certain tribalism, a certain might makes right at the heart. No one sees them as evil...

“I’M A MUTANT AND I’M EVIL!”

That youthful rebellion masquerading as nihilism. Pure id, pure Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck... putting the comic in comicbook. It’s traditional is what it is, going back to the beginning when men were men and villains were evil. The old ways coming back, patterns repeat, cycles and cycles and cycles and fragments shored. Plucking ruins from the past and colliding them, hoping to find meaning...

...I haven’t solved it, of course. That was my stated goal and I’m no closer, further away, perhaps. Frustrating. Out of grasp, unable to grasp. Warp Savant doesn’t matter. It’s a little sad, because he wanted to matter. He wanted this to matter. I did. It did.

‘Well now that’s done: and I’m glad it’s over.’