We Can Have the Wedding on an Asteroid!

Thor is a perfect example of what I was trying to explain to my mom the other night concerning why I will never find the right guy. All the good men are taken, gay, or living on another planet and only accessible by rainbow bridge.

My non-existent social life aside, let’s flashback to May 2010. A little film called “Iron Man 2” comes out in theatres. I really don’t remember that much about that film, other than it seemed to have five different story lines and Mickey Rourke had a pet bird or something? Anyway, what DID catch my attention was that two second bit at the end of the credits. There’s a desert, and a crater, and something in the crater that looks a hell of a lot like THOR’S HAMMER, because guess what? It is Thor’s hammer! To be continued…

I’m going to be totally honest. When that little snippet came out, I had never read a single Thor comic book. (I had read other Marvel comics that mentioned Thor, but never a Thor-centric comic.) Being a nerd, however, I was well acquainted with Norse mythology and Viking culture. So when I started to learn more about Thor, it was another one of those “This is exactly what I like, why haven’t I already consumed myself in this franchise” moments. Add in the fact that Henry V/Gilderoy Lockhart was directing the Thor movie, and I was pretty much sold before even seeing the first trailer.

Well, now that I’ve seen “Thor” I may have a new favorite sci-fi/fantasy sub-genre: space viking. If you don’t know anything about Thor, that’s pretty much what this series is all about. Thor and his peeps are all nearly-immortal beings that live in a place called Asgard. They have this magical rainbow bridge they can use to transport themselves to other planets like Jotunheim (home of the ice giants) and Earth (home of the fleshy not-quite-so-giants.) Thor has a punk brother named Loki, and a pack of multi-racial friends to help him when Loki starts to messing stuff up. Oh Loki! Will you ever learn that Thor loves you just the way you are? You don’t have to impress him by trying to set his friends on fire!

Likely this movie will have its share of haters. It certainly had a smattering of cheese ball moments. Early in the film, the king of the ice giants unleashes what looks like a whale with legs, a stegosaurus tail and some nasty, rock-grinding teeth. No problem for Thor! It’s really not even a fight. He simply flies through the back of the creature’s head, causing it to explode. That is how strong Thor is. He can punch a hole in the back of a ice monster’s throat. By the way, Thor can fly. It comes with the whole “God of Thunder” package.

Comic book Thor is tall and beefy with blond hair and a big ass hammer named Mjolnir. Movie Thor is pretty much the same, only he looks a little bit like Captain Kirk’s dad. (wink wink) Fortunately for movie Thor, he didn’t have to worry about that whole original comic book storyline of getting trapped in a crippled human’s body to teach him humility, which would have been a real drag when he was trying to make out with Academy Award Winning actress Natalie Portman. Heck, the film Thor was so entertaining, I was almost able to forgive Ms. Portman for participating in the atrocity known as “Garden State.”

This film really was one of those serendipitous cinematic moments. Instead of lamenting that a film completely botched the book adaptation, the movie version of “Thor” has gotten me even more geared up to plunge into Stan Lee’s comic world.

Jurassic Park Might Have Ended A Lot Differently

Last Saturday night, I hung out with two wonderful friends of mine. They have a seven week old daughter, which makes them real people, unlike me, who dresses up stuffed animals and lets them sit at the dinner table when my roommate isn‘t home. It was a delightful weekend. I held the baby, we watched the old version of “Fright Night,” then after a lovely homemade dinner, contemplated exactly how the gruesome 1980s prosthetic vampire makeup from the movie would scar their little girl for life. I know it scarred me!

Post dinner, I had a nerd attack. Going through my friend’s comic collection, I discovered “Runaways,” a Marvel comic series created by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona. Being the gracious host, my friend lent me the comic and I drove back to West Hollywood fully intending to be a productive human being for the next several hours after arriving home.

Wrong, Steinho! Wrong! It was the equivalent of a fat lady taking out an entire chocolate cake after licking a bite of frosting off her finger. I read all 18 volumes of it between about 8:30pm and midnight. I couldn’t stop. Not since I finally kicked my World of Warcraft habit back in 2008 have I been so drunk on nerdly delight.

This is a little how my experience reading “Runaways” started. Fifteen pages in, you find out that something is up with the parents of six regular teenagers. Gee Mom and Dad, why are you all gathering around a table in a secret library wearing cool costumes? I think, “Because they’re super heroes, right? Awesome! I wish my parents were super heroes! Yay comics!” Five pages later, the kids watch their parents murder a teen prostitute in human sacrifice. I think, “Human sacrifice? Teen prostitutes? Even better!” Oddly enough, the kids in the comic turn on their parents pretty quickly after this, vowing not to stop until they’ve brought about their wicked group’s downfall. No waiting around to see if it was all just a misunderstanding for these boys and girls! Maybe the writers were banking on the thought that deep down all teenagers already think their parents are evil, and wish they’d turn out to be diabolical magicians so their feelings would be justified.

“Runaways” is the type of story I love, where the focus is on a group of characters, all with a very distinct personality and ability. I think it’s a throwback to my days of D&D. There’s just some satisfaction knowing that you’ve got the whole set … strong dude, wizard, rogue, technomancer from the future, hot elf chick and so forth. In “Runaways” it’s a little more like, nerdy leader, goth wizard girl, hot hippie alien, jock with robot hands, super strong mutant kid, and sarcastic geek with psychically linked velociraptor. What a team!

My favorite was the dinosaur girl, Gertrude. Her parents are inter-dimensional time travelers, which explains how they got the dinosaur to give to her in the first place. There simply aren’t enough stories about evil time travelers. I think what I liked most about the idea of having a dinosaur for a weapon is that you can just hang out, tell your raptor to fetch/kill whoever you want, and then watch the magic happen. But that’s not all. Gertrude names her dinosaur Old Lace, after deciding that her code name will be Arsenic. Get it? Arsenic and Old Lace? No? Did your high school not have a theatre department?

Okay, so maybe not everyone is a theatre geek as well as a fantasy nerd. BUT for anyone who’s ever wished to be a superhero, or who just wished a dinosaur would eat their father, “Runaways” is sure to satisfy. And unlike chocolate cake, it will not give you diabetes.