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Mania Interview: Walter Simonson

Walter Simonson Interview
© Mania/Robert Trate

 Walter Simonson actually began work on one of his Thor stories nearly 14 years before he took over the Marvel Comics series.

“The Surtur Saga,” which ran through Thor No. 349-353 (although seeds were planted when Simonson took over with No. 337), actually began when Simonson attended the Rhode Island School of Design.

The plot has Surtur sending his demons to Earth, while he storms Asgard. On Earth, the Asgardians, the Avengers, Beta Ray Bill, and the Fantastic Four battle the demons. In Asgard, Thor, Odin, and Loki battle Surtur, resulting in the “deaths” of Odin and Surtur.

“With the Surtur story, the basic outline with some modifications was the story I (conceived) in college,” explained Simonson, whose 1983-1987 run on Thor has been lauded by fans, critics, and fellow creators alike.

Some of those modifications included Malekith the Accursed and the Cask of Ancient Winters in the previous storyline. The biggest was Loki fighting alongside Thor and Odin. 

“The overall idea of Surtur (attacking) Asgard, where he fights Thor and Odin – that was all stuff I had in my original concept. I didn’t have Loki get involved the way that he did. In the end, Surtur (had) to fight Thor, Odin, and Loki – that was something I added at the time I was writing it,” he said. “I loved writing Loki. It was fun to write a bad guy who wasn’t an idiot. I tried to write Loki as funny, ironic, cynical, and had a clear agenda.”

When Simonson took over Thor, he didn’t make a pitch per se; the late Mark Gruenwald, then-editor of Thor, offered it to him.

“We talked about the ideas I had in college,” recalled Simonson. “Somewhere in there, Mark asked me if I’d be interested in taking over Thor as writer and artist. I jumped at the chance. That was my favorite comic from back in the old days.”

In Simonson’s first story arc, he introduced Beta Ray Bill, a horse-faced alien worthy enough to wield Mjolnir, Thor’s enchanted hammer that only Thor could lift.  Simonson also got rid of Thor’s Dr. Donald Blake identity.

“My intention was when you were reading the Thors I was doing, they would not feel like the Thors you were reading for some years – they were different. I wanted to create something that had the excitement of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby work, where they introduced new concepts every 20 minutes,” said Simonson. “While I didn’t want to go back and do those stories, I did want to create the feeling I had when I had read those stories and loved them…You have to find some new way to bring in new ideas and throw stuff at the readers. Hopefully, they’ll enjoy it and stick with you.”

Readers and creators certainly did stick with Simonson as his Thor work is considered a high watermark in the character’s history that has since gone unmatched.

“All of us who worked on Thor treated Walt like our mentor. Thor wouldn’t have been half as good if we didn’t have him to follow. His run should be required reading for anyone who does Thor,” praised Bill Messner-Loebs, who wrote Thor from 1995-1996.

With Beta Ray Bill, Simonson wanted to tell a story readers hadn’t read before. He figured the best place to start was with Mjolnir, which is central to Thor’s identity in not only Marvel’s version, but also in the Norse myths on which creators Lee, Kirby, and Larry Lieber (Lee’s brother) based Thor. More specifically, Mjolnir bears the inscription: “Whosoever holds this hammer if he be worthy shall possess the power of Thor.”

“I thought the existing characters couldn’t (lift the hammer). So I created a character from the ground up that would be worthy of that kind of power… I gave Bill a tragic background: he was very heroic and made a lot of sacrifices to save his own people – that’s how it started,” he said. “You don’t want your readers to anticipate you, don’t want them to get ahead of you in the story. In superhero comics, one of the standard deals is that bad guys are ugly and bad girls don’t wear a lot of clothing.”

Simonson continued, “A lot of Thor’s villains were ugly… Readers knew what the deal with the hammer is. I created a character who looked like a monster with the idea of when he picked the hammer up, they’d be like, ‘Oh, then he must be worthy.’ I set the story up in a way where the conflict was already there between Thor and Bill. Readers would say, ‘Oh my god, Simonson’s screwing up the book by having this bad guy pick up the hammer – what’s up with that?’ Then of course, you’d have to come back next month and find out what’s up with that.”

Regarding Blake, Simonson felt the character was – in his words – “boring.”

“I’m sure people will freak out when I say that,” he said, laughing. “In the 1960s, Stan and Jack reached a point where they had to tell a story about who Don Blake was. My own interpretation on the way things happened from the beginning is that Don Blake was just a guy who found a magic stick. When he hit the stick, he became a superhero. As time went by, that part of Thor’s life became larger and more detailed.”

Therefore, Blake’s importance was questioned, which Lee and Kirby eventually addressed. Odin transformed Thor into Blake to teach him humility. 

“Odin’s idea was to turn Thor into a mortal with a limp, so he’d be slightly less than other mortals and he would learn what humility really was. Don Blake just shows up on a college campus and – poof! – he’s there,” explained Simonson. “He never thinks about the fact that he doesn’t have any parents, doesn’t have a past life, he doesn’t question that stuff… Blake really turned out to be Thor, one and indivisible at the end. He was a magically-reduced version of Thor… Odin made Don Blake to teach Thor a lesson.

My feeling was the lesson was over… and we wrapped it up.”

