Saturday, September 20, 2008
Comic Art
As we continue today to examine the denizens of Asgard (Marvel) and The New Gods (DC) the greatest creations of the Master Jack Kirby we get an overwhelming sense of Deja Vu. We look today at one of the few trolls of Asgard to have a name - Ulik. Take a close look at the face of Ulik in this first Kirby drawn cover. Look familiar? What about the New God Character Kalibak? Well, I certainly think the resemblance remarkable, but then it is just a cool look so who can blame Kirby for reusing it when he moved to DC.
It's not like other artists don't do the same thing. Look at the lower most rendering of Ulik below from an artist unknown. Looks a whole lot like Wolverine (mask off) to me!It should be noted that Asgardian trolls do not necessarily live under bridges and demand riddles or tolls for passage, they are just big, mean, ugly, strong and have a really bad attitude. They are opponents for Thor. I mean let's face it, when you are a god, you have to work pretty hard to come up with worthy opposition. (Could that have been commentary on Superman when Lee/Kirby came up with Thor? Sure!)
It is interesting that the trolls figured big when Kirby was pretty much shaping the Thor book, but the trolls became pure background after that. Of course, all of Asgard became background after that as Thor moved very much to Midgard (Earth) on a nearly full time basis.
One of the beauties of the New Gods was they did not have to travel back and forth to Earth to involve us in the story - a seemingly necessary narrative element to the genre.
I, for one, want more Tales of Asgard - really, seriously.
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