Techniques and Tricks: Thor Worldengine

Thor: The Dark World is coming out soon, so all my articles for October 2013 are about the God of Thunder! Some call it OcThorBer, but I'm just gonna call it Thor Month. This week, we're talking about...

Techniques and Tricks in Thor: Worldengine

by Duy

Travis has talked  about Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato's Thor four-parter, Worldengine before, taking an in-depth look at the contributions of each creator, from Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato to Marie Javins and Jonathan Babcock. I can't really do a much better job of describing their synergy, so I'm not even going to try — just go read his piece — so what I'm going to do now is talk about why I like Worldengine so much.

For me, Worldengine is an execution-over-idea piece. That means I wouldn't go so far as to say that the plot and ideas were absolutely brilliant (your mileage may vary), but I would say that the execution and storytelling were handled masterfully. The creators all communicated with each other on this story, and the end result is really a very beautiful-looking product. Mike Deodato, known in the 90s for being given to excess (in terms of skin, muscle, design, and whatnot), manages to rein it in here just a little bit and channel those energies in the most appropriate moments. As a result, he was able to showcase some of his storytelling, compositional talents. Mostly, I find that these are particular techniques that when done well, they really work for me.

Let's take a look at some of them.

Walt Simonson's Thor: A Retrospective

Thor: The Dark World is coming out soon, so all my articles for October 2013 are about the God of Thunder! Some call it OcThorBer, but I'm just gonna call it Thor Month. This week, we're talking about...

Walt Simonson's Thor

by Duy

It's pretty much agreed upon that the definitive Thor run is Walter Simonson's, which ran from Thor #337–382 (November 1983–August 1987). It was made available in the 5-volume Thor Visionaries: Walt Simonson trade paperbacks in the early 2000s, collected in an Omnibus in 2011 with retouches and recoloring, and is now being reissued in a new set of trade paperbacks.

Walt Simonson wrote the entire run and drew most of it, before Sal Buscema took over pencilling duties. Christie "Max" Scheele was the colorist, while John Workman lettered. For the most part, Walt and Sal inked themselves, but other inkers included Bob Wiacek, Terry Austin, Albret Blevinson (apparently Bret Blevins and Al Williamson working together), Al Milgrom, and Geof Isherwood.

Simonson's run is so historic and acclaimed that it gets special mention in Marvel's retrospective books like Peter Sanderson's Marvel Universe and Les Daniels' Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics. For you more casual readers, it's the Thor equivalent of Frank Miller being on Daredevil, or Alan Moore being on Swamp Thing. It's noted as the first great Thor run since Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's run that established the character and his world. Without further ado, let's take a look at some of the things that make Simonson's Thor so good!