Thor: Ragnarok (2017): based on characters and stories by Jack Kirby, Walt Simonson, Sal Buscema, Larry Lieber, Stan Lee, and others; written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher Yost; directed by Taika Waititi; starring Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Cate Blanchett (Hela), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Mark Ruffalo (Banner/Hulk), Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie), Jeff Goldblum (Grandmaster), Anthony Hopkins (Odin), Taika Waititi (Korg), Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange), Clancy Brown (Surtur), and Karl Urban (Skurge the Executioner):
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The off-beat jolliness and humour of this Marvel entry only grows on a small screen. One wishes Joss Whedon had the leeway to make as jolly a superhero movie. Chris Hemsworth is a comic revelation, closely followed by Mark Ruffalo himself as Bruce Banner and in motion-capture CGI as Banner's Hulkish alter ego. All that and so much design work based on Jack Kirby's art, right down to Hela's head-dress and all those weird circuit diagrams painted on every wall. Highly recommended.
Thor: Ragnarok (2017): based on characters and stories by Jack Kirby, Walt Simonson, Sal Buscema, Larry Lieber, Stan Lee, and others; written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher Yost; directed by Taika Waititi; starring Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Cate Blanchett (Hela), Idris Elba (Heimdall), Mark Ruffalo (Banner/Hulk), Tessa Thompson (Valkyrie), Jeff Goldblum (Grandmaster), and Karl Urban (Skurge the Executioner): Almost too jolly and jaunty an entry in the Marvel Movie Sweepstakes, given the death toll in the movie. Reducing Gotterdammerung to a punchline seems both too much and not enough.
Oh, well. Thor: Ragnarok is also the Marvel movie that looks most like the comic books it's based on, particularly Jack Kirby's 1960's work on Thor and Walt Simonson's writer-artist duties on his great Thor run of the 1980's.
The tone is really more Simonson than Kirby -- there was a jocularity and a sense of the absurd to his run, though he was better than the film-makers at balancing the epic and the absurd. Full credit to director Taika Waititi, whose What We Do In the Shadows was an absurdly hilarious faux-documentary.
The movie goes on about 15 minutes' worth of CGI battles too long. All the actors are as fresh and lively as in any Marvel production to date, and Cate Blanchett camps it up as super-villain Hela, whose crazy head-piece comes right off the Jack Kirby pages (so, too, the designs of many of the aliens in campy Jeff Goldblum's space-court, extras from Kirby's 1970's space-god saga The Eternals). Even Bruce Banner and the Hulk are funny. Recommended.
Hellboy: The Storm and the Fury: written by Mike Mignola; illustrated by Duncan Fegredo and Dave Stewart (2011-2012): The Duncan Fegredo-drawn 'middle section' of the main Hellboy saga (as opposed to the time-and-space-ranging standalones and miniseries, drawn by many) apparently comes to an end here. The last part of the saga begins in December with the first issue of Hellboy in Hell as Mike Mignola returns to the drawing board.
Fegredo really did a marvelous job over the last five years or so on the main sequence, his style similar to Mignola's without slavishly mimicking it. Fegredo really became a master of grotesqueries as he went along, though his Hellboy and others always seemed a bit skinnier to me than some of Mignola's blockier creations.
But it's been a heck of a ride, and probably not an easy one to illustrate: the second act of Hellboy left the more familiar plots of the first act behind, moving Hellboy from being a paranormal investigator with the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence to a wandering hero whose quest never seemed entirely clear because Hellboy himself wasn't clear about it -- or sober for long sections of it.
Mignola and Fegredo supply a handy bit of summary towards the beginning here, voiced by Hellboy himself, before moving to the main action. And what action it is, as Hellboy and his giant hand of doom must stop the end of everything or die trying.
Unlikely allies arise, including Queen Mab and Baba Yaga and a mysterious little girl. Loose ends, signs, and portents set up in the previous 11 volumes suddenly start to make sense, often in startling fashion. There is Ragna Rok and King Arthur and the last weird battle in the West. There is an evil badger and a repentant pig. There's a dragon that bleeds molten gold.
And there's Hellboy, perhaps overmatched but always game for a fight. He doesn't know when to stop punching, and while he was born a demon, he's ultimately humanity's best friend. Or fiend. And boy, can that guy take a punch!
Everything comes to a crashing conclusion which is really only an intermission between one important battle and what will ultimately be the war for humanity. And I'm excited to see what's next. Highly recommended.
Thor Visionaries: Walter Simonson Volume 2: written by Walter Simonson; illustrated by Walter Simonson, Sal Buscema, and Bret Blevins (1984-85; collected 2002): Writer-artist Walt Simonson's 4-year run on Thor was one of the highlights of superhero comics in the 1980's, an eclectic blend of sci-fi and mythology that took the title back to its heights, late in the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee years of the 1960's. Simonson's detailed, flowing, majestic but also nimble art made Asgard and the super-gods who lived there fun again without skimping on the melodramatically epic tone of the best Thor comics of the past.
In this second volume, Simonson's lengthy opening arc comes to its conclusion. Surtur, the fire giant tasked by Norse mythology with setting fire to the universe at the end of time, is about to break out of his imprisonment in Muspelheim thanks to the nefarious shenanigans of the Dark Elves, who've managed to unleash all the winters of the world upon the Earth by shattering the Casket of Ancient Winters, until now safely in the keeping of a long line of human protectors. Got all that?
When fire and ice finally conspire to break the walls between worlds, Surtur will storm Asgard, the home of the gods, to light his newly forged sword at the eternal flame Odin stole from him long ago and bring an end to everything. But the road from Muspelheim to Asgard goes straight through Midgard. Or Earth as it's more commonly known.
Gods, superheroes, and even self-interested supervillains and evil gods will have to unite to try to stop the end of the world. But Thor, one of Marvel's heaviest hitters, isn't powerful enough to stop Surtur on his own. Or, perhaps, even with a lot of help.
There's a lot to love in this jaunty second volume. One of my favourite bits lies in Simonson's visualization of Surtur, who had previously been drawn as pretty much a standard 500-foot-tall devil. Simonson goes with something a bit more impressionistic, and I think it works beautifully -- Simonson's a big Lord of the Rings fan, and his Surtur makes me wonder how he'd draw a Balrog. In any case, highly recommended if you've read the first volume.
