Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett talks about Loki, Disney's comics, and Marvelman.
 
Well, I finally saw Thor: The Dark World and as much as I and everyone else around me enjoyed it I can kinda see why others were more lukewarm.  Some have commented on how Natalie Portman's Jane Foster essentially had nothing to do and while that's certainly true, there was no shortage of underwritten, thankless roles.  Starting with our lead; at least in the original Thor Chris Hemsworth had a rudimentary character arc but this time he mostly just smolders and hits stuff.  And Christopher Eccleston's Malekith made for a totally charisma-free antagonist, especially when compared (and you're constantly compelled to) with Tom Hiddleston's Loki.  According to an interview with Eccleston his Malekith was supposedly motivated by revenge over the death of his wife and children but you certainly couldn't tell any of that from actually watching the movie where he’s depicted as a generic malicious bastard.
 
And naturally the movie was stolen by Tom Hiddleston as Loki.  I really do hope Disney and Marvel fully appreciate how much they owe the factor for almost single-handedly transforming a villain who was formerly as dull as The Mandarin (and don't get me started on the cuckold's horns he used to sport) into that singular paradox; the universally loved villain.  Don't believe me?  Just Google "Everyone Loves Loki" and see what you get.  At least Al Ewing, the writer of the upcoming Marvel title Loki, Agent of Asgard, has admitted in print that Hiddleston was the primary inspiration of their version of the character.  While I hope they resist the temptation of giving him his own movie (that really would be too much of a good thing) it is nice seeing the character finally living up to his full potential as the Norse God of Mischief, not Evil.
 
While we're on the subject, something no one else seems to mention is just how much Disney/Marvel has been dialing down the "god" stuff.  At first I thought it was just for the Disney XD cartoons to avoid them getting on the wrong side of various religious groups, but in the first couple of minutes of this week's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. the whole "Aesir Are Really Aliens" trope gets underscored pretty darn hard.  It even made an appearance in the title of Jeannette Catsoulis' New York Times review of the movie, "The Hammer Resurgent 'Thor: The Dark World' Brings Back Marvel's Alien Superhero."
 
Last week the online version of Publishers Weekly featured an article by Heidi MacDonald titled "Disney Expands Its Comic Program."  It primarily focused on the upcoming Space Mountain graphic novel based on the theme ride of the same name though it also said Disney "hopes to grow their US comics and magazine program in 2014."  Unfortunately no details were offered.  Plus it revealed something I somehow had managed to miss: Disney is once again sporadically publishing issues of Comic Zone magazine.  For those who may have forgotten, Comic Zone was an offshoot of Disney Adventures, a digest that featured comics as well as articles that had a print run of well over a million before it was cancelled in 2007.  Comic Zone apparently sold even better.  I seem to have missed two previous issues, one in January and a Summer issue.  Unfortunately, according to the piece "no Comic Zone magazines are on the schedule at present."
 
The piece also quotes Tonya Agurto, Vice President of Global Licensing at Disney Publishing Worldwide, "We think there’s a lot of opportunity to expand further with the digital comics area," something I had already started to suspect.  As previously established (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--A Whole New World") for a while now I've been downloading Disney Comics originally published in Europe via the Disney Comics iPad app.  Then on my iPad I got a message that "Disney Comics is shutting down as of November 1.  Thank you for your past support."  For a while I consoled myself with the fact I would still be able to download their comics on the comiXology website; last week three new Uncle Scrooge titles were scheduled to be released.  None of them were.  So, something is definitely up; I just have absolutely no idea what it is.
 
A couple of weeks ago (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Get Over It") I suggested that while Marvel had decided to call their revival/revamp of Miracleman by that name, that its original name, Marvelman, was too good to go to waste.  Well, in an interview on Comic Book Resources with Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada he's quoted as saying "That's not to say that the name Marvelman isn’t in play for something else down the line someday."  Since I'm always such a good sport when I'm wrong I hope you don't if I take just a bit of a bow on the odd occasion I'm actually right.
 
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.