Thor #359

Thor: Ragnarok

Thor #359

Marvel’s secret script consultant, Walt Simonson

"The Grand Alliance or Life with Loki!!!”

Art and Story – Walt Simonson

Letters – John Workman, Jr

Coloring – Christie Scheele

Editing – Ralph Macchio

Editor-in-Chief – Jim Shooter

September 1985

The Crapbox is sometimes prescient.

What prophetic powers do I ascribe to a random pile of comics that I bought for less a quarter a piece? If you’ve seen the movie, and from the box office I would hazard that most of you have, when you read this review all of it will become very clear.

Why do I say that? Here is my story: I am sharing with you what happened yesterday. Right before I purchased tickets to Thor: Ragnarok, I had a few hours to kill. I decide to reach in and pull out one more Thor issue from the pile that were in the crapbox to review.

This was what my hand settled on, a mid-run Walt Simonson tale of Loki and Lorelei that occurs one issue before the big showdown with Hela. I was enthused to read it because it was Simonson and I love all his work. It had been quite some time since I reached back into his stories, and I’ll admit to having forgotten this one.

I did remember Lorelei, though. She’s a minor villainess who has a bunch in common with her sister Amora, who is also known as the Enchantress. Her powers are mostly kiss-based, making men her obedient slaves if they so much as dare one brief lip-lock. In this issue she has Thor by the hormones after she kissed him last issue. Oh, and she is in league with Loki, which is why they show him and her together on the cover.

I wasn’t really thrilled to find out there was no Hela in it though. Also there was probably little movie tie-in appeal as Lorelei didn’t have a chance of showing up in Thor 3. She was so low level, Marvel gave her character away to the TV show Agents of SHEILD. While played by the lovely and talented Elena Satine, Lorelei bedeviled the agents for a few episodes in seasons one and two, albeit with little in the way of special effects. Perhaps that’s why she was attractive to the TV side of Marvel Studios: lower budget costs.

But ANY Simonson issue is amazing in one way or another, so I read it and found it was…well, you’ll find out below.

For those of you who’ve seen the movie, you’ll get the point I’m trying to make about the Crapbox just “knowing” when to spit something out at me. I’ve already taken what it throws out on faith.

But you might not, so let me show you what I mean.

We begin the issue with Thor completely mesmerized by Lorelei’s spell. He arrives in Asgard singing his step-brother’s praises and demanding he be made king.

Thor freely admits to Heimdall that his change of heart about his brother is all due to his new found love Lorelei having shown him the way. Heimdall is no fool, and summons help.

Next Lady Frigga arrives to hear from Thor’s own lips that he is advocating for his rat-fink step-brother. Thor subjects her and Volstagg’s daughter Hildy to the same line of BS. So she has Heimdall summon the Enchantress, Lady Amora.

Amora even tries to use her own magic kiss to break the spell on Thor…

…but Lorelei’s enchantment is much stronger, and Thor remains bound to her will and Loki’s mechanizations...

Sif arrives and tries the more…Direct approach, only to be prevented from doing any real intimidating by Thor himself. 

Seeing that things are getting rough, Lorelei excuses herself and flies back to Loki on a giant pelican-type bird, while Thor’s friends hatch one final plan to save him. It begins with Heimdall watching Lorelei’s flight to see where she goes. Once sure her path is back to Loki, they set their plan into motion.

They convince Thor that he has completed his mission, and everyone believes Loki should be made king. It is a short step from there to explaining that the Thunder God should go tell the God of Mischief immediately.

Thor arrives to find Loki’s castle deserted...

...and the only light coming from the bedroom where…

…this is taking place.

He doesn’t take it so well, the love spell being both a boon and a curse at this moment. Lorelei can control him and force him to bow to her words…

…but she can’t stop his rage at Loki for touching his beloved.

And that proves the villains undoing. For after a brief scuffle, with Thor coming to his senses about the evil Loki represents, Thor arrives at an elegant method of obtaining his cooperation.

First Lorelei gets knocked out after Loki attempts to use magic to make Thor see duplicates of her. The real temptress is injured by the whirling force of Mjolnir, banging her head into a beam.

Then Thor flings his hammer far into the sky and takes Loki in his grip. At this moment he offers an ultimatum.

What follows is a tremendously familiar (to moviegoers, anyway) form of epic brinkmanship.

Loki’s will breaks at near the last second, uttering the spell that frees Thor...

…and Thor proves quite the trickster himself, as the hammer returns to Thor’s empty RIGHT hand, not the one holding Loki. With that bit of enchantment dispelled, Thor gives Lorelei one final shove off…

…and the heads back to Asgard, proper, leaving Lorelei still in love with a decidedly dejected Loki.

The issue ends with the return of the assorted armies of Asgard from Central Park on Earth. They had been exiled there when the Bifrost was destroyed in Surtur’s attack on Asgard, even as they fought his fire demon hoards on Earth. Aided by Beta Ray Bill, Thor creates a portal to transport them to the golden realm, in a very amazing sequence…

… that even has a guest appearance by Walter and Louise themselves. 

Such a fun issue.

So yeah, this was great. And timely. And wonderful.

Simonson’s stuff rarely shows up in the Crapbox. These are possibly the best Thor stories ever, ranking right up there with Stan and Jack’s stuff and I covet every one I find. It is odd that this one wasn’t bagged and boarded into my REAL comic book collection the moment it arrived.

