Undeserved Fate: Journey Into Mystery #634 Review

I can’t imagine that Kieron Gillen was super excited to be assigned writing duties on Journey Into Mystery. A comic that’s nothing but Thor retitled following Thor’s “death” in Fear Itself, at face value this is a book designed to do nothing but park the title until they’re ready to bring Thor back properly. This is a book that is designed to have no future, and getting the assignment had to feel like getting a gig at a VHS tape factory. Or at a newspaper. Or on a non creator owned J. Michael Straczynski ongoing title.

So it would have been easy for Gillen to treat the book as what it is, write himself a good old middle of the road Thor-ish story and bide his time for a more lucrative assignment, like Scarlet Spider’s Pal: Jimmy Douchebag, or perhaps Ultimate Boom-Boom. Instead, he’s cutting loose with some of the zaniest, most fun comic writing you can currently buy. When it comes to pure fun, you’re not gonna find anything better than Journey Into Mystery #634 on the shelves this week.

Journey Into Mystery is following the adventures of Loki, who was turned into a child and rendered powerless recently and is being mistakenly hunted by Damion Hellstrom, Son of Satan, because Hellstrom thinks that Loki is causing people across the world to have nightmares about the Fear Itself event, which if true would mean that most of my recent nightmares are Loki’s fault. Which, as stories go, certainly is one… but the story isn’t the reason to read this book.

No, you should be buying this book for the characterizations, batshit crazy plot points, and the dialogue, all of which are damn funny and entertaining. Hell, the book opens with a three-inch drawing of a Fear Lord – “Fear lord shown actual size” – who flat out tells you what you’re in for:

Read on for dead gods, shirtless men, cute puppies, bad jokes, bottomless plot holes, and Tarantino rip-offs. The horror! the horror!

And that is precisely what you get. And it is awesome. The plot, such as it is, shameless lifts from Inception, references Neil Gaiman’s Sandman by way of Nightmare on Elm Street, and does in fact lift from Pulp Fiction. Which doesn’t matter in the slightest, because it is just relentlessly entertaining thanks to the interesting characterization of Loki as an earnest and enthusiastic kid trying to make good on his prior villainny, Leah – Loki’s girl Friday by way of being an abrasive and sarcastic dead girl, and Hellstrom, who is leather-panted and shirtless because “A guy’s got a certain reputation, you know.”

And my God, the dialogue:

Hellstrom: Sorry about that, kid. What’s Nightmare up to?

Loki: How – how – how do you know it’s him?

Hellstrom: As I went under, I was snatched away. Stuck in an awful bar conversation about old kid’s TV, without a chance to interrupt, with an empty glass and the bartender never even once looked in my direction… total nightmare.

In a character and humor driven story, all I want out of the art is one thing: solid facial expressions, and Richard Elson’s art delivers. It clearly communicates Loki’s alternating delight and terror, Leah’s constant bored disdain, and even Thori – a puppy – showing longing to be Hellstrom’s dog. But Elson also gamely tackles drawing an actual nightmare, including a zombie Thor, demons, and hellhounds. What action is in this book is mostly duelling magic, so I don’t know how Elson might do on more standard superhero fare, but in what amounts to a humor-loaded horror book, his stuff really hits the spot for me.

This is not a book to jump onto for the long haul, because by nature of what it is, it is doomed. However, Gillen is clearly taking advantage of that and doing comics that are just a relentlessly good time. He’s throwing everything at the wall – because hey, fuck it, why not? – and almost all of it is sticking. Journey Into Mystery #634 is highly, highly recommended.