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In preparing for the San Diego Comic-Con, I decided to enter the Marvel Comics talent search. Some of you may have seen that Marvel was holding a major talent search at this year's San Diego Con and Chicago's Wizard World. For San Diego, they posted a four-page Thor plot and for Wizard World, they have a three-page Wolverine plot for aspiring pencilers. Consequently, I did the Thor project for the con.
Now, there was a short time in Marvel history, when I really enjoyed Thor. A few short years, when Walt Simonson took over the title, when Thor was exciting and entertaining. Since then, I haven't much cared for the character. He's a bit too much of a pretty-boy, for me, and I never thought he dressed like a Norse god should. Overall, his Jack Kirby-designed outfit isn't bad, but it always looked too neat and perfect.
When you consider what real norsemen looked and dressed like, all of Marvel's Norse gods were always shown much too squeaky-clean. Even Loki, the god of evil, was depicted in an almost silly costume, with his garish green and gold. And those enormous curving on his helmet were nothing short of ridiculous.
Your average norseman was a bit taller than his southern European counterpart. Their size and strength, in addition to their fury in battle, led the Romans who encountered them to call them devils. This may actually be the source of the persistent image of the viking horned helmet. To my knowledge, no norse helmet has ever been found with the "traditional" horns attached, and thousands of helmets have been found. It's true that some ceremonial headresses had horns, but it's not the kind of thing you'd want to wear in a fight. Horns and other protruding attachments would only serve to catch a sword or axe blade, which goes down in my book, officially, as a "bad thing".
Now, this is something like your average norse raider might wear while pillaging an English village. Battered iron helm, wolfskin vest, homespun woolen trousers and a nicked iron sword. A far cry from that old Kirk Douglas movie, "The Vikings".
Back to Thor. One of the things I don't like about his costume is the way his cape grows out of his tunic. A cape, or cloak is a functional item of clothing, for people who lived in cold climates, in the olden days. However, it does very little good, hanging down your back. I thought it would be better to make it a heavy cloak, draped over the shoulders and fastened with a cloak pin.
That black tunic, with the silver disks, I modified, slightly. Ideally, it would be made from some kind of animal skin. Something with short, glossy black fur would be perfect. The tunic would be a looser fit, and instead of forming those super hero trunks, below the belt, it should hang loose. The thing is, those metal disks on the front would make it very difficult to bend, especially those below the belt. As far as the trousers and boots go, I always liked those. The only thing I did different was color the pants a darker blue, instead of that bright process blue they use in the comics. I want it to look like something that could have been made by hand, since even the gods were into handicrafts. At the same time, I wanted to keep him instantly recognizable as the Marvel version of Thor.
One other thing, the belt buckle. For almost forty years, Thor has bounced around the Marvel universe, a Norse god, with a Roman letter "T" on his belt buckle. For my version, I used a more traditional Norse symbol for Thor, which resembles the letter "T", but it actually a stylized depiction of his hammer, Mjolnir.
So, I managed to turn a submission project into a column. Incidentally, someone at the San Diego con had a sculpture of Thor's enormous hammer, Mjolnir in the art show. It was an accurate depiction, even to the point of it's being so much larger than what a normal human-type person would be able to swing. This thing was huge.
As always, I'd like to hear from readers. I'm always looking for feedback and new ideas.
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