Thor Odinson Appreciation 2018

[JackDaw]

I wonder why that might be?

When I get interested in a character I read as much if them as I can irrelevant of the age do long as I like the art

I'll admit dome stuff from the 40s or 50s might get skimmed but 60s onwards, I'll read up coz for me at that point the art got yo where I liked it

I am curious as to why age of product would limit interest

maybe the mythos feels dated and too different? I am curious

In my case the writing style is more important than the art...assuming artwork reaches an acceptable level. Given that bias...a lot of the 60’s stories just seem a bit too one dimensional/ lacking nuance. Always exceptions, of course!

In general...there’s such a wealth of wonderful old material, that I’m always surprised that newcomers often effectively get advised to concentrate on stuff being produced currently.

I can’t think of many genres where the standard advice wouldn’t be to sample fairly widely from different eras, find the style, writers (and artists) you enjoy most and take it from there.

[kilderkin]

In my case the writing style is more important than the art...assuming artwork reaches an acceptable level. Given that bias...a lot of the 60’s stories just seem a bit too one dimensional/ lacking nuance. Always exceptions, of course!

In general...there’s such a wealth of wonderful old material, that I’m always surprised that newcomers often effectively get advised to concentrate on stuff being produced currently.

I can’t think of many genres where the standard advice wouldn’t be to sample fairly widely from different eras, find the style, writers (and artists) you enjoy most and take it from there.

art puts me off something the most, that's true with stuff new and old

Writing I can see how things have changed a lot, but I still find much to enjoy especially of things in the 70s and 80's

[JKtheMac]

I wonder why that might be?

When I get interested in a character I read as much if them as I can irrelevant of the age do long as I like the art

I'll admit dome stuff from the 40s or 50s might get skimmed but 60s onwards, I'll read up coz for me at that point the art got yo where I liked it

I am curious as to why age of product would limit interest

maybe the mythos feels dated and too different? I am curious

I read the old stuff I missed and revisit lots of old books but they are just not well written generally. I read them with academic interest and rarely for pleasure. The style choices are very of their times. It is difficult to generalise because every era has its good and bad points, but the road map on how to write comics well was clearly more of a sketch back then.

On a personal note, I have an especially low threshold for clunky dialogue as much of my own writing work relies upon smooth and naturalist dialogue, so I am continually resisting the urge to rewrite everything in my head as I go along. So from a relaxation perspective that just doesn’t work. Even in the immersive medium of modern TV, unconvincing dialogue will be the most likely thing to break my concentration.

[JKtheMac]

In my case the writing style is more important than the art...assuming artwork reaches an acceptable level. Given that bias...a lot of the 60’s stories just seem a bit too one dimensional/ lacking nuance. Always exceptions, of course!

In general...there’s such a wealth of wonderful old material, that I’m always surprised that newcomers often effectively get advised to concentrate on stuff being produced currently.

I can’t think of many genres where the standard advice wouldn’t be to sample fairly widely from different eras, find the style, writers (and artists) you enjoy most and take it from there.

However, if someone says I just read Thor 700 and really loved it the worst possible advice would be ‘go back to the eighties you will love it!’ It is possible they will enjoy it, but there is no reason to suspect they will based on writing style.

Take the Simonson run. It is epic and mythic, and the art is one of the few that looks equally as great in digital as it did on paper, but the pacing is entirely different, there is a modem sense of subtext but it is far more on the surface. The scene changes are often not thematically driven so a reader more used to a unified theme may feel frustrated. The action is often simpler, less concerned with building the story and more about people hitting things. More cinematic, less literary. None of these things are going to put off an older fan. Overall it feels simpler and therefore comfortable and nostalgic, but a reader who picked up Thor 700 isn't nostalgic for old Thor, so that takes a lot of the charm away.

Simonson on Ragnarok might be a better first step. That is much more modern in its outlook.

To use a TV analogy, if somebody said ‘I just watched the new Doctor Who what else should I watch?’ I wouldn’t tell them to go and watch City of Death even though I love it. I know it’s a total mess and would probably put them off forever.

[Paradox_Nihil]

However, if someone says I just read Thor 700 and really loved it the worst possible advice would be ‘go back to the eighties you will love it!’ It is possible they will enjoy it, but there is no reason to suspect they will based on writing style.

