I’m getting a real kick out of Straczynski’s writing on the Thor re-launch and I have to say Coipel’s pencils are simply marvelous. JMS has brought the magic back to Odin’s boy. I’m excited about where the book is headed. Still as much as I like what they’re doing, that ain’t my Thor.
My Norse God of Thunder was hurling his mystic uru hammer back in the seventies.
My habit started back in ’75, but I didn’t get my Thor groove on until 1978. I remember standing before the spin rack at the corner store, disgusted that I’d read everything displayed except for the Archies. And that Thor book.
I picked up Thor.
Now, I was familiar with Thor from his various appearances in the Marvel books I was reading, but I’d not had much interest. Until I read The Mighty Thor #276. I read and re-read that book, soaking it up.
I ached for the next issue.
And the issue after that.
I went on a hunt for the issues preceding it.
I was fascinated by the mythology Roy Thomas was spinning alongside the clash of modernity so finely illustrated by John Buscema. Thomas was telling the tale of Ragnarok while a documentary film crew followed the action. I was hooked.
I was familiar with Greek mythology, but it was through the pages of The Mighty Thor that I developed a passion for the Norse legends. I worked to finish class assignments early so that I could be excused to the library. There, between the towering shelves, my eleven year old self studied the encyclopedia entries on the vikings and their deities.
I took pages of notes, filling up my spiral notebook with an awkward cursive (which I still haven’t mastered) and sketches of runes.
“What class are you studying for?” The Librarian asked one day.
“No class,” I answered barely even looking up from an illustration of the Twilight of the Gods.
“Then why do you come every day?”
“I want to know.”
Her look of stunned surprise remains with me almost thirty years later.
Post Ragnarok, Thomas moved his story into the Ring Cycle telling the tale of Alberich’s Ring with Keith Pollard at the pencils. My father, always interested in what I was reading, mentioned one day: “Y’know this an opera, right?”
“What?” I gestured to my comics, “This?”
Dad, a classical music buff, drew out his Time Life set of Wagner’s Ring Cycle placing the first of many LPs on the turntable.
And I’ve loved Richard Wagner ever since.
The Thor of Thomas & Buscema and Thomas & Pollard has been a doorway to both history and the arts, a doorway to knowledge. I’m a bit partial to those books. They’ve been magic.
So while Straczynski isn’t writing my Thor, I imagine he’s writing someone’s. I hope and pray that JMS and brother Coipel have the same effect on eleven year-olds today that those guys back in the 70′s had on me.
November 27th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Hey, Aron…that’s right about the time I came onboard as a Thor fan as well. Despite all of the additional Norse mythology and Ring Cycle elements to juggle, I was hooked. Hats off to Roy Thomas for taking a risk and introducing the Wagnerian stuff.
November 27th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Great piece, Aron! Does a nice job of capturing how comics from that era could serve as introductions to all kinds of new worlds…
An earlier period of Thor left me with an interest for Egyptian mythology. Much less fervent than yours, but it’s stuck with me.
November 27th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Thanks, Jeff. Comics can do introduce us to many fields… Sadly, reading FANTASTIC FOUR never gave me a thirst for physics – though I’d still like a Negative Zone portal of my very own. But I’d rather just order one out of the Penney’s catalogue than have to understand the science that makes it work.