Journey Into Mystery/New Mutants: Exiled

This was a fun little crossover that took the premise of what happens when the Asgardian gods are turned into “normal” humans and ran with it for a little bit.  Written by Kieron Gillen and frequent writing partners Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, it also features capable art from Carmine Di Giandomenico that suffers from coloring which is somewhere between “over-rendered” and “garish.”  If you’re reading both titles, or even just one like me, then it’s worth your time to pick it up (though more so for the “JiM” audience).  Of course, the most interesting thing about this collection is the sleight of hand Gillen is revealed to have pulled off.

A good deal of this crossover involves the Disir, the undead Asgardian-soul-eating fiends who have shown up regularly in Gillen’s “Thor”-centric work.  They originally appeared in the “Siege:  Loki” tie-in issue to that event where the trickster god suborned them and used them to manipulate Hela into striking his name from the books so that he would not wind up in any Norse afterlife upon his death.  We saw them again during “Siege” to bedevil the dead Asgardians and teach a valuable lesson to Dani Moonstar and then in its immediate aftermath to bedevil Hela in her newly sublet part of Mephisto’s Hell.  These undead warrior women made for great antagonists and their origin — they were the former shieldmaidens to Odin’s father Bor whose unnatural appetite for human flesh caused him to curse them into their current forms — had me thinking that they were ripped straight out of mythology.

Then “Exiled” came along and ultimately provided a resolution to their story.  Suffice to say that they undergo a major change in not only their status quo, but their origin as well.  It eventually got to the point where it started to feel implausible that he would be able to make such changes to mythological creatures.  The changes they undergo are akin to, say, making the Asgardians into an alien race with their powers derived from science.  It may work fine in the movies, but it’s not in line with their decades of history within the Marvel Universe proper.  So I did what any person with such a conundrum would do and looked it up on the internet.

If you clicked the link, then you’ll see that the “disir” as they’re commonly known aren’t specifically like Gillen’s interpretation.  I can see that some could wind up like what we’ve seen in the comics, but they’re not constantly hungering for the souls of the Asgardian dead.  Even so, their portrayal here still fit thoroughly in line with the rough-and-tumble world of the Norse gods and we got to see some neat de-mythologizing of them with their real origin in this story.  Those of you with a proficient knowledge of Norse mythology probably thought Gillen was pulling off a pretty good joke on the rest of us, but in this case it felt like I was being tricked by the best.

One other thing.  The resolution to this crossover also continues “JiM’s” trend of having Loki ultimately save the day, but doing so in a way that pisses someone off or sets him up for more trouble down the way.  With the title having wrapped up in single issue form with the “Everything Burns” crossover, I’m starting to wonder if there’s even a remotely happy ending in store for “Kid Loki.”  He owes his whole existence to a trick played by his previous incarnation and I’m starting to wonder if it’s still ongoing.  We shall see where it goes in “The Manchester Gods” before the final volume hits paperback.