Take the Simonson run. It is epic and mythic, and the art is one of the few that looks equally as great in digital as it did on paper, but the pacing is entirely different, there is a modem sense of subtext but it is far more on the surface. The scene changes are often not thematically driven so a reader more used to a unified theme may feel frustrated. The action is often simpler, less concerned with building the story and more about people hitting things. More cinematic, less literary. None of these things are going to put off an older fan. Overall it feels simpler and therefore comfortable and nostalgic, but a reader who picked up Thor 700 isn't nostalgic for old Thor, so that takes a lot of the charm away.

Simonson on Ragnarok might be a better first step. That is much more modern in its outlook.

To use a TV analogy, if somebody said ‘I just watched the new Doctor Who what else should I watch?’ I wouldn’t tell them to go and watch City of Death even though I love it. I know it’s a total mess and would probably put them off forever.

You are searching for easy solutions. There are no absolutes in the art (or entertainment). I've heard educated musicians stating that Mozart is only an average composer, so there are really no works of art which are "for everyone", and never will be. I always give recommendations not based on my personal taste, but on the taste of the person asking, or what I at least assume that taste is. Nobody writes like Shakespeare today, but that doesn't mean nobody respects his work. That has nothing to do with nostalgia. And there are some people with great knowledge about the medium of comics, who analyzed Simonson's Thor and felt it isn't dated by any standard. Just different. And you forget to mention that it was very strange in its own time, totally unlike anything Marvel was publishing then or published since. You can't label someone as 'nostalgic' if he/she wasn't born when the run was first published, and read it many years later as an adult.

And, in fact, it's neither literary nor cinematic. (But, generally, why do you think "more cinematic, less literary" approach would limit the audience, when we live in what some historians call "movie age of comics"?) The work of Bryan Hitch is "cinematic" (just without sound ). Simonson used similar structure occassionally (and before Hitch, of course), but only within very limited scope (like the opening sequence of Orion). It would be an impossible task to adapt his Thor stories into a movie (or a series of movies) without losing much. One of his greatest strengths is the page design (and onomatopoeia, too), and you can do it only in comics. Page layout is the third great element of the comics, usually neglected in favour of just words and pictures/artstyle, but the truth is that comics are a visual medium, and the overreliance on the role of the writer in some* modern American mainstream comics, with at least several different artists on a longer run, is absurd. There is no "Jason Aaron's run" on Thor, really. It's just an unknown (to me) quantity of words on paper (or screen). But there are Aaron/Ribic's, Aaron/Dauterman's runs, etc, and people just forget to refer to them as such.

"Modern" can mean "up to today's standards (which are always evolving**)" but also "engaging in daily politics and problems the next generation will forget about = pretty ephemeral in the long run".



*meaning, Marvel and DC
** art doesn't really evolve past a certain point, but changes

[JKtheMac]

You are searching for easy solutions. There are no absolutes in the art (or entertainment).

Nope I don’t believe in them.

And there are some people with great knowledge about the medium of comics, who analyzed Simonson's Thor and felt it isn't dated by any standard.

They can be proven objectively wrong even if they are convincing. You seem to think I am critiquing the run as not good or less than great for its time. (Mozart is phenomenally great for any era. Shakespeare and the King James Bible between them shaped the English language, so there is nothing relevant there.)

And, in fact, it's neither literary nor cinematic. (But, generally, why do you think "more cinematic, less literary" approach would limit the audience, when we live in what some historians call "movie age of comics"?)

You clearly didn’t read what I said. I was talking specifically about the fight scenes being cinematic in that they are lead by visuals and action and not in any way thematically driven. Lots of modern writers try and do more with fight scenes. That isn’t a criticism so much as a demonstration that it isn’t modern in one specific aspect. The grand climactic fight scene in the first big arc sets up the combatants and then focuses on events and action. Just like a movie would.

Compare to the climactic fight scene in Fear Itself which on one level is an eventful fight and on another is a culmination of tragedy, contains resonances about inevitably and self-fulfilling prophesy, has religious subtext regarding Thor's messianic context etc. etc. It has a more literary feel in its depth and resonance.

Note: I am not saying Simonson doesn’t do this at all, I am saying it was less expected in that era and therefore there is less of it. Indeed these things go way back to the roots of the characters. The way they get expressed has changed considerably over the decades.

