JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #632 (Marvel Comics)
By Kieron Gillen, Mitch Breitweiser, Bettie Breitweiser & VC’s Clayton Cowles
Synopsis: If a comic where Kid Loki has to find homes for evil puppies doesn’t make you smile then you’re a goddamn communist.
01. I want to get something out of the way: this is a comic where Volstagg is Broxton, Oklahoma’s mall Santa and that is literally just the first two pages. That is one tenth of the issue and it is already better than most comics released this year. Kieron Gillen is not fucking around.
02. I have spoken before about why I love Journey Into Mystery so much, but as crazy as it sounds, this is a series that has only improved throughout the year. The first arc, a Fear Itself tie-in about Kid Loki assembling a black ops team of myths and legends to defeat the Serpent, recently wrapped with a bang, and by “bang” I mean “Loki writes his own brother’s tragic death into prophecy because the pen is mightier than the sword.” It was incredibly moving, and in the months that followed it, Gillen has stepped back and told some smaller stories that were no less moving or rewarding. With #630, he focused on the guilt and sadness that Volstagg hides from everyone, even his family, and as amazing as that was, with #632, he accomplishes an even greater feat: he and the Breitweisers have made a Christmas special about Loki finding loving homes for evil puppies. And why does he have to find homes for them? Because his Hel-wolf had sex with Garm, the dog guarding Hel, and now the All-Mother is making him clean up that mess, even if it means cold-murdering 6 adorable-if-slightly-evil puppies and one with demonic Tourette’s.
03. This comic took me about twice the time that Journey Into Mystery issues normally take me to read, if only for one simple reason: I had to stop every page because I was laughing too hard to focus on what was on the page. This is a comic where Loki and his friend Leah fool Warlock of the New Mutants into taking a Hel-puppy, give one to the Devil and make the other a Tumblr celebrity so that donations can support its presumably lavish lifestyle. That’s not the best part, though. The best part is the montage of Loki’s attempts to give away the evilest puppy (the one that won’t stop screaming “Bastard” and “Murder”) to the people who took the other six, including it chewing on the devil’s shoe, terrorizing children via YouTube and - this is maybe the funniest thing I have seen all year - trying to bite off the dead god Tyr’s sole remaining hand while Tyr screams, “NOT AGAIN!”
Journey Into Mystery: making amputation funny.
04. What does Kid Loki end up doing with the other puppy, even as it screams about how it will kill him? Well, between murdering it like the SPCA and adopting it while naming it after Thor, there’s only one holiday-appropriate answer.
I would read an entire comic just about paper training evil puppies, I am not joking.
05. I don’t think it’s crass to describe Journey Into Mystery #632 as a Christmas miracle. This is a comic that started off as incredible and ended 2011 with one of the best single issues released all year. The Breitweisers‘ art looks like it stepped out of the classic era of comics, and in a holiday issue, that invokes nostalgia like Rankin-Bass Christmas specials (or “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”). It’s funny, it’s sweet, it’s shockingly dark and it has puppies! Even evil puppies are loveable at Christmas.
God bless us, everyone.
