Last week saw the close of a majority of runs that had redefined characters or elements of the Marvel Universe. It was a big week for a lot of Marvel fans, as Marvel NOW! edges ever closer and everything we knew becomes different.
So, as a tribute to some of the impressive work that helped shaped the Marvel Universe as we like it, we thought it would be appropriate to take a week and look back at some of those titles, to really try and dissect what it was that made it special. It could be any number of things, and it is obviously different per person, but what you’ll find in this article series is essentially our version of a viking funeral.
Today we wrap things up for the month by looking at Kieron Gillen’s runs on “Thor” and “Journey into Mystery.”
As a note before we begin, spoilers for the entire run are inevitably discussed.
Here’s a question for you: why hasn’t there been a definitive modern take on Thor? We’ve covered Captain America, Iron Man and the Fantastic Four, and in about another month or so we’ll tackle the Avengers, but Thor — one of Marvel’s biggest characters right now — does not have any singular writer who has been guiding him and his title for a distinctly modern epic to the same level that the previously mentioned books and characters have. It’s a very curious thing, but it’s one that is never the less noticeable as we look at what is coming in the Marvel NOW! era and what is wrapping up to make room for it.
Well, I sort of have the answer for you. There may not have been a definitive modern take on Thor himself, no, but there was a definite modern update to the Thor mythos — and that’s what you will find in Kieron Gillen’s extended run on both “Thor” and “Journey Into Mystery.”
Here’s what happened: when J. Michael Straczynski’s “Thor” began in 2007, one would have assumed that this would in fact have been the modern definitive take on Thor. Suffice it to say, it had all the makings for it: characters reinvented, a bold new direction and strong (and not so subtle) thematic undertones that gave us a Thor with a bit more levity. Asgard was on Earth and in small-town America (for a while), Loki was a woman and a human man was dating a goddess! JMS’ run was instantly memorable, but it was also rather brief as he wound up leaving the title right as his story was entering into it’s second year and second act. While JMS’ reasons for leaving Thor so suddenly were (to my knowledge) never fully disclosed, this did leave Marvel in a bit of a bind. So they did what any company would do in this kind of situation: they brought in a fix-it man.
Enter a young Kieron Gillen, who stepped up to the plate to inherit JMS’ “Thor” run and act as an intermediary. Gillen’s job was actually quite simple, really: all he had to do was wrap-up the story as neat as possible, bring Thor and Asgard from Latveria to Broxton so “Siege” could happen properly and then tee the ball up for Matt Fraction to take over with Pasqal Ferry. Nothing too extravagant, and something that most interim writers would happily do simply to carry things along. For all intents and purposes (as jaded or cynical a thought as this is), Gillen didn’t ostensibly need to try; Marvel had a plan that matched changes they had planned and line-wide events, and Gillen was the Wolf.
And yet, try he did. Gillen very clearly and instantly took to the world of “Thor.” Without missing a step, he didn’t just wrap-up JMS’ storyline with a few deus ex machina. Instead, he impressed immediately with ‘the Latverian Prometheus,’ a finale that admittedly seemed bigger than what JMS would have done yet fit in perfectly with the various threads that he had sewn. Upon bringing Asgard to “Siege,” he took to the sidelines and treated Broxton and Volstagg as if they were characters he had been writing for years, and when “Siege” wrapped he gave us the Ragnarok vs Thor story we’d always been waiting for — and, let me tell you, it was epic. Add to that a “New Mutants” tie-in and the “Siege: Loki” one-shot (which we’ll get to soon) and we were given so much more than a simple set of filler arcs; we were given two great Thor-centric stories.
