Thursday, April 12, 2012

Reflecting: Thor, The Avengers, and my Childhood

This will be one of my stream of consciousness posts as I reflect on the Character of Thor in my childhood.

With the media hype really ramping up for this summer's Marvel Blockbuster, "The Avengers."  Recently a new TV trailer for the movie has hit and this one features Thor.
 



Last summer I went to the theater to watch Thor.  Walking out, it was the best movie I had seen in a long time.  I have a strange history with the character of Thor, and there were probably a lot of nostalgic things in effect that DID make me look through the rose colored lenses.  I'm going to wax nostalgic for a few minuets.

When I was growing up I collected comics, I liked Marvel comics a lot.  I preferred the characters that kids usually liked, the X-men, wolverine, spider-man.  I never had an interest for Thor, which was weird, because Thor was My Dad's favorite comic.

Thinking of it that's probably why.  Like most kids I wanted to be like my dad (I liked comics) but different at the same time.  Thor probably seemed like a more grown up hero to me.  It's a shame really because now as I am older I feel like I missed that connection.  Now, I have always had a deep respect for Thor, especially the older Thor stuff, the Kirby Thor.  Even though I wasn't into the character or the comics it still was a huge influence in my early life.  Boxes of Thor comics were in the basement.  So I would some times get curious and pick an issue and go through it.  I also learned a lot from my dad, when ever I wanted to know I would ask him.

Since then I have gotten far into Jack Kirby and his art, and of course Jack Kirby's influence is all over Thor.  I have went back and explored those mythos and actually quite like Thor now.  More than many of those things I loved as a kid.  The movie, I felt played wonderful homage to Kirby and this early mythos, so it was nice to come out of the movie with that as well.  Kirby is sometimes highly underrated for his contributions to comic books in general.

 

Another thing that I remember was one of the made for TV incredible hulk movies (the Incredible Hulk Returns) where they decided to bring Thor in.  It was horrible, but for some reason I thought it was the coolest thing to see Thor visualized on the screen.  My dad was excited about it as he heard about it from commercials.  He made time to watch it.  He complained and pointed out the errors but somewhere he was enjoying his childhood hero.



This is probably why Watching the Thor movie last year with my dad was so much fun.  Thor was not my childhood hero, but he was my dad's.  Getting to see him turn into a 9 year old boy who waited as his dad would bring home the next issue for him when he went to the store, was a lot of fun. 

Now we are gearing up for the Avengers movie which will be hitting this summer.  Above I have posted the new Thor Centric tv spot that just hit and it is very exciting, I can't wait to get to Journey into the Mystery with my Dad again as we get to share this movie this summer.  Parents often get to talk about seeing their Kid's face light up with excitement but it is rare that one gets to say that about one's parents.  Thor gave me that chance.            

3 comments:

  1. That new Thor-centric TV spot is very cool. I think he will be the most interesting character when in comes to the Avengers trying to fit in as part of a team.

    I had a similar experience a few weeks ago when I took my father-in-law to see John Carter. He read the books in high school and again recently and he was very excited to see the movie.

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    1. Tommy, I agree with you. I am really excited to see what they do with Thor in this movie. I wonder, however, if anyone will overshadow Robert Downy Jr.

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  2. Am pretty excited about this film too and that excitement doubled when my wife informed me she wants to go see it now too.

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