The Fractal Hall Journal

Marvel’s big gun, and hugely important to both companies in that it was with Thor that Jack Kirby started to cut loose with concepts that would end up shaping both respective universes.

Core Genre: Fantasy. Very much so. There are always the SFish cosmic overtones you get with Kirby’s work, but the bottom line is he’s a magical viking.

Anyone remember the Books of Magic ongoing, the one that followed Neil Gaiman’s initial miniseries? Great little title, with a very spooky atmosphere. It managed to have a distinctive voice that wasn’t a slavish recreation of Gaiman’s style.

Tim Hunter, the main character, was a kid with great magical power who would create creatures without realising it. One of these creatures was the Wobbly, a squiggly monster with a bird’s skull, an imaginary creation that lurked in a disused plot of land and disposed of things that Tim threw away. The Wobbly’s trapped there, but when Tim needs it to take away the broken-down car that his mother died in, he gives him permission to leave. “You can always come back, you know,” says Tim. “I’d just as soon you did.”

But this isn’t possible. “To go from a small here to a greater,” says the Wobbly. “That is to be living. But to go from the great to the small? That is death.” It’s a great little bit, in a great standalone issue (#14). John Ney Rieber wrote a lot of good stuff in the course of his run, and Peter Gross after him. The minis that followed the end of the ongoing series were a little ropey, but that’s more due to DC’s need to take the character in a less than ideal direction after Harry Potter pissed in the Bespectacled Young Wizard pot than any fault on the part of the talent.

To go from the great to the small; that’s what Marvel’s Thor is all about. To be diminished, to be humiliated, to die a little. And then to learn from it.

There’s an obvious Christ metaphor here, but it’s one I’m not keen on. Partly it’s because the motivations are completely different, but also because Norse mythology doesn’t need any bed-wetting hippy shit to prop it up. We’re not talking about aspects of a single god, we’re talking about an army of the fuckers, dead-set on getting arseholed and thumping people.

Controlling factors:

A) Big hammer
B) Elemental powers (specifically storm/weather based)
C) Humbled human alter-ego (medical background preferable)
D) An accompanying pantheon

There are a few elements to this character that aren’t really common to other superheroes. Firstly, he’s probably the most popular superhero taken from pre-existing myth. I mean, there’s not a Robin Hood title that’s run for several hundred issues, and is currently bothering the top of the sales lists. The creator credit for this character’s going to be interesting when they get round to making the film, because while he’s undeniably Jack Kirby’s baby, you can’t exactly say he’s created by the King.

His special powers are self-evident. There’s probably room to define his weather abilities, but he’s meant to be an all-powerful storm god so it’s best not to get too hung up on his limits. More important is an alter-ego that humbles him, that both raises and diminishes him. With Donald Blake’s recent return, it’s probably safe to suggest it has to be him, although I have to say I liked the Jake Olson EMT identity in the early days of Dan Jurgens’ revamp, and thought it was quite an elegant modern twist. Unfortunately then it got a bit silly and a lot confusing, and I’m certain there must have been some behind the scenes shenanigans because the first 12 issues were intriguing and consistant and the ones after just seemed to contradict things that had been set-up.

Also, JR Jr’s art was gorgeous.

I think the medical background is essential. First of all, it’s a contrast to the more barbaric image we have of viking berserkers, a civilising influence. Secondly, it suggests Thor would have to have spent a long, long time in the Blake guise, learning and training in a field that is, shall we say, somewhat tricky, requiring not a small amount of sacrifice. Thirdly, it’s seen as a selfless, humanitarian vocation (to which, considering some doctors I’ve dealt with, I say ho ho). It’s a deliberate role meant to inform the thunder god’s character, to give him a reason to protect humanity instead of the more attractive pursuit of pillaging his way across the cosmos in a goat-drawn shagwagon.

I think Thor is also unique in that the context that defines him isn’t as dependent on his rogue’s gallery. Instead, the facets of his character become illuminated by his relation to the other gods that surround him. His supporting cast are largely made up from the mythical Norse pantheon, with a few invented gods thrown in for good measure. There’s scope for decent stories in his search for them when they go missing (which seems to happen a fair bit), but a Thor series with them completely absent would be unthinkable, or at least so divergent from the average that it wouldn’t really be a Marvel Comics’ Thor story anymore. It would, however, still be a Thor story, in that the character has existed for a very long time prior to Marvel’s take, and it’s worth noting here that obviously there is a distinct difference between the two.

