Tag Archives: Mangog

Apr 26 2018

Mighty Thor 706: Discussion

by Drew Baumgartner and Spencer Irwin

Mighty Thor 706

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

Genesis 2:2

Drew: Can gods be heroes? I might posit that immortality voids the noble qualities like courage and sacrifice that define heroism. To me, anyway, gods and heroes are mutually exclusive groups, which might well be the reason we created the concept of demigods — Hercules slaying the Nemean Lion is less impressive if he has infinite time and power at his disposal, and Jesus dying on the cross is literally meaningless if he can’t die. In this way, we understand that Jane Foster’s nobility comes not from her godliness, but from her humanity — from the sacrifice she can only make because she isn’t a god. But still, she was a god, at least briefly, which maybe entitles her to a bit of rest after all of that sacrifice. Continue reading →

Mar 26 2018

Mighty Thor 705: Discussion

by Spencer Irwin and Ryan Mogge

Mighty Thor 705

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Spencer: Jane Foster is willing to do what must be done, no matter how hard or dangerous, no matter what the consequences might be, even when nobody else can or will. It’s what makes her a hero, what makes her worthy; it’s also what brings about her downfall. The Mighty Thor 705 is the swan song our beloved Jane deserves, a beautiful, action-packed, heartbreaking issue that highlights everything that made Jane’s Thor an inspiration, everything that made her important both in-universe and out. Continue reading →

Feb 28 2018

Giving Meaning to the Inevitable in Mighty Thor 704

by Drew Baumgartner

The Mighty Thor 704

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Heroes are predictable, at least in terms of the noble qualities that define heroism. That is, while a hero’s cunning plan or stroke of genius may surprise us, that they would try to save the day — even and especially at great risk to themselves — is kind of a foregone conclusion. And no hero represents that quality of self-sacrifice better than Jane Foster, whose daily choice to wield Mjolnir to protect others has slowly allowed her cancer to advance. So that she would take up the hammer once again, even with the knowledge that doing so would surely kill her, isn’t exactly a surprise Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman could have hoped to withhold. So instead, they spend this issue detailing exactly what that decision means to her beyond self-sacrifice, getting at just what it is that makes Jane so selfless in the first place. Continue reading →

Jan 26 2018

Mighty Thor 703: Discussion

by Taylor Anderson and Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Taylor: One of the hardest lessons to learn growing up is that everything has a cost. This is a particularly difficult lesson to learn because when we’re young, things tend to not really cost all that much, if anything at all. It’s only once we become adults and begin to age that literally everything has some cost associated with it. Want to go out and drink all night? The cost is a hangover. Want to get a master’s degree? The cost is crippling student debt. Heck, even want to find love? The cost is putting in the time and effort to cultivate a meaningful relationship with someone. This isn’t to say that things aren’t worth their cost – love is a good example of something that more than pays for itself. However, the cost of things always has to be collected, as Jane and her friends learn in Mighty Thor 703.

Continue reading →

Dec 22 2017

There’s Power Beyond the Hammer in Mighty Thor 702

by Taylor Anderson

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

In the recent arc of Mighty Thor, tension has been building regarding Jane Foster’s inability to chose between being Thor or herself. At the crux of the matter is the fact that Jane has cancer which needs to be treated — which can only be done in her human form. However, she’s needed in virtually every corner of the universe as Thor to try and stop Malekith and his armies of evil. Forced to choose between saving thousands (millions?) and saving herself, Jane makes the obvious heroic choice. But as issue 702 shows, sometimes the obvious heroic choice isn’t always the best one. Continue reading →

Nov 20 2017

Creating Stakes in Mighty Thor 701

by Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS! If you haven’t read the issue, proceed at your own risk.

700 issues in, the gods of Asgard have faced annihilation numerous times. But they have always pulled through, because that’s how decades-long serialized mythologies work. Every threat must be bested in order to perpetuate the franchise. This isn’t something that bothers me: the “what happens” never concerns me as much as the “how it happens.” But for anyone demanding meaningful, lasting, concrete consequences in their storytelling should welcome the rise of Mangog. Mangog is here to kill the gods, and by the end of issue 701, he’s already got a definitive Win in his column. Continue reading →

Oct 23 2017

Discussion: Mighty Thor 700

by Taylor Anderson and Patrick Ehlers

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

Taylor: Midway through the extra large, special 700th issue of Mighty Thor, Karnilla, Queen of the Norns, asks which ingredient is the most essential in the makeup of a Thor. It’s a good question, and one that writer Jason Aaron has been exploring ever since he took over the reigns of Thor some 60 issues ago. While Aaron has posed various answers to this question multiple times, he’s never come outright and revealed to readers what exactly makes a Thor Thor. That is, he’s never done that until now. Using the 700th issue as his podium, Aaron waxes poetic on the nature of Thor, presenting us with not so much a new Thor narrative, but a grand tapestry that relishes in pondering what Thor has been, currently is, and what it will always be. Continue reading →

Dec 6 2013

Deadpool 20

deadpool 20

Today, Patrick and Greg are discussing Deadpool 20, originally released December 4th, 2013.

Patrick: There’s no single person or institution that’s introduced me to more media than The Simpsons. I didn’t know that it was happening at the time, but my 10 year old mind was being educated in the works of Alfred Hitchcock, Rod Serling, Francis Ford Copola, Stanley Kubric, Martin Scorsesse, Tennessee Williams, and on and on. But the film that seems to have cropped up the most was Citizen Kane. I can’t possibly convey what my first experience of watching Citizen Kane was like: by that point in my life, I’d seen the same scenes and camera angles and transitions and themes and characters reconstituted a hundred different ways on The Simpsons. It was invigorating and shocking to see everything in its original context, granting new meaning to my favorite old Simpsons episodes, but also imbuing Citizen Kane with a kind of pre-loaded meaning. Deadpool has never shied away from referential humor, but writers Gerry Duggan and Brian Posehn and artist Scott Koblish narrow their focus in the third inventory issue, and convinces us that Jack Kirby’s work is the Citizen Kane of comic books. Continue reading →