Marvel's Thor could inspire Thorgrim??

I was seriously wondering which could really be the seminal source of all this giant battlehammers fashion from the "sword and sorcery" media. All these dwarfs with Thorgrim-like massive mallets (usually metallic), and so.

I think the Marvel version of Thor -created in the 60's- could be the origin. Truth is Thor had been painted several times centuries before Marvel, but the hammer is allways small, size and look of a carpenter's one. Then Marvel Thor comes with that huge mallet, almost 2 handed.

And, 20 years later, there's CTB with Thorgrim's giant weapon. Which very probably was inspired by the retard from Yojimbo, though the name of Thorgrim clearly shows Milius was thinking about Thor, and I really wonder if he was thinking about the Thor from the comics...

Roy Thomas wrotte a lot of "Thor" comics issues, and by the time he was involved in the movie -giving advices to Milius- he had (or still was) doing those.

And then, the vikings in fantasy have been described using giant battlehammers ala Thorgrim. When they hjistorically didn't. So, I am pretty sure the giving giant mallets to vikings is a result to "Marvel's Thor" but also very probably to the Milius' film.

Otherwise... I really don't know of any other source before the 80's, where medieval/barbarian/viking warriors used giant battlehammers. Do you?

I wouldn't be surprised if the inspiration for Thorgrim's "look" came from the Marvel representation of Thor.

And slightly off-topic, I made this a few years ago (just for fun, & to see if I could pull it off convincingly):




...After which, I decided to make a plaque for it.

The plaque itself is patterned after an ancient representation of Mjolnir that came in the form of a one thousand-year-old pendant found Kabbara in Scania, Sweden. (A fine replica of this pendant can be seen HERE.) A friend of mine actually came up with the idea of making the plaque in the shape of the hammer (he even made up the template of the shape for me).

The plaque is cut from a flat piece of 3/4" thick wood, that I then shaped with some wood-carving tools. The "hangers" are 1" diameter red oak dowels wrapped in leather, tipped by carvings of Fenrir made from poplar wood.

To make the wolf heads, I just carved away everything that didn't look like a wolf's head; however, I didn't want them resemble actual wolves too closely. I wanted the plaque to appear ancient, & I've noticed that artisans from thousands of years ago, didn't seem to pay too much mind to proportions. I painted everything up, & here's what I came up with:



/END thread hi-jack.

Thanks for your non-answers.

Such a great job! The hammer, is it true metal?

Trolls and Hammers in modern fantasy i think have been around before Milius. But sure some of Thomas' influence may of spilled over. I dont have any of the CONAN comics in any large significance, so its possible Conan fought someone with a giant hammer at some point.

*Nice hammer btw, Nex!

Flaming Turd wrote:

Thanks for your non-answers.

Such a great job! The hammer, is it true metal?

No, since that project was a display & only meant to be hung on the wall-plaque, I made the handle from hickory wood & the head from stacked layers of MDF covered in Bondo car body filler (along with an appropriate paint job).

Cromulus The Destroyer wrote:

I dont have any of the CONAN comics in any large significance, so its possible Conan fought someone with a giant hammer at some point.

No, not before the Milius' movie. Only swords and axes, maybe a mace, but never a battlehammer.

Years after the movie, yes. He used a giant hammer against some swamp demons in some kind of "Aliens" rip-off, in an issue from the Savage Sword.

This is from a 1997 comic from Argentina called CAZADOR (Hunter) with very very savage humor and languaje, clones Simon Bisley's style and indeed it had an issue which is nothing but a rip-off of Slaine -plus ultra dirty dick jokes inside - . The drawing with the Thorgrim's weapon is in an issue where Cazador kills some vikings, he took the weapon from a corpse.

I honeslty hesite to give Milius that kinda credit for inventing modern hammer weidling fantasy vikings,lol. Dwarves of Germanic folklore were associted with the forge, so hammers had to been used prior to Milius who actually gave the Thorgrim hammer originally to Brak in the 1st draft.. and Brak was a generic beastman, troll, overgrown dwarf whatever ect.