By incorporating the mythological pantheon, a different spin is given to the usual superhero template. It makes the non-mythical rogue’s gallery less important (which is good, because that side of things tends to be weak), but gives the character a strong supporting cast, and some absolutely cracking mythological bad guys. I mean, elsewhere in comics we see a lot of myth-based evildoers, but are any of them as good as Loki? Surely Thor’s arch-enemy is up there in the list of all-time great comic book baddies. The practical result of the pantheon’s existance is that there’s less of a need for the comic to deal with Thor locating these antagonists. At the simplest level, he knows them because myth tells us he’s been engaged in battle with them for centuries. Thor didn’t need to ‘discover’ Loki, or the frost giants, and neither does the audience, because of the pre-existing literature (which isn’t to say the writer shouldn’t still define them within the context of the Marvel U, of course).

Finally, one aspect of the character that always interests me is how, considering his all-powerful nature, Thor is the Marvel character best suited to deal with the theme of death. A lot of that is inherited from the mythology, of course. Norse culture was very clear that all stories had to have an ending, and that a hero’s tale wasn’t complete without his or her death. With Ragnarok, the people of the north made it very clear that not even the gods could escape from this. What’s fascinating is how the Marvel version of the character embraces these themes. As I said at the beginning of this post, to diminish Thor from god to human is in one sense to kill him. The Marvel U not only incorporates Ragnarok, but has inflicted it on its characters several times (and not even the vikings were that cruel to their gods). Death becomes just another element of a cycle, a reflection of an overarching superheroic theme: our heroes die, but they always come back. And Thor becomes Donald Blake, yet always returns to godhood.

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Some (non-Alien/Predator for once) tat I really, really need to own, spotted at io9: An incredibly detailed Iron Man toy.

Other news has Kenneth Branagh in talks to direct Thor. This is a great idea. His Frankenstein film came up as a conversation topic the other day, and although I remember it having a lukewarm reception, it really was a decent film, with a great cast, and probably one of the steam-punkiest films to ever have a wide release. If Branagh brings that kind of atmosphere and imagination to the Asgard scenes, the film’s going to be amazing. On one hand, I’d love to have a crazy Kirby-fest, but until someone gets Pixar to make Michael Chabon’s 60s set Fantastic Four film it’s not going to happen, so I’ll settle for Oddly Gothic.

The Green Lantern film appears to be ramping up. I don’t see why they don’t just adapt the recent Secret Origin storyline, because I really love that story. I mean, I’m one of the (apparently few) people who quite liked Emerald Dawn, but I don’t really want a screen adaptation of it, and I’m glad the crippling-his-mate-while-drink-driving thing’s been retconned (ret-retconned?) away. I’d be interested to see who they tap for the aliens. I bet Weta’d do an awesome job, but I’d be happy with the Henson Creature Shop too. No news on Sinestro, but he’s got to be in it. Presumably as Hal’s mentor in the first one, and the antagonist in GL II.

Johns has been playing down Sinestro’s alien-ness in Secret Origin so far, in that when he turned up in Rebirth a big deal was made of his, well, sinister demeanor and alien unknowability. Which was really cool, playing up the idea that not every alien species in the Corps was just humanity with a funny skin colour. It gave a sense of original Star Trek-type mystery, the vibe that it’s cold and scary out in space, something that doesn’t always come through in space comics. Of course, that spin doesn’t quite fit with the other Korugans we’ve seen, or Sinestro back when he was a Lantern. Perhaps the cold freakishness isn’t an alien thing, but a symptom of his time spent exiled, either on Qward or inside the Battery. Which is quite cool, too.

Quite looking forward to Neil Gaiman’s new book. It looks a bit more up my street than some of his other work. I think Gaiman’s a great writer, and when he’s good, he’s brilliant. I love Neverwhere, and the original Books of Magic, Anansi Boys was a lot of fun and I’m making my way through his Sandman stuff in the Absolute editions. But I never really got American Gods, I found Eternals a bit lacking and 1602 was let down by a weak ending after a great start. I always meant to go back and read Gods again because I’d probably get more out of it second time round, but I can’t find much enthusiasm for it, really. I think I’d be too busy trying to figure out where all the different gods came from, and while a little bit of that can be fun, the sheer amount of them in the book makes the whole thing too much like hard work.