Continued belowFortunately the good times didn’t end there. For whatever reason a delay was caused between Fraction and Ferry’s start date and reality, so Gillen stayed on board for another short arc. Once again, this very much could’ve just been a filler story, one designed to carry the title around from Point B to Point C, but Gillen went the extra mile. Incorporating class mythology into a dark and grandiose story of Thor in Hell, we were given an Alighieri-esque journey for the Mighty Marvel hero — one that would add extra padding to all of what had happened at the tail-end of JMS’ run and Gillen’s previous two stories. Thor’s journey into Hell was the first “entirely Gillen” story, in the sense that it wasn’t implicitly tied to anything else; it was filler that moved beyond the average notions of filler, justifying why this writer should stay on the book and perhaps be there for a long time, which is how we eventually ended up with “Journey into Mystery.”
Now’s a good time to look backwards at “Siege: Loki.” Illustrated by Gillen’s comic life-partner Jamie McKelvie, “Siege: Loki” was the birthplace of all that was to come in the future. This along with Thor in Hell was the big surprise of “Siege,” as Marvel announced in the middle of the event a string of additional one-shots that would illuminate the overall event, chief amongst them a Loki story; with Loki being the true villain behind the entirety of the fracas, some sort of side-story would seem appropriate. Yet Gillen took it in a different direction — this wasn’t a “why he did it” story but rather a “what he’s doing” story, something with far reaching consequences that we couldn’t quite see at the time. It was playful with mythology and current events, and it was somewhat (in retrospect, anyway) a pilot episode for a Loki-centric book, full of twists and turns and layered machinations only truly visible upon further review and hindsight.
So when the Thor film came out and “Fear Itself” sat around the corner, Marvel relaunched it’s Thor title so that new readers could wander in the shops and find a place to read with “The Mighty Thor.” However, the company also continued their trend of relaunching titles with a secondary accompaniment title, and that gave us “Journey into Mystery.”
At first glance, “Journey Into Mystery” was just the alt-Thor book. In initial interviews, Gillen described the book as the “Secret Avengers” to Thor’s “Avengers”; all the stuff you’d want to read about Thor and his adventure could be found in the other book while this took a look at the world surrounding him all anchored to Kid Loki, the recently reincarnated young iteration of the classic villain. While marketing (and the banner at the top of the book) implied that it would be beholden to the events of “Fear Itself,” the book very quickly veered off into its own world of Asgardian mythology and adventure, justifying the return of Loki, clarifying what the “Siege: Loki” one-shot meant for all of it and kicking off a series of events that would eventually culminate in ‘Everything Burns,’ the recently concluded crossover with “Mighty Thor.” What we were given was a tale of redemption and adventure, a — dare I say it? — journey into mystery.
There were two things that really sold the title. The first, and the more obvious one, was the work of Gillen himself. Gillen handled the book with layered panache that made “Journey” a rather unique experience. To go into full detail of everything that made the book so fantastic would probably take a few different article series, but the roundabout gist of What Gillen Did is this:
- The humor. Easily recognizable from Gillen’s previous work, his sharp sense of humor was always present in “Journey,” which worked perfectly for Loki. Loki himself is a sharp little character, always being forced to think on his toes and come up with quick witticisms to get himself out of sticky situations, and with Gillen at the helm of the series the sass flew left and right and almost every issue contained quite a few laugh-out loud moments. Continued below
- The game. This was made actually quite literal during ‘the Terrorism Myth,’ but to a certain extent “Journey” was a game. The question is, who were the players? It was Loki vs Loki at certain points, with both Kid Loki and Old Loki leaving certain traps in place for one another. In others, it was Loki against the world, deftly dodging left and right from various attacks. In a few instances, it was very much Sad Writer (not being rude; that’s Gillen’s name in the letter column) vs The Audience, which wound up with its own elements of back and forth. Never have any doubt on this, though: we were all playing a game, and whether either we or Loki (and which version) won or lost is up to you. (Depends on your take on the finale, really.)
