Interview with Comics Legend Walt Simonson

As the first arc began, readers were introduced to a world of perpetual dusk, populated by fearful, subjugated humans, wandering destructive gangs of walking dead men, trolls and dwarves just getting by, and terrifying fiefdoms of giants and fire demons under the control of the great enemies… and one awakened hero. 

However, our protagonist isn’t the mighty Thor of myths or previous comics iterations; this is a terrifying, missing his lower jaw, hair gone white as a ghost, he’s just been awakened after centuries so he doesn’t quite know what’s going on but will still lose his temper and pound you into a stain, zombie-looking, Thor…

If that description alone doesn’t make you want to pick up the book, check your pulse.

The gorgeous pencils alone are worth the price of admission, but they are in service to a story that is consistently engaging and keeps moving forward with a propulsive, steady rhythm of alternating character and plot development. Though it is in some ways a prototypical picaresque traveling/quest story, the fact that this world is only vaguely familiar, for the most part alien to both the reader and the protagonist, also makes it a mystery. Simonson teases out the reveals a morsel at a time, just as the poets who once recited the original Eddas did, building up the tension and anticipation for us.

Once again, Walt Simonson has produced a “must read” book for us.

So you’ve recently wrapped up the second story arc of Ragnarök, “The Lord of the Dead” and had it collected in hardcover format. What can you tell us about where the story will be going next?

The third arc is called “The Breaking of Helheim.” In the world of my story, in the Dusklands, when the Nine Worlds collapsed, Helheim is sort of a vast pit—a gigantic area of sunken land. It isn’t like the Hell of Dante, although it is an unpleasant place—dank dark, rainy, crappy—it isn’t one of punishment. Hel [the mistress of Helheim, in Norse mythology she shares a name with her realm] is one of the Great Enemies in my stories because in her realm is the great ship Naglfar, made to carry the dead, the warriors, the bad guys to battle the gods in the final battle, so she clearly wasn’t on the gods’ side in that final battle—she was probably still pissed at Odin for throwing her into Hell in the first place.

But in the poetry, the original Edda, Hel isn’t mentioned again—so I’m going to use that for my story—not that I want to give too much away (laughs). We could say that after the great battle, after the dust settled, Hel probably wasn’t on the best of terms with the other great enemies who had shown up and fought the gods. She was absent from the battle, at least as far as the poetry is concerned, so I can make use of that.

Do you have an end-game in mind? A set plan as far as number of arcs, or actual end of the story?

The through-line would be my interest in mythology.

My parents had this book on Norse Mythology, an adult book, and I loved those myths from an early age and I’ve enjoyed playing in those mythological places I’ve done.

I mean, Marvel’s Thor is more contained, in that even though you’re in a giant universe—you’re inside the “Marvel Universe,” you aren’t going to break out of it to do certain things. I mean, I wasn’t going to bump off Thor! When the late Mark Gruenwald, who was my editor, offered me the book, I’d written maybe ten stories! I was just a brand-new writer in comics, but he and I had talked—I had come up with a story when I was a Marvel reader in the sixties, and Thor was my favorite Marvel comic. I’d read The Lord of the Rings around the same time, and being a fan of the norse myths, I just thought it was awesome that Thor was in a comic—so I came up with this idea for a big story, which eventually became the “Surtur Saga.”

I’d wanted to tell a story of the origin of the Odinsword—that it was originally Surtur’s. Jack [Kirby] had done this awesome spread where it showed the Odinsword and right near by it was this eternal flame, and I was connecting them to give an explanation for them. In my original story, it was more like the connection between Sauron and the ring, where the sword wasn’t just Surtur’s, it was a piece of him. So Surtur would’ve been building up a magic spell for centuries if not longer, and finally when he tapped that spell—like a supersaturated solution, “bam” it all crystalized, and the sword would wink out of existence on Asgard and “crack” it’d be in his hand but it wouldn’t be aflame. So he’d have to go back to Asgard to light it in that flame. And it’d be where if he had the sword, it’d be bad, but if he managed to light it, it was game over.

So fourteen years later, when Gruenwald gave me the book to do, it was with carte blanche, the book wasn’t selling well, so I could do what I wanted to do. I could kill Thor off and give someone else the hammer.

I didn’t do that, I’m a conservative guy in some ways as far as story-telling, so I kept Thor but I invented Beta Ray Bill. I really wanted a story that would feel like no one had read it before. No one had picked up the hammer before—actually, Loki had once, cuz Jack and Stan had kind of forgotten what they were doing (laughs) and they had him get some extra juice from the Norn Queen and that meant he could pick up the hammer, and I thought, “No you can’t! That’s just a lie!” (laughs) “Lies!” But I was able to use that idea.