In addition to creating new characters, Simonson also developed secondary characters, including the Executioner, Heimdall, Volstagg, Karnilla, and – most notably – Balder the Brave. In fact, Balder got an eponymous 4-issue mini-series chronicled by Simonson and artist Sal Buscema.

“I just got to a point in my stories where I thought Balder was a really neat character; I really enjoyed writing Balder. In a lot of comics, Balder seems kinda like Thor but not quite so,” said Simonson. “He’s not quite as fast, not quite as powerful, but he’s a really nice guy. I wanted to do more with that.”

During Roy Thomas’ storyline from Thor No. 273-278, Balder died, starting the “twilight of gods.” In the comic, Balder returned to life by fighting all those he killed in battle, which traumatized him.

“I thought when you’ve died and gone to Hel, probably when you come back, you’re not the same when you left. He gets fat, eating comfort food and ignoring what happened to him in Hel. It put Balder in a different set of circumstances than Thor. You could start examining him from a different point of view. We reached a point in the series where I thought it would (require) a broader exploration of both Balder and Karnilla,” he explained. “Karnilla was great because she was a bad girl attracted to goodness. It was really a struggle to be attracted to goodness and if she made the goodness bad, would she still be attracted to it? The answer would’ve been no. There was something in her that wasn’t unredeemable; she had her own agenda – that’s all.”

Thor #382 was Simonson’s final issue. 

“At that time, there were things going on that suggested to me maybe it was time to (leave) the book and try something else. I had about two more years of stories to tell,” he said. “If things had worked out differently, I might have been on the book for five years, possibly a little bit longer.”

As to what those stories were, Simonson said with a laugh: “I’m not telling.”

Nonetheless, he was satisfied with the way he ended things; there weren’t any loose ends. 

Tom DeFalco, the subsequent writer of Thor, stated he and artist Ron Frenz were intimidated to follow Simonson – something DeFalco did again when he succeeded Simonson as writer of the Fantastic Four. Frenz, in turn, followed Simonson on Galactica and Star Wars.

“As much as I loved Walt’s stuff, it was so uniquely Walt – there was no chance to even copy it. There was no seamless transition. I wanted to helped out (editor Ralph Macchio) and not interfere with anything Walt did,” recalled DeFalco. “After two fill-ins and pitching for Daredevil, Ralph decided to put Anne Nocenti and John Romita, Jr. on (it), while we got Thor. I wasn’t sure we could do cosmic, but Ron said we had to try. ‘If we can’t make it work, we’ll go right away and do something else, I said. We had the longest run on Thor.”

After he left the title, Simonson worked on Thor again as writer of Avengers in the late 1980s and in the mid-1990s. In Simonson’s first story arc as artist and writer of Fantastic Four – which began with No. 337, ironically enough – Thor guest-starred.  Thor had cameos when Simonson drew X-Factor, which was written by his wife, Louise “Weezie” Simonson.

Before he even did Thor, Simonson did Thor. He was the layout artist for Thor No. 260-271 and Annual #7.

Over the years on a sporadic basis, Simonson has provided covers – mostly variants – featuring Thor, including The Mighty Thor #1. He even proposed a Thor/New Gods crossover between Marvel and DC Comics, but nothing happened.

Simonson’s celebrated tenure on Thor has been reprinted over multiple volumes in Marvel’s “Visionaries” line. Recently, his entire Thor run – including the Balder mini-series – was collected in a single volume Omnibus edition.

In July, IDW Publishing is releasing Walter Simonson’s The Mighty Thor: Artist’s Edition, reprinting the original artwork from Thor No. 337-340, 360-362.

“Each page has been scanned IN COLOR from Walter’s original art,” explained editor Scott Dunbier. “Now, I stressed that the pages were scanned in color for a good reason – even though the book appears to be in black and white, it’s not. Not really. You will be able to see each page in more detail than ever before, as close to the actual original art as possible. Additionally, the paper we are printing on mimics the look and feel of original art.”

Simonson, along with his wife, Macchio, Lee, and writer J. Michael Straczynski, make cameo appearances in the new Thor movie.

“It was great fun. We were asked to keep it quiet until the film came out… Weezie and Macchio are at the other end of the table but I think you only see the backs of their heads, darn it. <vbg>” Simonson wrote on his Facebook page.

Asked what makes his Thor run so revered to this day, Simonson replied, tongue-in-cheek: “Honest to God, it’s the great draftsmanship and fabulous writing.” Turning serious, he answered honestly, “I don’t know what makes it work like that. I’m the wrong guy to ask.”

However, he’s happy to see his work reprinted.

“I’m glad it still seems to have an audience and that it found a new audience. I loved doing the book,” he said.

Asked if he would ever return to Thor, Simonson also answered honestly: “A lot would depend on circumstances. The real answer is I don’t know. I’m more empirical than theoretical.”

Dunbier has high praise for Simonson’s Thor work.            

“Well, I was never much of a Thor fan before Walter's run. I had read some of the Lee and Kirby stuff but it wasn’t my thing, not like Fantastic Four…  But, being a Simonson fan from way back, I picked up his first issue with Beta Ray Bill. Well, I was sold on it from the start. It is the definitive Thor and one of the finest series Marvel has ever produced. Period,” said Dunbier. “Walter gets my vote for the nicest guy in comics – and Weezie’s the nicest woman!”