But it wasn’t. It was in the Crapbox as if it knew that it was relevant. And it waited until two hours from showtime to appear there, begging to be read.

The Crapbox knows the future. And oddly enough, I’m kind of proud of that…

The Mighty Thor #32

Thor: Ragnarok

The Mighty Thor #32

 

 100 PAGES!

If you think I’m reviewing all of this one, you’re crazy

"The Meaning of Ragnarok!” and “Aftermath”

Script – Stan Lee

Pencils – Jack Kirby

Inks – Vince Colletta

Letterer – Artie Simek and S. Rosen, respectively

Reprinted February 2001

I don’t know what Marvel was drinking in my birth month circa 2001, but I wish they did it more often. It’s like they knew years of decompressed storytelling was on its way and they tried to make up for it in one issue of Thor. 

100 pages of story.

This is a serious issue, folks.

There are four complete comics in this, one new and three classic. Also two Tales of Asgard “shorts.” And the price for all these pages? $3.50.

I mean, you should sit down when you say that because DAMN. Sure these are mostly reprints, but the eras are so removed from one another, it is unlikely that a majority of the audience has seen ALL of these stories.

But we are here about the new movie and tie-ins and getting people excited and stuff! Not about telephone book glimpses into Thor’s world. So, one of these tales will be a lucky winner of a review.

But which one?

Not this first 22 page original story “Forever Kursed” which features Malekith and Kurse, the villains from Thor: The Dark World. Although the art from Andy Kubert is nice and Dan Jurgens spins an entertaining tale, if feels like we’ve been here before with these two characters and Thor…and done better even, perhaps.

Okay then if not that tale, what of this classic Lee-Kirby era yarn called “To Become an Immortal!” which when viewed by today’s audiences is sure to get a laugh. 

For you see, in it Thor takes Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, in the movies) to Asgard via the Bifrost…

…and it freaks her the heck out! Once they stand before the All Father Odin, he bestows upon Jane a gift because she is Thor's beloved.

…a gift which turns Jane into a goddess with the powers of an Asgardian. 

Which she has for about ten seconds before she freaks out and forgets how to fly while in mid-flight. Then she fails a test where she has to punch a multi-armed monster to prove she has the mettle to be a god. Thor has to jump in and help her, which leads to this:

And Jane is seen with a new guy in the VERY NEXT PANEL. A nice man. A dentist. And Thor moves on to Sif.

I find that so funny given Jane is the current God of Thunder in the Thor books at this time. It’s like they aren’t even the same person.

But NO, it isn’t that story either. Perhaps it is this one?

“The Day the Thunder Failed!” is a great Roy Thomas tale with classic Buscema-Palmer art that has Thor telling some youths about facing up to bullies even when they are bigger and stronger than you.

Still! Not the one. Nope.

Okay then, what about “This Kursed Earth…!” the culmination of a large part of the Malekith arc from Walt Simonson’s epic masterpiece of a Thor saga? It’s got everyone from Power Pack to the Beyonder making appearances. How about it?

Alas, no. Again that’s treading on Dark World territory and where we are headed is forward.

Forward to the silver-age tale “The Meaning of RAGNAROK!”

For the first time I really see how botched Vince Colletta’s inks are. There are several panels in here that needed a lite touch and received either no subtlety at all or no ink. It was truly feast or famine.

To the good we have a story where Thor, Loki, and Balder? Is that Balder? have been summoned back to Odin’s side to hear the words of Volla, the Prophetess, who is going to explain THE THING THAT WAS SAID IN THE TITLE!

So from her smoky visions, we make out that Ragnarok will begin with a horrible winter the produces a nameless fear driving all of Asgard mad. As anarchy and chaos descend upon the gods themselves…

…a god (to be named later) betrays everyone and leads frost giants and monsters across the Bifrost to destroy Asgard (psst! It’s Loki. You can tell it’s him from the picture), causing the gods to destroy the Rainbow Bridge and Heimdall to sound the alarm as his last act of devotion.

Which prefaces All Father Odin and faithful son Thor moving to defend the golden realm with their very heart and badly inked, poorly color-separated souls.

Until only Thor is left alive and must face the betrayer (Loki!) alone in single combat. But defeating him only leads to the ultimate foe rising to avenge him. The appearance of the terrible Midgard Serpent…

And then we even get to see what comes after all this in the next “Tales of Asgard”…but first this brief one-panel recap.

Followed by page one which has Asgard EXPLODE! (seen that in the trailers) shaking the very foundations of Infinity itself.

In the wreckage Surtur appears and burns the rest of Asgard as a final “middle finger” since he himself will die next.

And then some bullshit that everything will start back over again and everyone will be happy, including all the dead people…who I would argue are not happy, but just dead. 

And I think this part was all Jack’s imaginings, since he planned something like this for the New Gods at DC as well. The idea of creating characters and then later throwing them all out and starting over really appealed to Jack. Probably because he had so many NEW characters popping out of that amazing noggin of his that he constantly wanted to clear the way for them.

He really was a tremendously imaginative dude.

Anyway, with that last bit, Odin concludes and then points out Loki as the one who will bring this all about. Which makes me wonder if that was the case before he pointed or if this is some kind of “self-fulfilling prophecy” deal.

Either way – Asgard in ruins! Explosions and flames! The gods themselves fighting in the streets for the Golden Realm! Thor defeated! Ragnarok!

Yep, should be a great movie.