NOT A HOAX! NOT A DREAM!: Thor

Showing posts with label Thor. Show all posts

Friday, January 24, 2020

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2020

The first Unboxing of the year is a little light on physical books, but quite hefty on digital. First, Christmas gifts: from my lovely wife and from my parents, I received two more installments in the Carl Barks Disney Library from Fantagraphics: THE MINES OF KING SOLOMON and CHRISTMAS IN DUCKBURG.

Then, my normal book shipment for the month contained one Marvel tome: X-MEN: SHATTERSHOT, an oversized hardcover collecting a run of issues from X-MEN vol. 2. This book replaces the previously issued trade paperback, A SKINNING OF SOULS, as it includes all the issues contained therein plus more.

(Apologies; I haven't had a chance to take pictures of these books yet. When I eventually do, I'll add them to this post.)

And then we move into the digital realm. Remember last month when I mentioned the huge sale Marvel was having on Epic Collections, for only five bucks a pop? Well, I received some Amazon gift cards for Christmas and I, uhh... may have gone a little overboard. I have a huge blind spot for Marvel's Silver Age catalog, outside of Spider-Man and to some extent the X-Men, so I decided to stock up. Who knows if I'll ever find time to read all of these, but I picked up all of the following:

Also, via a couple of other Amazon/Comixology digital Marvel sales to start the year, I picked up DEFENDERS: INDEFENSIBLE and GALACTUS THE DEVOURER.

And lastly, in a recent Fantagraphics sale, I grabbed the digital version of THE CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE MINES OF KING SOLOMON, as well as MICKEY MOUSE: THE PHANTOM BLOT'S DOUBLE MYSTERY.

Whew! That's it (and isn't it enough?) for January. Next month should be considerably lighter, I hope! Catch you in February!

Sunday, January 27, 2019

THE UNBOXING - JANUARY 2019

We'll kick things off this month with the Christmas Unboxing -- a few gifts from my family on December 25th. First and foremost among these is STAR WARS ART: RALPH McQUARRIE, a massive two-volume slipcased set collecting all the artwork McQuarrie did as a concept artist on the original STAR WARS movies. I'm positively in love with these books, and I may have to do a post about them at some point, if I ever get around to it.

Also, from my wife, we have Fantagraphics' CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE LOST PEG LEG MINE and CARL BARKS DISNEY LIBRARY: THE BLACK PEARLS OF TABU YAMA. I think I mentioned last year that my wife has been giving me these books every year for Christmas for a few years now (Fantagraphics releases two volumes per year). I believe there are only around ten books left before the full series is collected, but I could be mistaken. In any case, I read Barks' stories through Gladstone Comics when I was in elementary school, but I've never touched them since. Still, somehow they're indelibly burned into my brain to the point that every time I get a new volume, memories rush back as if I just read them yesterday.

I also made a number of digital purchases through Comixology via their year-end sales. From Dark Horse, several books which are no longer available to buy, since the company has now lost its license to Marvel: THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN vols. 1 - 9 (the series ran much longer, but I believe this is the full Roy Thomas run, which is all I really wanted), and CONAN: THE DAUGHTERS OF MIDORA AND OTHER STORIES.

From DC, I grabbed WONDER WOMAN/CONAN and BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS vol. 2. From Fantagraphics, I picked up THE CARL BARKS LIBRARY: THE BLACK PEARLS OF TABU YAMA (yes, I'm double-dipping on these. I like having "digital copies" of a lot of my books) and THE DON ROSA LIBRARY: THE THREE CABALLEROS (I want to own Barks in physical format, but I'm okay going digital-only for Rosa).

And from Marvel, I got THOR BY WALTER SIMONSON vol. 3 and vol. 4, TOMB OF DRACULA: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 2, X-MEN CLASSIC: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION vol. 1, X-MEN: GRAND DESIGN vol. 2, and X-MEN: THE MAGNETO WAR.

And that about covers my merry holiday haul. We'll check in next month for more of the same!

Friday, June 3, 2016

THOR: THE TRUTH OF HISTORY

Writer & Penciler: Alan Davis
Inker: Mark Farmer | Colorist: Rob Schwager | Letterer: VC's Joe Carmagna
Assistant Editor: Alejandro Arbona | Editor: Warren Simons | Editor-in-Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley

I'm not sure what I make of this story. Written and drawn by Alan Davis in 2008, it begins with a pair of scholars drawn and named to resemble Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as they debate the nature of the Sphinx in Egypt. Stanley believes the fabled statue originally had a different head, which was resculpted into the visage we know today. "Olivier", meanwhile, stands by conventional wisdom which says the entire thing was created at the same time.

