occupy failboat, journey into mystery

[bagheera_san]

I wanted to go to Occupy Frankfurt today but I failed because of EARLY MORNINGS. At least it's no surprise to me that my political convictions < my epic laziness. Well, now I've got time to:
- read "An Ideal Husband"
- take care of Radiosonic editing stuff
- look for my half-orc character sheet
- clean the bathroom and my room
- write this post

A post by xparrot reminded me that I wanted to do a write a little post regarding an excellent comic I've been reading, namely: Journey into Mystery (volume 4, starting with issue 622). It's part of the Marvel universe and their Thor franchise, and the first trade paperback, in my opinion, is up there with the best bits from the Sandman comics. The art quality suffers in the second TPB, but I'll still buy the third TPB even though I rarely buy comics because they're quite expensive here (usually I just get my fix from scans_daily).

Or rather, Loki's attempt to redeem himself, if by redemption we mean "save Asgard repeatedly through various questionable means and break his own vicious cycle of going evil" - and since comics!Loki has for a while now been quite worthy of his trickster heritage, his plot includes sacrificing himself, getting reincarnated as a street urchin/kid hustler in Paris, buying and selling some real estate in Hel(l), tricking Mephisto, and trading his soul and various other things he has no business selling a dozen times over - and little tricks like the bit where he buys the opposite of a mythic sword from the King of the Fire Giants, and then reveals that the opposite of a sword is (obviously) a pen, and he saves the world by writing Thor fanfic... in which Thor dies heroically. Yeah. It's shenanigans of the highest order, and very cleverly written.

There's also one little detail that made me panic because I thought I had inadvertently plagiarized this comic in my Norse Myth yuletide fic: the opening narration of JiM has Loki's dead spirit turn into seven magpies, which (all but one) die until the last remaining one returns to kid!Loki to mentor him. It's pretty clearly based on the crow-counting rhyme (one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, etc.). In A Game of Shapes I used the same counting rhyme, also with magpies instead of crows. I checked the dates, though, and I wrote my fic in 2010, whereas the first issue of JiM came out in 2011, so, whew.

For comparison:



So I took the only things that were my own – a net I had made from some string, and a knife I had forged from scraps of metal – and went out into the forest. I put down the knife in the high grass, and waited until a magpie came down, attracted by its silver glint, and then another, and another, and I started counting them, one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told, eight for wish, nine for a kiss, ten,” Loki hurled the fat-drenched stick into the fire where it burst into crackling sparks, “for a bird you don’t want to miss! I threw the net over the bird and cut its throat, and its blood turned the white of its pied feathers all dark, and from that day on it was always mistaken for a raven.”

“I thought a little bird like that would be dead if you slit its throat,” Thor objected.

“Oh, you can’t kill a thought so easily, not even a little magpie thought,” Loki smirked. “Its brother soon came hopping along, that one was called Memory, and it was blood-dark already from all the things it had seen. I told them both: I will have you for lunch if you do not tell your master that in this shady glade, the fairest of maidens awaits him, fairer than all the maidens of Jötunheim.

(On that note: did anyone else notice how in Avengers, in the scene where Loki and Thor argue on those rocks in the middle of nowhere, there are two ravens flying by? I LOLed but I think I was the only one in the cinema who noticed that little detail. Ceiling!Odin is watching you...)

Comments

[blindmapmaker.livejournal.com]

Ravens flying by? You are ten times more perceptive than me (Who'd have thunk?). I didn't even notice that Stuttgart was not actually Stuttgart, though there were certainly enough sandstone buildings and opera advertisment. And don't worry to much about the character sheet. I know you guys and will have my files with me. I guess the host has a working printer.

By the way, Any good ideas what to GM at the Heidelcon? I'm a bit bummed, at the moment.

[asthenie-vd.livejournal.com]

Didn't notice the ravens in the movie, but I love the image.

The part with the magpies was the first thing that one me over about JiM. I did a recommendation squee post about it a while back, and I love what the writer is doing with the book. Also, don't forget that in Norse mythology magpies are sometimes messengers between Hel and the realms of the living (what with the black and white plumage, etc). It's so perfect. The series is really going out of its way to establish this mythological flair with the narration. And then there's all the meta and fourth wall breaking and symbolism going on. Really a joy to read.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

So can one just start at Vol. 4, or would it be better to read the preceding three as well?

(Also did not notice ceiling!Odin, but feel film is enriched by this)