Lögberg-Heimskringla - 14.07.2006, Page 9

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ing books of mythology, but
enjoyed the Norse myths best.
He says he liked their “doom-
haunted quality” — unlike the
Roman and Greek gods, the
Æsir had an ending, Ragnarök,
waiting for them.
He also enjoyed the Lee/
Kirby Thor comic (which, after
Journey into Mystery No. 125
was rechristened The Mighty
Thor), and when he had the op-
portunity to work on the title as
writer and artist, he brought his
own knowledge of the Eddas to
it.
He had already drawn it for
a year in the late ’70s, follow-
ing the style of his predeces-
sors. “What that meant for me
is that when I went back to the
book several years later and be-
gan writing it as well as draw-
ing it, I’d kind of done my ‘Stan
Lee/Jack Kirby’ Asgard. I sort
of felt a little freedom to move
beyond that.
“What I really wanted to do
was to capture the enthusiasm
those stories had for me... and
yet, I didn’t want to go back and
just retell their stories.”
Simonson introduced some
of his own new characters, such
as the alien Beta Ray Bill, the
only other being deemed wor-
thy of wielding Thor’s ham-
mer Mjölnir. He also brought in
more elements from the Eddas,
such as Naglfar, the ship made
from dead men’s nails, or Gar-
mur, the huge canine guardian
of the underworld. One charac-
ter he reintroduced was Surtur
the fire giant, who nearly suc-
ceeded in his bid to destroy As-
gard.
“Thor, for me, looks back
into the past,” Simonson says.
“Because of the nature of the
character and because of his
mythological antecedents, he
looks back to the mythological
past, and the values it encom-
passes and the storues that are
told there. The Fantastic Four,
because of the pulp science fic-
tion techno look to the strip, and
the way it was written, looks
forward to the future. A very
much from its time [the 1960s],
very much an optimistic future,
in which technology would be
able to solve lots of problems.
“I was always a big fan of
the myths and when I discov-
ered the Thor comic book, I was
delighted,” Simonson says. “Of
course, like anybody else who’s
read the myths, I realized im-
mediately that Thor didn’t have
a beard, he wasn’t red-headed,
he didn’t wear his iron gloves to
throw the hammer around. But
you know, I wasn’t a fanatic
about that stuff. I just enjoyed
the stories for what they were.
“Later, when I was doing the
comic, I did actually give him a
beard.” He adds that he wanted
to make Thor’s hair red as well,
but given the colour limitations
of the printing process, it would
have been too similar to his
cape, which would have meant
more changes to the hero’s sig-
naturte look. “In the end I just
thought it was too much of a
pain in the neck, just to make
the hair work.”
On what the appeal is of
the characters from Norse my-
thology for modern audiences,
Simonson says it’s difficult to
pin down. Thor was always his
favourite Marvel character, the
company’s equivalent to Super-
man, and Simonson enjoyed
touches like Thor’s archaic way
of speaking and his nobility.
But in general, he says,
the “doom-haunted quality of
the Norse myths is terribly ap-
pealing. It’s really the sense
that you get a complete story.
There really is an ending.” He
adds given the fragmentary
sources for them, there is a
“cryptic quality of some of it,
where there are clearly things
we don’t know about what the
stories were back in those days
or how they worked, and un-
less they find some other docu-
ments and somebody’s at it, we
aren’t ever going to know.” He
Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 14. júlí 2006 • 9
VALHALLA © CARLSEN COMICS / PETER MADSEN
Thor wrestles with his nemesis Jormungandur, the Midgard
Serpent, in one of Peter Madsen’s Valhalla books, Rejsen til
Udgårdsloke (“The Journey to Utgard-Loki”).
THE MIGHTY THOR © MARVEL COMICS / ART BY WALTER SIMONSON
From left: Loki, Odin and Thor prepare to face the fire giant Surtur during Walter Simonson’s
popular run on Marvel’s The Mighty Thor in the 1980s. Marvel Comics’ Loki was Thor’s mis-
chievous half-brother, and not Odin’s blood-brother as in the original myths.
Continued on page 10