- The meta-text and self-awareness. It’s a bit like “Final Crisis,” really. “Journey” is somewhat of a story about stories, and how they evolve, come back around and never truly end. This became a bit less subtle in the final issue when we met the narrator and transcriber of the actual book “Journey into Mystery: A Comedy in 30 Parts (or a Tragedy in 31)”, but let it not be said that the book didn’t always know what it was in the most literal of ways. A re-read of the series reveals a lot of lines of dialogue of foreshadowing and clever bits of dialogue, and it’s a bit humorous to see how often it was flaunted right under our noses.
- The parody and satire. Every arc, to an extent, a bit of a gag. ‘The Terrorism Myth’, for example, is a bit of a play on “Sandman,” as Gillen noted to us in an interview, and during and after “Fear Itself” there were more than a few pokes at the event and how it wrapped up, all quite lovingly and in character. While this certainly ties into the humor and meta-awareness of it all, the aspect of the book that ties into other fiction and how that influences the book’s purpose is one of the least discussed but most profound elements of the story.
- The passion. Last but certainly not least (never least), the book had a heart of gold that irradiated from the pages. The characters in this title are some of the most well developed you’ll find in any title, but what makes it special is how well they were brought to life and given value in such a limited amount of time. Debuting in April of 2011 and nearing the end of “Fear Itself” in October, “Journey” had more character and quality in less than a year’s time than your average comic on the stands, and that all stems from the passion Gillen brought to his work and gave to the characters. They felt real within the first few issues, and they stuck with us for long after.
The second, and the arguably more intense element, was the fanbase that grew around the book. Sure, the comic community as a whole is made up of passionate fans (that explains this year’s jam-packed NYCC), but there are few comics that foster as passionate a community as “Journey” did. Monthly feels-posts on tumblr would flood the web every time a new issue came out alongside waves and waves of fan art and Kid Loki cosplay (complete with milkshake and L fingers) as fans across the world celebrated this book that brought them all together. There is something to be said for that, as it sets this book apart from the large majority of Big Two superhero books out there. This is the sort of thing you see in a lot of creator-owned comics like “Morning Glories,” yet “Journey” appealed to similar comic-reading idealists in a step above your average comment section full of fanboy rage. These were people whose passion for the characters and story knew no bounds, and even the lightest of searches under tumblr tags reveal a large and seemingly limitless group of people whose adoration of the book is effortlessly infectious (I’ll be honest: if I could draw, I probably would’ve done a few Kid Loki doodles by now, just to join in the fun.)
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Of course, as “Journey” concluded last week, we were given what is perhaps the single most powerful finale Marvel has handed out so far. While all finales for titles are good and have a certain amount of emotional levity, there’s one thing that they all almost universally have across the board that “Journey” does not: a profound sense of optimism. Most endings left themselves open to the future and what was to come; Marvel NOW! is supposed to ostensibly be a celebration, which is why we’re referring to our Marvel THEN! series as a viking funeral. But when “Journey into Mystery” ended, there was no future, no happy endings — there was only a single crushing moment of absolute heartbreak, and with it the end of a story we’d followed along with and a character we grew to love. Gillen couldn’t give the book the happy ending the fans wanted, not when it didn’t fit with the metatext, not when it left the opportunity for a retcon, not when every previous beat in the overall story practically forbade it — not when the book starred a villain. And when the dust cleared and we finished wiping the tears away from our eyes, all that was left was an epic story set in the heart of Asgardian lore akin to that of Simonson’s famous and defining run.
(Although for a more detailed analysis of the finale, I will selfishly point you to my review of it, as well as Kieron’s blog where he threw down some thoughts.)
This, in so many words, is why Gillen’s take is not the definitive take on Thor (as that isn’t a character he didn’t implicitly work with for too long), but rather the modern definitive take on the Thor mythology as a whole. The inclusion of mythological elements into the “Thor” titles has always been an important if underused one, but Gillen was the man to truly carry these aspects and keep them at the forefront of the series. Yes, most major changes were made by other writers (Asgard in Broxton was JMS, Kid Loki and Asgardia was Fraction in “The Mighty Thor” and “Fear Itself”), but Gillen was the man to make it work. It’s similar in thought to a gardener and his garden; the gardener may plant the seeds, but it’s photosynthesis that helps the plant mature and grow to become the beautiful foliage that we truly enjoy. Gillen is the Thor mythos’ photosynthesis.