The rest of your post is weirdly argumentative for no apparent reason. I am talking specifically about writing qualities and you want to argue about artist contributions, as if I wouldn’t agree. Aaron is setting the themes and direction of the narrative and is building in the resonance and all the things I am referring to. His entire time on the character has unified themes and is developing a single long-form story, so it is not wrong to refer to it as his ‘run’ in this context.

You set your own definition of modern that has nothing to do with what I am talking about. 'Nostalgic' is taken way out of my context. If you think Simonson’s run is somehow above criticism then good for you, but it’s just a comic, and subject to critique like anything else. I think it would be a terrible recommendation for a reader that is just getting into modern comics and has been reading things written by Gillen, Aaron, JMS etc.

P.S. Simonson’s art is some of my favourite in all of Thor history, but I wasn’t talking about art.

P.P.S. No more stark a thread exists to demonstrate some of these points that the current one on Jurgens. A run that marks the transition towards modern comics and as such divides opinion in fandom.

[Paradox_Nihil]

Nope I don’t believe in them.

They can be proven objectively wrong even if they are convincing. You seem to think I am critiquing the run as not good or less than great for its time. (Mozart is phenomenally great for any era. Shakespeare and the King James Bible between them shaped the English language, so there is nothing relevant there.)



You clearly didn’t read what I said. I was talking specifically about the fight scenes being cinematic in that they are lead by visuals and action and not in any way thematically driven. Lots of modern writers try and do more with fight scenes. That isn’t a criticism so much as a demonstration that it isn’t modern in one specific aspect. The grand climactic fight scene in the first big arc sets up the combatants and then focuses on events and action. Just like a movie would.

Compare to the climactic fight scene in Fear Itself which on one level is an eventful fight and on another is a culmination of tragedy, contains resonances about inevitably and self-fulfilling prophesy, has religious subtext regarding Thor's messianic context etc. etc. It has a more literary feel in its depth and resonance.

Note: I am not saying Simonson doesn’t do this at all, I am saying it was less expected in that era and therefore there is less of it. Indeed these things go way back to the roots of the characters. The way they get expressed has changed considerably over the decades.

The rest of your post is weirdly argumentative for no apparent reason. I am talking specifically about writing qualities and you want to argue about artist contributions, as if I wouldn’t agree. Aaron is setting the themes and direction of the narrative and is building in the resonance and all the things I am referring to. His entire time on the character has unified themes and is developing a single long-form story, so it is not wrong to refer to it as his ‘run’ in this context.

You set your own definition of modern that has nothing to do with what I am talking about. 'Nostalgic' is taken way out of my context. If you think Simonson’s run is somehow above criticism then good for you, but it’s just a comic, and subject to critique like anything else. I think it would be a terrible recommendation for a reader that is just getting into modern comics and has been reading things written by Gillen, Aaron, JMS etc.

No, it's just the opposite of what you have said. No one and nothing is beyond criticism, but you seem somewhat "obsessed" with Aaron and Simonson and their relation. It's evident even in your very reply or you wouldn't have turned to statements of appreciation for Simonson in every other sentence, when my point wasn't about that (or him) at all, but about a larger issue of how we perceive and accept values in art. I would never have started this discussion alone. What prompted me to react wasn't your opinion about Simonson's Thor, but about people who think it stands the test of time. "Time", mind you, not a fashion or style or someone's taste, and all you ever said could be attributed to these, although you believe otherwise. I mean, those silly comic books of the 70s and 80s, they were meant to be consumed and thrown away, weren't they? That's the very definition of the word "pulp". There were repeated explanations in every issue, because that's how the format was operating back then - every issue could have been someone's first. Series were never meant to be read in one session. And there was the Comics Code, that seriously limited the content. And yet, our culture picked those comic books and preserved them and started to study and analyze and re-print them, as if it was high art. So, we are going to apply the principles of high art.

As Warren Ellis once said, comics are a weird medium, almost without general rules. You can be cinematic, you can be literary. You can be both or neither. And still be contemporary. There are different approaches even within Simonson's run, and hand picking just the ones that (you think) suit your belief or cause will lead us nowhere. Surely, the battle between Thor and Jormungand isn't cinematic in any sense?