I’ve always loved mythology in general, but the Norse in particular, maybe because everybody dies at the end in this fabulous, astounding way—and the Norse gods were more vulnerable in that they weren’t immortal, they had to eat the apples etc. so they more interesting. And I wanted to play there. I do like myths. In a way, in Ragnarök maybe, I’m certainly inspired also by the work Jack [Kirby] did, and the work of all the guys who did the comics I’ve loved, but I’m not inside someone else’s universe anymore. I have to create as I go along, which is difficult in the beginning, but the more I do, the less hard it gets. The world I’m creating gets more complicated but the work I’m doing to create it gets simpler. I have more ideas of what there is in the dark corners of this world of the dusklands, and what it looks like, and I can find more stories that I can tell there… but whether it’s thematically or stylistically connected?

I read this thing someone wrote about the first couple of issues, that it was like an ‘old man superhero comic book’! (laughs) And I thought, “Ok, I’ll cop to that!” (laughs) Yeah- this guy is trying to go around and help people—not the way Superman or Batman, or Thor in Marvel is doing it or would do it, but he is trying to save the people he can save and destroy the enemies he comes against. And maybe sometimes those purposes get mixed up a bit, and they come across as more brutal because this is a more violent or brutal world in this story. So I’m willing to do things in this book that I wouldn’t have been willing to do in those other books I did.

What are your plans, if any, for any other work that isn’t related to Ragnarök?

Yes, I’m setting Ragnarök aside for a bit for a script I just received as part of the Kamandi Challenge DC is doing to commemorate Jack Kirby’s 100th. I’ve got about two months, because it’s meant to be out on-sale right before Thanksgiving—so I’ve really got to put the hammer down on that! (laughs) I’m gathering some reference now, from other stuff—and I have the IDW Artist editions of Kamandi I’ll be looking at well, as well as a couple of the omnibuses I have.

I get asked to do other stuff occasionally—I get asked to do a lot of covers, and charity pieces, I have a couple of charity pieces I have to finish.

But for example, Titan Books is putting out a miniseries of Hercules, I’m gonna guess it was a series of graphic novels they were doing over in France several years ago, they were doing the twelve labors of Hercules. The artist’s name was Looky—the artwork is fabulous, completely fabulous—unbelievable! I would never have hired me to do the cover! (laughs) But they felt they had to. (laughs) And I was a little stressed about doing it because the stuff inside is so good—but it turned out well. Laura Martin did a great job coloring it. They were doing a science fiction version of the twelve labors, so I did the Nemean Lion—but it’s a robot, lots of sci-fi trappings and stuff I like, so he’s got blades and a desert eagle. That was a lot of fun to do—it was interesting to do, it was just two figures on a white background, and Laura did a really nice job, and it worked out really well. So stuff like that, that appeals to me, I will take occasionally; but right now I’ve got so much to do, that I have to turn everything else down.

And besides all the ongoing Ragnarök stuff, I do have a couple of other Star Slammers stories I’d like to go back and revisit. After I did the last miniseries, what—like twenty years ago now?—I did have another story in mind, and actually with Old Rojas, my hero from that storyline…and if I live long enough (laughs) I hope to get to some of that stuff, I just don’t know how it’s gonna all work out (laughs).

A few years ago I did something for, I think it was for the Indestructible Hulk, which Mark Waid was writing…Mark called me up, he thought of me because they were thinking of taking the Hulk to Jotunheim so he thought of me. And I thought, “that’d be kind of fun,” so I suggested, “well, maybe we could stick Thor in there,” and then I said, “well, maybe we could use the old Thor, before he got his new outfit,” and then I said, “well, maybe one issue seems kind of short—so maybe we could do three issues!” (laughs) And Mark was very accommodating .. and I was an idiot, ‘cause I had plenty of other stuff to do (laughs). But it was fun.

So I will do stuff like that occasionally, but now with Ragnarök I’m kind of booked up for the foreseeable future. Well, I’ll do the Kamandi thing, and a cover here and there—like I did a couple of covers for Archie Comics which were a really neat change of pace.

How do you feel you’ve evolved as a penciller or artist?

I do see some development, I do take more time on the art. In some ways, at the same time, if you take a page from my old Thors and you put it against a page from Ragnarök, I’m going in the wrong direction as an artist. (laughs) As an artist—I mean, mostly artists, as they get older, they get simpler—they need fewer lines, they don’t get more complicated. (laughs) And I don’t know why. So I’m really going to have to solve that problem—I’m gonna have to become like Alex Toth, and just put down like five lines instead of fifty and have them come out just right—but I don’t have the courage for that yet! (laughs)
But mostly, what I’m trying to do, I’m trying to do good drawings—drawings that in their own way are attractive. I don’t necessarily mean—I’m not a “good girl” artist or something—but I also want the art, I want the ink drawing to be alive on the page. And that’s always been true—it was true in the old days—I try to get at that in some way.