Q: So who is Thor's arch-nemesis?
A: His brother, Loki, the god of mischief. Thor may be a lot of things, but he's not very smart. Loki typically gets the better of him through deception and illusion.
Q: Hmmm... my interest is peaked. What else can you tell me to sell me on Thor?
A: Anything goes in Thor comics. That's what makes him so awesome. It's about adventure and fun. In the best Thor stories, he can fight mythical monsters in Asgard, clobber evil aliens in deep space and come back to Earth to kick it with the Avengers. There's something about the conceit of Thor that I find really appealing. I like the tension between magic and science – because really for storytelling purposes they're the same thing. I'm a big fan of both S/F and Fantasy stories, so seeing the two in one comic is really fun for me. I like that Thor can simultaneously take itself sooooo seriously with the haughty language and regal spectacle while also being very goofy – one of the seminal Thor comics involves him being turned into frog-Thor for a few issues.
Q: Wow, Justin, I'm in! What are some great Thor comics I should check out?
Thor: The Mighty Avenger by Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee – Don't let the fact that this comic is sold as an all-ages book fool you. This is the best place for a Thor novice to start. Thor: The Mighty Avenger is a continuity-free telling of the Thor story. You don't need to know anything going in. Langridge is a fantastic writer. Other than this, he is best known for a great run of comics based on The Muppet Show. Chris Samnee is an incredible artist and a fast rising star. His loose iconic style is a joy to look at.
Thor by J. Michael Straczynski – JMS of Battlestar Gallactica fame wrote an awesome run on Thor a few years back. Prior to his run, Thor and all the Asgardians were dead. In the first issue Thor rebuilds Asgard just outside a small town in Oklahoma. There are a lot of very entertaining scenes with Asgardians interacting with Oklahomans. One particularly great subplot has the Asgardian weather goddess fall in love with a fry-cook at the local diner. These comics are available in a one volume omnibus edition as well as several smaller trade paperbacks.
I'm currently making my way through the Volstagg-sized Thor by Walt Simonson omnibus. This 1,200 page volume contains what's generally considered to be the best run on Thor by anyone. And I have to say that even though I'm only about 250 pages in, I totally agree. Simonson wrote all of these and drew most of them (until the also awesome Sal Buscema took over). The book starts with a bang with the saga of Beta Ray Bill, a sort of alien-horse warrior who becomes one of Thor's closest allies. These comics aren't to be missed. These are also available in a more manageable size as Thor Visionaries: Walt Simonson – although I believe the last volume of that series is currently out of print.
If you want to see where it all began, your best bet is to check out the Essential Thor series. These low-cost black and white volumes reprint around 500 pages of comics per book. They're in black and white, but it's a great way to sample the early stories by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The stories may seem kind of hokey by today's standards. To me, they're always entertaining if a bit ludicrous. Even if you don't care for the stories, that's a lot of awesome Jack Kirby art to feast your eyes on.
Honestly, Thor isn't for everyone. He's a hard sell and a little hard to appreciate. I didn't like Thor until very recently when I discovered J. Michael Straczynski's run on the comic. But it's like this: all superhero stories are ridiculous, implausible, and fantastic. If you can buy that a rogue billionaire would fight crime like a giant bat or in a suit of armor, then it's not that big of a leap to accept a hammer-wielding thunder god. Let yourself like Thor. Let yourself have fun.
Don’t look now, but Facebook is on the move again.
Today, the company announced a new program called Community Boost that’s designed to improve the digital skills of a variety of people around the country; according to the website, the goal is to provide U.S. businesses and workers with “the digital education and skills they need to compete in the new mobile economy.”
Beginning next year, Facebook will visit 30 cities around the country (including Houston, Detroit, St. Louis, and more) and provide both business tools and job training for companies, job seekers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders. The education will focus on tech training and the ins and outs of Facebook in order to create a larger knowledge base and boost social media skills.
According to Morning Consult, “62% percent of US small businesses using Facebook said having digital or social media skills is an important factor in their hiring decisions — even more important than where a candidate went to school.” Because of this, Facebook has decided to try to maximize the number of people who can successfully use the platform.
Since 2011, the social media company has invested more than $1 billion in supporting small businesses through programs that teach social media management and social marketing skills – and they’re not slowing down now.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is that 70 million small businesses use Facebook to connect with customers,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook announcement. “That’s 70 million people who now have access to the same tools the big guys have. Now we need to make it easier for people to start and build new businesses or find jobs and opportunities, and in the process strengthen their communities.”
Here’s a more detailed look at what the program entails:
So what do you think of Facebook’s Community Boost? We’d love to hear your thoughts! And if you’re interested in having Community Boost present in your city, you can fill out the form on the website and share your story.The ‘On This Day’ series continues with the second part of a post on Italian Romanticism from Fabio Camilletti, who is Associate Professor at the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick. The first part of this blog post can be viewed here.
To contribute a blog to this series about the bicentenary of a significant event in 1816, please contact Anna Mercer.
a sky perennially bright, such as the Greek or Italian one; a most pure and tempered air, always imbued by the sweet-scenting smells of a thousand different flowers, of cedar and orange trees; such a sky will pour out of the mind of its poets joyful and pleasant ideas, full of imagination, in the same way as the soil generates through it a variety of flowers and fruits. He who secludes himself in the melancholy regions of the North, where mind and heart are both oppressed by the perennial shadows, and by the mist, and by ice, will not be surprised if the poems born in those country are gloomy, ferocious, and sad, and if the similes employed by the poets of those unfortunate climates look all the same.
we are still great; we still speak that tongue before which all living ones retreat, and with perhaps would not retreat before the dead ones; […] we still drink this air and tread this earth and enjoy the same light that an army of immortals enjoyed; the fire that enflamed our ancestors still burns […]; that character that belongs to us is unchanged; it remains an inspirer of the highest things, ardent and judicious, most willing and most vivid, sweet and tender and sensitive in the highest degree, and still solemn and nonchalant, the most mortal enemy of every affectation whatsoever, aware and enamoured of naturalness above every other thing, that naturalness without which there never was nor ever will be any beauty nor grace, the yearning lover and most refined connoisseur of the beautiful the sublime and the true, and finally the most wise moderator of nature and reason.
Leopardi concretizes, therefore, a recurrent image of Classicist polemics: that modern poetry – i.e. Romantic verse – is nothing else but the prosecution, through other means, of Napoleonic invasions, aiming to ravage Italy from its last prestige, that of literature. The Romantic invasion is much subtler as it disguises itself under the (Satanic) temptations of fashion: in his later work Operette morali, of 1827, Leopardi will name fashion (moda) the sister of death; with ‘modernity’, moda shares the etymology from the Latin adverb modo (today), conveying the principle that what is new is intrinsically better than what is old.
From this angle, Leopardi shares exactly the same view as Stendhal: the breach opened by Napoleon near Milan has allowed modernity to irrupt into Italy. However, whereas Stendhal saw the battle at Lodi as presenting a possibility for reawakening, Leopardi views modernity as the most threatening menace to Italian specificity, namely its being located before modernity, before that extreme sophistication of taste that exceeds civilization, turning into barbarism. Romanticism is, therefore, the last attempt, on the part of the nations that has ‘always hated and will [always]