Of course it's always difficult to recommend (to the modern audience) anything that isn't actual and contemporary. That's a no-brainer and that's how entertainment media work. You don't recommend Portishead to modern-day kids without deep consideration. But, those who are curious and have a broad range of interests will sooner or later find out about it. Those who are not... well, why would I care? Mozart is mentioned as an example that even someone who is believed to be to everyone's taste actually isn't. So, the whole your question is futile in essence. There is no "formula for perfect recommendations" to solve here.

But this is becoming too big in scope and meaning for this thread. I could say much more, but I don't want to limit myself to Marvel comics in a discussion of this type. Not even to American comics. French comics. Manga. Options are everywhere. But, if you just wanted to hear what other posters think about recommending Thor runs, that's another matter. The early Jurgens' run is barely readable to me, for he doesn't know how to use archaic speech properly. And he used a lot of it. He had some great ideas later on, though.

The best myth - or the story that works on a mythic level - that hasn't been used very well inside the context of a Thor comic is the story about Elder Gods and Demogorge, in my opinion. Alan Zelenetz, I think. And someone should have done something constructive about it.

P.S. Simonson’s art is some of my favourite in all of Thor history, but I wasn’t talking about art.

Neither was I. To put it in the words of Howard Chaykin, "I'm more interested in why than in how". Or something like that. Call it visual thinking if you want. The language of comics. The majority of writers think in words. So, "the artist's contribution" should be the essential part. There is no advancement in comics as a medium without it. Even Alan Moore produced best work when his collaborators were atuned to his vision, given relative freedom, and consequentially couldn't be replaced at all. All Marvel has been doing in "modern" time is replacing artists. And replacing artists. And then replacing them again. (To be fair, DC isn't better at this. But there are better options in other places.)

[616MarvelYear is LeapYear]

Thor #396 Oct 1988
War of Gods: Part 2 of 6 – "Into the Realm of Death"
On Earth, Hogun has recovered and been released into Thor’s custody.

With the help of Earth Force, they trick Grog into taking them to Seth’s dimension.

But Seth has already begun his assault of Asgard itself and Balder has no
choice but to use the Celestial Siphon to drain Thor’s powers into himself.

Which leaves Thor helpless before Grog and Seth’s army.

Script by Tom DeFalco, pencils by Ron Frenz, inks by Don Heck

[comicscollector]

Ron Frenz was a great choice to illustrate the Thor stories back then.
I think Frenz art style worked really well in the Thor stories.

[GodThor]

https://www.quora.com/In-the-most-re...-of-themselves

damn, it's hard to read it.

[kilderkin]

https://www.quora.com/In-the-most-re...-of-themselves

damn, it's hard to read it.

Copy that

Thor and odin are shadows of their former selves for most of their history

pitiful imo

[Ken Ashcroft]

Ron Frenz was a great choice to illustrate the Thor stories back then.
I think Frenz art style worked really well in the Thor stories.

Personally I didn’t like the way that Frenz worked at all. The odd ‘homage’ cover or two to great past artists like Kirby and Buscema is fine but he went too far in the actual stories and I’m surprised that the editors let him get away with it.

[616MarvelYear is LeapYear]

Thor #467 Oct 1993
Infinity Crusade crossover, "Descent"
Sif arrives in Olympus and voices her fears to Zeus that Thor may be suffering from madness

but has to battle Pluto in the arena to prove her point;

Thor is reunited with Valkyrie who shows her true colors by getting the confused thunder god to agree to kill his father.

Script by Ron Marz, pencils by Bruce Zick, inks by Mike DeCarlo

[Thor-El]

Ron Frenz was a great choice to illustrate the Thor stories back then.
I think Frenz art style worked really well in the Thor stories.

I have to agree. He did use a lot of Kirby and Buscema but he organized it in a way that never looked bad but brought a unified style to the book that made it look even fresh and nostalgic.

[Thor-El]

Thor #396 Oct 1988
War of Gods: Part 2 of 6 – "Into the Realm of Death"
On Earth, Hogun has recovered and been released into Thor’s custody.

With the help of Earth Force, they trick Grog into taking them to Seth’s dimension.

But Seth has already begun his assault of Asgard itself and Balder has no
choice but to use the Celestial Siphon to drain Thor’s powers into himself.

Which leaves Thor helpless before Grog and Seth’s army.

Script by Tom DeFalco, pencils by Ron Frenz, inks by Don Heck

Ah, some of the last Don Heck to appear in Marvel Comics was at that time! The memories!