Monday, May 11, 2015

31 Days of Comics: Day 10 – Most Beautiful Scene in Any Comic



ROB'S NOTE: May has become the go-to month of the Comic’s Industry (even though National Superhero Day is late April, but whatever… Congress… pshaw).  It is when Marvel drops their big movie of the year.  May also sees the annual Free Comic Book Day celebration take place on the first Saturday of the Month, so I hope you all got to check that out.  May also has 31 days of the month so what better way to celebrate the wonderful world of sequential art with the 31 Days of Comics?
Seth Hahne, who runs the blog GoodOkBad, has put together the 31 Days of Comics challenge.  A daily challenge in which you are given a category and you have to fill it with a comic that you think fits it the best.  You’re all on the internet, I shouldn’t have to explain it to you.  For the rest of the month I will be taking this challenge.  It is my hope it encourages others to make and share their own lists either in the comments here or on their own websites.  The sharing not only might turn comic fans on to works they have yet to sample but maybe catch the eye of a few non-comic fans and highlight the diversity of the form. 

Our prompt for Day 10 is “The Most Beautiful Scene in Any Comic”


Thor #362 “Like a Bat Out of Hel”
Written, Penciled, and Inked by Walt Simonson
Colors by Max Scheele

This one was very close.  So close I’m going to briefly go over my runner up.

Mary Jane Watson was introduced as the happy-go-lucky party girl in the early days of Amazing Spider-Man.  She eventually evolves into the one true partner for Peter Parker.  The key scene in this is right after the death of Gwen Stacy.  Peter, obviously distraught, is yelling at MJ to leave him alone in the hospital as she never had “time for squares” like Gwen.  And in one move Mary Jane gains a depth of character and a metaphor for her relationship with Peter (until Marvel ruined it with One More Day).


As great and powerful as that scene is I think it pales a bit in comparison to the one I ended up selecting. 

Walt Simonson’s run on Thor is widely regarded as one of the single greatest runs on any character, if not the greatest.  I’m not exactly the biggest Thor fan but the parts of this run I have read are spectacular and I plan on going back and reading the whole thing when time and income allow.

Even if your fandom for Thor is limited the scene depicted in issue #362 will leave you in equal parts awe, shock, depressed, and happy.  Thor, Baldar and a few others have just led a mission into Hel to rescue the souls of a number of people from Earth that were trapped there.  They were joined by longtime Thor villain Skurge the Executioner, who had asked to help.  Freeing the souls the group still needed to escape as they reached a bridge that would take them to safety.  Realizing that the hordes of hell would overrun them and they needed to buy time to cross the bridge an already injured Thor stepped forward to volunteer for this suicide mission.  Thor is then hit over the head and rendered unconscious by Skurge.  While at first his actions appear to be that of a traitor he is instead volunteering to make this sacrifice.  Baldar informs him that he will most surely die.  Skurge replies that he is viewed at as a joke by most, and that each time he hears of everybody laughing at him he thinks he already is dead.  But Baldar was always too kind to laugh.  All he asks of Baldar is that he and Thor have a drink and toast him one day.  And then we get this



So many levels of awesome. 

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