Newsarama: The character of Thor has been off the Marvel playing field for several years now, only hinted at with an appearance of his hammer in your Fantastic Four run and with the android Clor in Civil War. But now that your new series is announced, we can say he's back - but how does he come back to Earth?
J. Michael Straczynski: The first issue finds Thor in what is essentially a kind of limbo, between life and death and something greater and more profound. He is offered both an opportunity, and a challenge, a chance to fight his way back to finish the work he began. We also use the same process to re-introduce Donald Blake, who raises the question: "Is it for the gods to say when men die, or for men to say when the gods die?" Answering that question is a large part of what propels Thor back into the world of the living.
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NRAMA: Much has been made of the announced story element that Thor is rebuilding Asgard in the Middle of America - Oklahoma to be specific. Can you tell us why Thor would set up stakes in middle America as opposed to the lands where Norse mythology was worshipped, or say in another dimension as Asgard was done in the past?
JMS: A large part of the story involves both rediscovering and reinterpreting his godhood, but also reacquiring his ties to humanity, since it was that love of our species that has kept him here for so long. He needs, wants to bring back Asgard, but wants it closer than before to his loved home Earth, feels that they have lost something by being so removed. So he begins that process, and selects Oklahome for a number of reasons including the fact that it has vast open spaces large enough to accommodate the primary city of Asgard. Any place else would get flattened. And putting it somewhere in Antarctica would defeat the larger point.
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NRAMA: The last we saw of Thor, he went off into deep space following the foretold end of the Asgardian people with Ragnarok. How are you fitting that in with the new series?
JMS: We cover that in the first issue, but I don't want to say too much about it yet, that needs to be seen in the telling.
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NRAMA: Fair enough. In a previous interview with us, you said that "Way back several retreats ago, Joe Quesada mentioned the goal of eventually bringing Thor back, and I made a suggestion for whoever ended up doing it." This project has been one that's gone through several writers - both Mark Millar and Neil Gaiman were on tap at different points to write the series before it came back to you. Can you tell us what that original suggestion was from you, and how the book ended up back on your table?
JMS: I may be wrong, but I think the progression started with Neil, who had some great ideas (as he always does), then when that didn't work out for logistical reasons, it bounced back to the group. I mentioned the image of the hammer falling in Oklahoma, and Mark leapt right for it, but also had to bow out for similar reasons. It then came back to the group, and it came my way again. I'll be honest, I was kinda hoping that would happen because I've always been a big fan of Thor and his mythology, which I really wanted to explore.
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NRAMA: Thor's alter-ego has been under several names and personalities over time, but most notably that of Dr. Donald Blake. In your Fantastic Four run, someone with the initials "D.B." eventually picked up Thor's hammer discreetly and went off. What can you say about the story of Mjolnir as it crashed into the FF comic?
JMS: The crash is dealt with in our first issue, and was established in FF because we were trying to tie the whole thing together, and give the event the proper weight. If he just showed up, it wouldn't have as much impact as setting it up gradually, so people get a sense of what's coming, and then pull the trigger.
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NRAMA: Virtually throughout his entire history in the Marvel Universe, Thor's been a character out of time and place - what would you say his perspective is on Earth in the new series?
JMS: Initially, he's distant, trying to figure out where he fits in again. We're going to really power Thor up, give him all the strength of his heritage, and that can kind of put you apart the very human race you want to rediscover. He doesn't want to get pulled into the other groups, he wants to do his own thing...the question he has to answer is, what is that? And why? To a large extent, what he finds in the people of Oklahoma will help to answer some of those questions.
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NRAMA: Much has been made of Thor's unique speech pattern in Marvel Comics - he has had, on and off, a Shakespearean way of talking --- but it's something you've said in the past you've had problems with. Can you tell us where you're coming from in writing Thor's dialogue, and perhaps give us an example of how he would say something?
JMS: I've just never understood why a Norse god would speak in Medieval English. Never parsed for me, even as a kid. So I'm going for more of a sense of antiquity in the grammar and style rather than tarting it up with "these" and "thous." The closest tonal parallel would be Aragon in Lord of the Rings. The sense of dialog there has the feeling of formality and otherness, but without resorting to tricks.
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Originally Posted by Gohron
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