From the company that brought you Roxxon Body Gel™, and the immersive Roxxspexx™, comes a brand new adventure starring their very own mascot, the Mighty Thor! Watch as he fights Loki and his lies of global pollution and the idea that corporations are not to be trusted! But is there something more sinister going on beneath the surface? Find out in Roxxon Presents: Thor #1, written by Al Ewing, penciled by Greg Land, inked by Jay Leisten, colored by Frank D’Armata and lettered by Joe Sabino.
I am tired. So very, very tired.
I am tired of advertisements telling me that I am missing out if I don’t regularly pour money I don’t have into poorly designed products that come with enough planned obsolescence to inspire me to shell out even MORE money just to get the “full experience.” I am tired of people with more money than brains, convinced that they are the future, that their every thought is lightning in a bottle that will revolutionize the industry. I am tired of those people having enough power and influence to see people as things, and to see things like AI as cost-cutting tools to rob even their employees of what little hard-earned money they’ve managed to squeeze from the corporate stone. I’m tired of hearing about the layoffs borne of short-sighted investors who want to “shake things up,” tired of rich people getting second chances, and third, and fourth, and fifth. I am tired because it’s 2 a.m. and I’ve been writing all day in the hopes of alchemizing word counts into enough money to pay the bills. I am tired of being told that the world is better for rich people getting richer by numbers my tired brain cannot begin to comprehend.
I am tired of Greg Land’s art.
When you are tired, there is one refuge that can consistently bring you joy, especially when you’re a writer, and that is to get very, very silly.
It’s very likely that Al Ewing is tired, too.
The Comic That Never Should Have Been Made!
This is a terrible comic. I want you to know that. It wants you to know that. That’s the point.
For those of you who haven’t been reading The Immortal Thor, you’ve been missing out, but I’ll catch you up to the parts that are relevant to this comic. Al Ewing’s theory of divinity is that the gods — Asgardian ones, most relevantly — are creatures of story. They win the day when their need is great, and good defeats evil, time and time again, because that’s how stories go, and the patterns of those stories cannot be denied. Thor is brave and good, Loki is manipulative and deceitful, and the power of truth always defeats the tricker of lies.
But stories can be twisted.
Dario Agger, CEO of Roxxon (Marvel’s stand-in for all things evil about capitalism), is finally, well, capitalizing on this weakness of the gods. He’s purchased the company that publishes Thor comics within the Marvel Universe — a concept Marvel’s always had fun playing with, but never to this extent. Roxxon is now publishing its own comics that push forth their own views about who Thor is: a capitalistic stooge, a corporate mascot, a man who fights for profit, the power of corporately defined cool and the ultimately, inescapably American way.
It’s a cheap comic. It’s crammed with jokes about corporate synergy, how shallow comics can be, it winks and nods at everything that’s wrong with superhero IP today and the part that comics have to play in that field.
Don’t forget, though, that as cheap as this comic is, Marvel is going to be making money off of it. Laughing with us, all the way to the bank, thanking us for all the free promotion it’s getting from the terrible jokes, cheap callbacks to classic lines and lazy satire that this book is stuffed to the gills with.
I’m not going to lie — it’s a very funny comic. It’s relieved of the pressure of having to be good. It throws everything at the wall. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, but you’re left having a good time because of how much fun this book is having making fun of everything that is wrong with the world. And then you’re reminded of the dark truth of this comic as Dario Agger, in full grisly minotaur form, stares at you right down the page and reminds you that every laugh this book gets is another dollar in Marvel’s pocket — and you go right on laughing because nothing about Roxxon’s Thor takes itself seriously.
The Comic You Never Should Have Read!
Greg Land is the perfect artist for this. His art is defined by its empty glamor. There’s no heart, no soul in his art, but one thing I have learned to appreciate about his art is his ability to make it funny. As Thor fights environmentalists and their “lies” of cancel culture and climate change, Land gives him repeated expressions of ghastly, unrestrained horror. His handsome, perfect jaw holds firm as he strikes one power pose after another, usually while advertising one of Roxxon’s many products.
It’s hard to know what to feel about this comic. Some of the jokes are so over the top they come right back around to being uncomfortable. The story goes all in on its bad jokes, on its bad writing, on Land tracing models who bite their thumbs to show just how aroused they are by the hunky hero with the bad, bad art. It’s hard to know who this comic is for, except to be an extra way to make Marvel some extra money off of the truly excellent Immortal Thor series. It underlines the privilege that a company as big as Marvel has: Their comics don’t have to be good, so long as you slap a recognizable brand on it.
It goes so out of its way to be bad that it’s horrific — but the jokes keep coming, drowning you in cheap humor, until you’re laughing again because reading through all of this has had your brain melting out of your ears enough to believe that this comic is funny because it keeps telling you that it is.
It feels like a lot of comics the Big Two keep putting out.
It’s brilliant storytelling, if you’ve been reading Immortal Thor. You can imagine him reading this comic, and feel his soul slowly start to leave his body as this warped representation of who he is slowly fries his brain to nothing. It’s a brilliant business move, because instead of showing a handful of pages in the Immortal Thor comic, Marvel can rush out another Thor comic with Greg ‘By God, He Gets The Work Done Fast’ Land and the art team that perfectly complements the empty sheen that Land’s pencils call for.
Or is it just a terrible idea that is given way more space than it deserves? The thing is, you can’t really tell unless you buy the comic — and that’s exactly what you’re going to do if you’re a real Thor fan, aren’t you?
You have to laugh. You have to embrace the silliness. Because if you don’t, you’re going to be reduced to tears by the fact that large companies can keep putting out comics as bad as this one, just because they can. They can lay bare just how empty their stories are, admit with their most shameless grins how little effort they need to put into a project, because it’s becoming clearer by the day that you don’t need to lie about how empty this industry can be — people are just going to buy into things anyway.
Roxxon Presents: Thor #1 is as brilliant as it is terrible. It is as dark and as well crafted as it is cheaply put together. It is a joke of a comic. The question is, here, who the joke is on.
I can’t wait for #2.
Buy Roxxon Presents: Thor #1 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
