Welcome to the home of THOR: The Lightning and the Storm, a 13-episode podcast love letter to Walter Simonson’s epic 1980s run on The Mighty Thor!
Starting May 7th, join us for the epic highs and lows that only Viking space-gods can experience: Noble alien horse-dudes! Star-sized fire giants trying to burn down the universe! Villains redeemed through valiant and legitimately tear-jerking sacrifice! And yes, that one time Thor was a cape-wearing frog for a surprisingly long time!
We’ll marvel at the glories of about four issues per episode, stopping along the way to discuss the most elaborate hats in the Nine Realms, the most metal mythological moments, and the relative merits of BARRROOOOMMM versus KRAKA-DOOOM!
THOR: The Lightning and the Storm is entirely listener-supported. Please click the DONATE link on the left sidebar to help us bring you from Midgard to Asgard and back over the next twelve weeks and unlock some extras – including a special donors-only preview episode!
Thank you for making this! Your enthusiasm for this run is one of the reasons I bought and read it a couple years ago and it lo, it hath become one of mine very favorite things in life. Verily, Miles’ Thor-ner doth branch out!
Can’t wait to listen,
Kris
Yea, it brancheth mightily!
I am seriously looking forward to this. The Walt Simonson run on Thor was the best. Will you be posting this to iTunes?
iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and whatever podcatchers people want to use to manually subscribe!
Totally stoked for this, can’t wait.
Since the soundtrack to Simonson’s Thor is obviously metal, what sub-genre would it fall into: Power Petal? Sympbonic? Doom Metal?
I can see The Sword making a Simonson Thor concept album.
The Sword doing Simonson? That would be AMAZING.
I always got a power metal feel from this run, but melodic death metal could work really well too.
Please no. After a certain point most melodic death metal singers sound like the Cookie Monster.
Get serious. Nothing EVER beats KRAKA-DOOOM!
How would you recommend someone getting their hands on this run to read along?
Great question! You have two (realistic) options:
1. The whole run has been collected in five trade paperbacks. There have been a number of printings, but the most recent ones are just called “Thor by Walter Simonson” or “The Mighty Thor by Walter Simonson”.
2. Marvel Unlimited is a subscription-based service that grants access to a ridiculously large number of digital back issues – it has the entire Simonson run available.
I jumped on the Simonson train when I got the issue of Detective Comics with the third part of the Simonson/Goodwin Manhunter serial. I was around for the frustrating years when Marvel used his storytelling and power, but buried it beneath inkers who made his art look more conventionally Marvel. I remember how excited I felt when that little promo piece started running in their books of a helmetless Thor standing over fallen foes with a blurb of ‘Thor Unleashed!’ and you could see they were unleashing Simonson as well. Unleash your podcast!!!
Oh, you made me so happy when I saw this. I adored the Simonson run when it the stands — Thor was always one of my favorites and Simonson’s run caused me to keep buying comics for a while longer than I’d expected. (I ended up entering one of my fallow periods with comics after this ended.)
But I’ve been dipping into his run in Marvel Unlimited recently, so this is coming at a perfect time.
So I went and re-read the first four issues of the run and now am even more excited about this project. Things that stood out this time were the promise and the paradox of the first two covers, Sif gets to be messed up in desperate, savage battle and Simonson neatly turning a power fantasy trope into a vulnerability fantasy-which is a term I may have had to coin just now!
I suppose I should reread the run before the podcast starts. I haven’t reread it for about a month. BTW would you consider extending the podcast to include Simonson’s current book Ragnarok? I’m beginning to think that it might be even better than the Marvel run. How does he keep getting better? He was operating at genius level 40 years ago.
Yeah! No Miles hiatus!!!!
(Can’t find the podcast yet on iTunes, but I will. Verily.)
We’re not up on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play yet, but hopefully we’ll be approved on all of them in the immediate future. I’ll make a new post once we are!
I love what you do in the X-Men podcast and I loved this Thor run when I was a kid so this podcast seems a no brainer. I listened to your 0 podcast first and I am really excited to hear you two dive in. I do not know if you clear this up in a later episode but I think you are mixing up your Buscema’s. Not that big of a deal but just thought you might like to know.