This leads into the main story, set "less than 4,000 years ago," as Thor and his allies, Balder, Sif, and the Warriors Three, fight off a clandestine incursion into Asgard by agents of Nedra, Queen of the Frost Giants. The heroes learn that Nedra has, in violation of Odin's law, opened a portal to the Earth which leads to Egypt. Volstagg of the Warriors Three falls through the portal, so Thor and Volstagg's partners, Fandral and Hogun, go after him. In Egypt, the Asgardians battle a half-animal slavemaster and travel to Giza in time to save Volstagg from being sacrificed to a fire-breathing griffin at the order of a mad pharaoh. But the pharaoh is slain when the griffin gets loose, then Thor defeats the beast and brings rain to Egypt.

X-MEN: MUTANT MASSACRE

Hardcover, 2009. Collects 1986's UNCANNY X-MEN #210 - 214, X-FACTOR #9 - 11, NEW MUTANTS #46, THOR #373 - 374, POWER PACK #27, and DAREDEVIL #238.

Published in 2009, X-MEN: MUTANT MASSACRE was, to my knowledge, Marvel's first attempt to collect the complete "Mutant Massacre" event in on volume, including not only the pertinent issues of the mutant titles, X-MEN, NEW MUTANTS, and X-FACTOR, but also the various tangential crossover material from DAREDEVIL, THOR, and POWER PACK.

The book opens with UNCANNY X-MEN #210, X-FACTOR #9, UNCANNY #211, and X-FACTOR #10. From there, we move into the majority of the one- and two-off chapters -- NEW MUTANTS #46, THOR #373, POWER PACK #27, and THOR #374. Then it's back to the "core" material in UNCANNY #212 and X-FACTOR #11, followed by DAREDEVIL's contribution in issue 238, and then the saga is capped off by UNCANNY 213 and 214, which was not originally identified as an official piece of the crossover, but which provides a nice coda to the whole thing.

The reproduction of most of these issues is very nice, with the criminal exception of Alan Davis's X-MEN 213 (below), which looks absolutely horrid and represents an unforgivable crime against one of Marvel's best artists of all time. That issue is, for me, easily the highlight of "Mutant Massacre" in terms of both story and art, and I can't believe it came out looking so awful in this book.

CAPTAIN AMERICA’S THEME

A well deserved, albeit long and meandering, tribute to the most ubiquitous musical motif in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

From my perspective, Marvel Studios doesn't have many failings so far. Not all their movies have been great (IRON MAN sequels, I’m looking at you), and yes, there are some things I think they could've implemented better -- but overall, even on the rare occasions they have a misfire, their output is generally still a lot of fun.

But there is one area where Marvel’s movies have mostly fallen very short in my estimation. I love strong recurring musical themes in my movies, especially across multiple films. Think of the STAR WARS or INDIANA JONES movies, the LORD OF THE RINGS and HOBBIT sagas, or the HARRY POTTER series. All these franchises feature numerous recognizable themes and motifs developed across all their installments.

Not so with the Marvel movies. IRON MAN 1, 2, and 3 all have completely different themes by three different composers for the main character. Likewise, THOR and THOR: THE DARK WORLD feature separate themes for the God of Thunder, as composed by two different men. AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON uses some of the main theme from the first AVENGERS film, but that’s a special case which we’ll get to shortly.

But somehow, through all of these, one character’s theme has stayed with him, popping up at least once in every one of the films featuring him: Captain America.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

My fiancée is amazing. That is all. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Sunday, November 24, 2013

MY TOP TWELVE FAVORITE MARVEL COMICS RUNS - #12 - #6

And away we go:

Art: Alan Davis

Excalibur by Alan Davis
(EXCALIBUR #42 - 67)
Nostalgia Rating: 1 | Story Quality: 4 | Overall: 2.5
Reason: I won't waste much time on this one, because I've already written about it at length in my Captain Britain reviews -- but I find Davis's tight plotting and mastery of seemingly unrelated sub-plots which thread back together, sometimes when you least expect them to, to be astounding. The run loses steam after issue #50, but it's never a chore to read, and the characters are all great fun.

NOTE