OK, I should be really, really afraid.

[gridlore]

I'm watching "Minoriteam" on Adult Swim. Quite possibly the most offensive thing ever. In it, one of the characters has been blown up.. all the way past Black Heaven into Nordic Heaven.

Valhalla, in other words. And they got the Aesir right. Thor has red hair and Mjonir looks right. Odin has one eye and ravens.

Why is it this really objectionable little cartoon gets it right and Marvel skill can't get a clue?

Comments

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

It's even the right eye that Odin is missing. heh

Marvel artists came up with the graphic designs for most of the Aesir they use way the hell back in August, 1962. Leaving aside that details were something that other people fretted over, never Marvel, they're kind of stuck with those designs for the unchanging gods. Doug, we ought to be glad they haven't decided to thrown down with a Ragnarok storyline and then fuck it up by wanting to still use all those characters afterwards.

Come to think of it, they may possibly have at some point.

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Oops, pardon me. They very well HAVE done Ragnarok and fucked it up. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_(Marvel_Comics)#Ragnarok)

Didn't see that one...

[seawasp]

... but I stopped reading Marvel around the time of Inferno.

The best Marvel Thor was the Simonson era, especially the final battle with Jormungandr.

Re: Didn't see that one...

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

A battle Thor survived, just to show another example where they diverged from the Eddas. They explain this away by saying, "Oh, these aren't the same Norse gods. They're reincarnations from a previous cycle. Ragnarok happens over and over, and these are reincarnates from the last one."

That's Marvel for you. You don't have to make sense or be accurate so long as you can explain it away in one panel.

Re: Didn't see that one...

[seawasp]

They don't really HAVE to explain it. Unless we have documented film and testimony from the Norse Gods and the Norns "back in the day", it's all fiction. And as Marvel has *NEVER* come close to the original legends, using only components that they found "cool", expecting them to be "accurate" -- when said "accuracy" would actually contradict the stuff they were doing -- isn't really an issue.

I personally wouldn't even have bothered to try to explain it, beyond "Hey, you 20th century types can't even really understand us gods. You expect the stories told by 12th century barbarians to describe the past, present, and future accurately? Giveth me a break, thou fools!"

If Marvel (or DC) had ever shown really strong interest in long-running consistency in their universes, that might be different. But they haven't. It IS one of my pet peeves, and if I do a superhero universe of my own I'll be remembering that, but I certainly don't expect them to change.

Re: Didn't see that one...

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Oh, don't get me wrong. I don't expect them to change. Heck, the myths as told by the old Norsemen changed over time to reflect changes in their society and its needs, as has been mentioned. Marvel and DC have their own mythological cycles. If they're internally consistent, I'm fine with them. Problem is, they don't even bother staying internally consistent. If they need to change something, they just whip up a big event through which they can sell more issues, change things... and then do it all over again a few years later. I understand they're a business, but there are plenty of comic buyers who are more interested in the story than in giving up a ton of money for a plotline that has more pointless twisting than a Gordian knot.

Re: Didn't see that one...

[seawasp]

. Problem is, they don't even bother staying internally consistent. If they need to change something, they just whip up a big event through which they can sell more issues, change things... and then do it all over again a few years later. I understand they're a business, but there are plenty of comic buyers who are more interested in the story than in giving up a ton of money for a plotline that has more pointless twisting than a Gordian knot

I hear you there. Which is why I DON'T buy Marvel any more. "Inferno" was my last straw. As I said, if I ever do my own Superhero stories I'd work out the multiverse AHEAD OF TIME and tell the stories in that framework. That wasn't even thought of back in the Old Days, and so Marvel and DC are stuck with 40 years of accumulated "Hey Wouldn't THIS be NEAT!" stuff which holds boobytraps for the consistency-aware.

Re: Didn't see that one...

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's been my problem. I've got dozens of plotlines and plenty of characters, all with firm stories and story hooks, but no talent with a pencil through which they could come to life on the page.

I read Marvel past the Inferno crossover. I felt they cheesed out on the ending of it, but stuck with them and DC for quite a while after that. I still don't think most of their work ever approached the sheer comic brilliance that you'd find in something like Watchmen or even the intelligent approaches taken with Bill Waterson's Elementals or more recently The Authority. Far more interesting stories, there, and often because they had no qualms about killing off characters nor any established malarky to which they had to cling and cleave.

Re: Didn't see that one...

[seawasp]

Well, for my money, Kingdom Come ranks up there with any other graphic novels. Other than that the Big Two haven't produced all that much to grab me.

Re: Didn't see that one...

[twfarlan.livejournal.com]

I thought Supreme Power has been a good body of work. Of course, that started under Marvel's MAX imprint and is now going forward under the only slightly-more limiting Marvel Knights line, so they had the freedom to operate outside any of the usual concerns like Marvel's continuing self-regulation by the old Comics Code Authority guidelines.

Why the hell...

[seawasp]

would Marvel *WANT* to "get it right" when, after all these years, they have a very clear "branding" and their own take on the mythos? It would be pretty crazy for them to take a popular, and within the industry, well-known setup and throw it away just for the sake of historical accuracy. It'd be like Xena suddenly stopping in the middle to change the characters to historically accurate sequences, changing the gods' relations to the originals, and thus eliminating the main character entirely.

Marvel *WAS* quite aware of the "difference" for a long, long time. They even made some clear referents to it more than once; there was a Thor special in which another man temporarily became Thor, and he was a mighty red-bearded warrior. However, they'd be plumb crazy to go changing their version of Asgard, et.al., to the old one.

Note, also, that the Norse myths themselves evolved and changed over time. Thor was, at one time, the head of the pantheon. So was one of Odin's brothers. This is the modern myth.