The following page takes place towards the end of a story in which Thor has been called upon to investigate a number of crimes against prominent religious figures. High profile priests have been crucified, holy books burned, temples destroyed. Thor has tracked down and confronted the man responsible yet has been unable to stop his reign of terror...
Panel One.
Thor stands before a burning cathedral, the stained glass in its windows broken, thick black smoke pouring from a hole in its roof up into a dark, thunder-swept sky. Thor himself is beaten and bloodied, his face and arms scarred and bruised, his costume torn. He's holding his hammer defiantly, but we can tell he's on his last legs.
Thor: I have seen the atrocities that lie in your wake...
Thor: Desecration and bloodshed not even the Dark Elves of Svartalfheim would wreak...
Thor: And I have done all within my power to bring this to an end...
Thor: Yet still you stand... still you blaspheme... still you defile...
Thor: How can this be?
Panels Two - Four.
Three small panels of Thor getting his ass handed to him and taking a serious whupping at the hands of his enemy: a small, intellectual-looking man in his early 70s (though still in reasonably good health) with swept-back grey hair and spectacles. He's wearing a woolly crew-neck jumper and cords. Thor is unable to fight back. With each blow, the Thunder God weakens further... and gradually turns back to Dr. Donald Blake.
SFX (4): THOK!
SFX (5): THOOM!
SFX (6): THOOP!
Panel Five.
The man holds Donald Blake's body up. Blake slumps, defeated - he would fall to the ground were it not for the man's hand gripping the front of his shirt. The man speaks directly to Blake. Behind them, the cathedral roof collapses into the flames while thunderclouds continues to roil overhead.
SFX: Kra-koom!
Man: If a god were ever to ask me that… if a god were to stand before me now and speak those words from his own immortal lips… do you know what I’d tell him, Dr. Blake?
Man: I wouldn’t tell him anything. I wouldn’t even hear him.
Man: Because I am…
Man: The Atheist.
Panel Six.
The Atheist snarls into Donald Blake's face... he's been corrupted and driven insane by his own unholy power.
The Atheist: And no god has power over me.
So, the Aetheist is Robert Langdon...?
ReplyDeleteNot a bad page but I really can't get behind this antagonist, for some reason. He's a Dan Brown/Jeph Loeb creation for sure...too harsh?
You do set the page out well, though, Rol. Nice.
As comic "gods" are treated more as extra-terrestrials or extra-dimensionals, I'd wonder if there would be a place for Atheists in their pages? Ponderous...
ReplyDeleteRyan - no, the atheist is Richard Dawkins. Hence the title. And having never read Dan Brown, I'll have to rely on your extensive knowledge... ;-p
ReplyDeleteDanial - it's probably not a question Marvel would want to tackle so directly, otherwise it'd already have been done.
I like the concept, and the Aetheist character. The only thing that sits badly with me is Thor investigating something. I'm not a regualr Thor reader by any stretch of the imagination, but does he do detective work? I thought he was more of a mystical/mythical kinda guy?
ReplyDeleteYou're right, investigates is probably the wrong word. I do believe that if Thor was faced with a serious of crimes against a variety of religions / deities, he'd want to confront the culprit... but as far as investigation goes, he probably just followed the line of burning churches.
ReplyDeleteI like the concept you have here. I really like the idea of a villain whose power is that gods have no power over him - I really like it. I especially enjoy that the character is off-type: a reserved old man wielding a ton of power really grabs my attention. My one nitpick would be the name; The Atheist doesn't sound quite right. I feel like it isn't insistent enough. I know they're virtual synonyms, but maybe something like The Heathen or Blaspheme would get the point across with more force? However, this is just my personal opinion, so make of that what you will.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Grant. I like The Heathen, but Blaspheme sounds a bit Rob Liefeld to me. I never liked that trend in the 90s for giving characters verbs as names.
ReplyDelete