That and the definitive modern take on Loki, of course. But that one is a bit more obvious for reasons I don’t think quite need to be stated anymore, chief amongst them being that this character is dead. Let’s just say that when Tom Hiddleston, the actor who played Loki in Thor and The Avengers, writes a fan letter to the comic, the job has been done properly.
You might be asking yourself at this point, “why isn’t “The Mighty Thor” being considered as the central Thor title and/or Matt Fraction’s version of the character as the modern definitive take?” Well, when you compare “The Mighty Thor” to “Journey Into Mystery” for the criteria we’ve set above and before, you’ll see that “Thor” never had a true line through it that could singularly define the title like “Journey” did. Fraction told tales of Thor, but not with the singular razor-sharp focus of “Invincible Iron Man” (unless he did and I missed it, which is entirely possible); we had ‘the Galactus Seed’ for movie watchers, ‘the World Eaters’ as the post-“Siege” shake-up and the pre-‘Everything Burns’ arc to clarify what happened to Donald Blake and insert a few Mountain Goats references into the comic. Fraction brought a mythic look at Thor as a character, and his characterization of Thor as a brutish stoic god worked quite well, but there’s no over-arcing story to his run on the book in the way that you can follow a path through Gillen’s total body of work. That and when reviewing the recent climax, ‘Everything Burns’ is very much a “Journey” story before it is a “Thor” story, if only for the fact that all of the seeds for this event take place in the first arc of “Journey.”
Continued belowSo when we’re looking at writers (and artists, although not in this particular case since there was a rotating team) who changed the landscape of a given franchise in a big way, it’s very much Gillen who is the champion of Asgard. Taking the reigns from JMS and Fraction and boldly running with Thor’s lead antagonist, Gillen wound up doing more for Asgard at the end of the day as we slowly move into the world of Marvel NOW!; all the character growth and epic events of the past few years are thanks to Gillen’s careful plotting, and the emotional levity always present in the series is one similarly on par with Brubaker’s “Cap,” Fraction/Larocca’s “Iron Man” and Hickman’s “F4/FF.”
I’ve said it before and I’ve said it before that but I’ll say it again: well done, Mr. Gillen. It’s tough to think of new ways to write about “Journey Into Mystery” in a way that’s ostensibly different than I have in the past, recent or otherwise, but I think the overall message is clear. Gillen did in a shorter time-span what others took years to accomplish (and arguably, in quite a few cases, more powerfully), and the final effect that “Journey” has had on myself and others is quite strong. This is a book that will have a profound lasting relationship with its readers (heck, I honestly can’t listen to “HoppÃpolla” without thinking of the “Journey” finale anymore, partially in thanks to Gillen’s “Journey” playlist), and I don’t think it’s too far off to compare it to classic comic runs like Simonson’s “Thor” (as I’ve done so) or even Moore’s “Swamp Thing.” This is a book that properly defined an era and introduced evolving and succinct changes to a never-ending drama, and if tomorrow Marvel announces an epic event of retroactive continuity, it won’t matter because we’ll have always had “Journey.” As odd of a way to wrap things up as it is, this is a story that is defined by its existence as a story, and no matter what may happen to try and change that nothing ever truly will. We’ll always have it.
So lets throw this all in an omnibus and call it a day while we wait to see what Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic have in store for us with “Thor: God of Thunder” and what Kathryn Immonen and Valero Schiti plan to do with Sif in the new “Journey into Mystery.”
Look for more columns similar to this in a month or so when I return for a week-long look at Bendis’ unbelievable “Avengers” run I’m already having difficulty writing!