Moreover in the Illiad, Ajax the Great uses his mighty warhammer and beats back the Trojans army single handedly, He also uses an oversized spear and sheild. He was a giant of a man.

*Brak in the scripts also used a spear/lance.

Sure the hammers themselves were older but I wonder about the design, because Thor's for example was depicted in old artworks by the size of a normal hammer, for carpentry and normal stuff, not even a sledgehammer. Also I believe the big worker sledgehammer was used for political propaganda when depicting the "working class" warrior of communism and so. But the giant wood battlehammer with that kind of viking decoration, I am not sure if i've seen any artwork of something similar pre-movie.


In Conan's particular case, there are no art of the character wielding a battlehammer pre-movie, but there were some, after it. Ken Kelly's case, -he was indeed influenced by the movie in his artworks and even painted a cover for "The Destroyer" novelization-, here he painted him using this sorta unbelievable weapon:





Plus he gave a Thorgrim's to this giant foe, in a cave enviroment.




In any case, maybe it's a dumb idea giving credit to Milius for that but again I wonder why there is no art of barbarians with battlehammers before the movie... At least I can't find any. But THOR of course. Which leads me again to the seminal question of the thread.

Check out this art by Ken Kelly again:



Is soooo fucking close to the concept of the Casaro poster, one wonders... But what is really close to is of course to the painting that was also used by Casaro as the primeval source:




Ok, so we can assume that Thor and Casaro were both inspired by Frazetta and that's all but I do really wonder if Cobb and Stout weren't also influenced by Marvel's Thor, for example the artwork of the Father in the mountain,





Thor has been SOOO many times in that very exact pose, in the top of the mountain with lightings into his hammer and so...




And then there is this artwork by Buscema:



When the guy worked no less than in Marvel's Thor before the Milius0 movie was even in pre-production:

Well the Thorgrim character was very popular for fantasy enthausaisnts during the 80's to present, the entire movie was.. but then again Thorgrim was modeld on Marvel's Thor, even his name was lifted.

I also found this:

Quote :

Cyclopean masonry is a type of stoneworkMasonry

Masonry is the building of structures from individual units laid in and bound together by mortar....
found in MycenaeanMycenaean Greece

Mycenaean Greece, the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, is the historical setting of the epics of Homer and mu...
architecture, built with huge limestoneFacts About Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite ....
boulders, roughly fitted together with minimal clearanceClearance

A clearance can refer to:* in engineering and safety, a physical distance or space tolerance, as in a truck, train or...
between adjacent stones and no use of mortarFacts About Mortar (masonry)

...
. The boulders are typically unworked, but are sometimes roughly worked with a hammer, and the gaps between boulders are often filled in with smaller hunks of limestone.

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Cyclopean_masonry

Goes back to the Historical Art & Symbolism thread I think. Having the Archeans with their Cyclopean(which some associated with giants rather than man made,lol)structures and use of masreoy tools/weapons I think easily explains things.

Also I am pretty sure there were some Odin's drawings in the comics were he was in the "thinkers" pose, in a throne, with beard, and so... Could inspire Milius? Again, I don't know.

This one is post-movie, though. So, surely what we can say is the movie indeed had an influence in the comics:




And marvel also publised a What if? where Conan and Thor had a fight, and you know the question that is coming, right? What were the scripter watching when having the idea of this pieceofs... er, comic?





As you can see, the visualization of the fight SWORD vs HAMMER is similar to the coreography of the movie. or maybe it's just me


In the comic, Thor gives the hammer to Conan. And also gives him one last thingy.

Turd, what is the published date of that comic, '82/83?

1983

Yeah, I think its possibly Marvel's way of making a point they helped create Milius' movie,lol.

He did lift alotve stuff from Thomas and Marvel, as did Stone.