Welcome to Make Ours Marvel, the weekly show where Michael Kaiser and Jon M. Wilson read chronologically through Marvel Comics’ spandex adventures and discuss their thoughts with little to no authority.
In this episode…
- Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes #5-8 (2005)
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Of course you bring up Norse stuff and I’m here to comment. Jon said, “When you’re part of a culture that has a religion, in theory at least, the gods of your religion are probably, you view them as the gods of the entire world.”
Not really. In fact, to be a polytheist is to believe that there are other gods and pantheons out there that are just as valid as yours. Heck, the Norse even have that baked into the religion with the Vanir being a completely different tribe of gods than the Aesir. The idea of there being one, all-encompassing religious “Truth” is much more of a monotheistic world-view.
Now, on to how Valhalla work. Valhalla is the hall of the dead that Odin presides over and half of the honorable dead that fall in battle go there (the other half go to Freya’s hall). The problem is, for the Wasp, is that you have to be a Norseman to get in. Since she doesn’t worship the Aesir, Valhalla is barred to her. You’d think that Thor would know that, but when have the comics done anything that aligns with the actual lore (where Walt Simonson wasn’t involved)? 😉
It’s a rare day when I can listen to the new episode this soon, and glad I could. Various little thoughts on the comics:
Iron Man plugging into the wall. He has a 3-pronged plug. If he’s stuck in a room with only 2-prong outlets, does he have one of those bright orange converters in an iron pocket?
Nice that Pietro and Wanda have on-brand colors for their parkas, blue and red. But kind of a nod to Pietro’s later costume since his current one is green. Wait, the Maximoff’s are Christmas colored! JOY!
Valhalla. You’ve already had the expert reply, so I’m probably overstepping here. There was a resident of Broxton, Oklahoma who fell in love with an Asgardian woman, and after he was killed, he DID end up in Valhalla. I only know that from reading lots of recent Thor series-es. (serii? serieus?) Gene, does falling in love with an Asgardian count as “worship”?
Tony/Iron Man were a lot more effective at dealing with Murch than Henry Peter Gyrich. Of course, including Murch is a retcon really, since this level of government oversight was never implied in the original comics until Gyrich came on the scene, and the team was terrible at dealing with him. Still, that’s just a quibble, because it makes for fun stories here.
Jarvis’ mother has been shown repeatedly as being in fine health in comics from the 2000s, and I’ve seen no signs of her declining. I would venture that Jarvis is in his early 50s (like me), and his mother is late 70s/early 80s. But really, the J-man could be even in his 40s reasonably speaking.
This issue does make it sound like Jarvis knows about Tony/Iron Man, but I’d venture he hasn’t been told, and I really don’t know when that would have been official before The Crossing. (shudder) You are correct that in the comics, only Thor and Iron Man knew each other’s secret identities until Avengers #216-224, where Cap and Wasp learned them in various issues and situations. You’ll probably get there in episode 100.200.313.444…
I’m trying to figure out if Hawkeye tying up Jarvis was now a plan they concocted together, but Jarvis is scowling because Clint improvised some. J: “You can free me by shooting an arrow.” C: “Hey, Avengers, watch me shoot 3 arrows at once!” J (thinks): “(Wait, what??!))” But the “cheers” moment they have in the kitchen was awesomely depicted. Scott Kolins is so good!
Hmm, maybe not so little. Thanks for bearing with me.
Until next time, or until Tigra (who?) learns the secret identities of Thor and Iron Man, make mine Make Ours Marvel!