Ragnarok: Last God Standing
Written by Walter Simonson
Art by Walter Simonson
IDW Publishing
Fans of Norse mythology and all things Viking should just buy this book and get it over with. There is really nothing I can say other than this is a most satisfying read, if you are a Norse fan.
I’ll admit this was a bit different than I had expected when first cracking the book.
The gods are all dead, or at least that is the belief.
The walking dead traverse the land.
The world is a dark and sun-less place.
But, gods don’t all die so easily it appears.
He may have a skeletal face, and no lower jaw, but he also happens to awake from years of death, or slumber, initially that is unclear. And, he happens to be able to call a certain hammer to his hand, and call lightning, and well by now you get the idea.
When he finds the other Gods are dead, he goes looking for knowledge to fill in the blanks of his years kept alive only thanks to the help of Ratatosk.
Ratatosk is the squirrel the legends say ran up and down the world tree Yggdrasil to carry messages between the unnamed eagle, perched atop Yggdrasil, and the wyrm Níðhöggr, who dwells beneath one of the three roots of the tree.
In this case, before all the Gods were killed Odin enlisted Ratatosk to keep Thor alive, sort of at least.
The story is about Thor’s quest, and as you would desire with a book centred on a Norse god writer Walter Simonson writes in big, bold strokes.
As artist too, Simonson is able to tie the art very nicely to the writing, since he no doubt approached it with a singular mind. It works too.
This is about as good as a comic of this sort of theme gets. Check it out.