But a story about a kid raised by ghosts in a graveyard? Kind of thing you wish you’d thought of yourself, really. I’m a little underwhelmed by the McKean cover, but it’s ok because they’re also offering an alternate one by artist Chris Riddell. Riddell’s a fantastic cartoonist, one I remember really clearly from my time as a bookseller. He really stood out amongst the children’s illustrators, his “Rabbit and Hedgehog” books in particular. Even if they may skew a little young for the Journal’s readership.

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I’m starting to feel a bit of a prat putting the year of release in brackets next to the title. It made sense with the Hammer Dracula, not so much everything else. But there we are, that’s just How Things Are Done.

Anyway, great film this. Job done.

Okay, maybe I should expand a little, if only to fill out today’s word quotient.

I tag these kind of posts under ‘Reviews’, but I’m not sure they fit that label. They certainly aren’t critical analyses, because I honestly don’t really know what that means. I guess they’re just blog posts where I want to talk about something I’ve seen, and I don’t know what the word is for that. Whatever they are, I hope that they’re a little more interesting than a plot recap followed by a conceptually pointless mark or percentage.

This particular entry is made difficult by the fact that I have more to say about where the film went wrong than where it went right, which will make it sound like I didn’t enjoy it, when I did. What the film did well, it did really well, and I wish they made more films like this, but I suspect its low-key reception will rule that out. My giddy aunt, what a useless set of sentences.

Anyway, the negatives: There’s what I can only describe as an arbitrary unicorn in this film. It is a walking, neighing plot device, present only because there’s a tacit agreement that all fairy tale movies have to have one. The score is awful twee, from the flutey sparkles to Gary Barlow over the credits, the most distracting bit being the first bar or so of the love theme, which is almost identical to the hobbits’ theme in Lord of the Rings. Ricky Gervais, while funny, takes you right out of the setting by playing Ricky Gervais. And, despite every other American (well, Michelle Pfeiffer) giving the Generic English Accent the old school try, De Niro sticks with his usual one. Bobby DeNiro is always from New York.

But my two biggest criticisms are a bit less definite than the ones above. Firstly, the script writers did a brilliant job of capturing the tone and atmosphere of Gaiman’s fairy tale. The changes made to the plot are necessary to really tie the story into a comprehensible film, while retaining all the major points and scenes from the book. The problem is that some of the dialogue tended to clunk a bit, which may not have been noticible in an original flick but suffers in comparison to Gaiman’s somewhat more elegant style.

The second is the production design. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty impressive; epic where it needed to be, whimsical, fantastic and jumbled elsewhere, all gothic and Gigery in the witches’ hall. But to me, it didn’t look at all like Charles Vess. Oddly, if there was one thing 30 Days of Night did better, it was in capturing the flavour of the original story’s artist while unable to physically replicate his images. Here, the design team are pretty faithful (I thought) to Vess’ images, while being unable to replicate his unique style. Mind you, that may just be me.

God, now I feel mean. Regardless of, well, everything I’ve just written, I did enjoy the film. It’s funny and exciting and the cast are awesome, and if you like fantasy films it’ll be right up your street.

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Just a few follow-up points to yesterday’s post:

• I rank both Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis highly as writers, but I liked neither of them about ten years ago. As a teenager, I found their work far too mean-spirited, but as with Sandman, I’ve found myself appreciating them more now I’m older. The turning points for me were Preacher round about the time Alamo was released, towards the end of the run, and Ultimate Fantastic Four. Unsurprisingly, I first understood the strength of their writing when they weren’t tediously reiterating why they hate superheroes so much.
• Regarding Neil Gaiman, while I’ve only begun to appreciate Sandman recently, even at the time they were originally released I loved The Books of Magic, Good Omens, and Neverwhere (both the novel and on the telly). With the other two writers, I didn’t seem to like anything they did.
• It’s really difficult for me to describe Ennis’ strength as a writer. I keep going round and round on this point. I will say he’s better read in collected form than individual issues, where you’re able to immerse yourself in his somewhat skewed worldview. There’s a lot of substance to his characters, considering how cartoonish the violence is on the surface.
• It’s a credit to Ennis that I’ve started to enjoy his Punisher run as much as I do, because I fucking loathe the character. Really, really fucking loathe him.
• With indescribable fucking loathing.

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