KICK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)

By: Douglas Wolk
January 27, 2022

One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of a favorite sidekick — whether real-life or fictional.

VOLSTAGG

Volstagg the Voluminous is a brilliant twist on a familiar character, a latter-day addition to Marvel Comics’ version of the Norse mythological pantheon who’s also a thinly disguised version of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff: a once-formidable hero who’s gone to seed, coasting on his enormous ego, silver tongue, and improbable luck. He’s also a sidekick twice over. Invented in 1965 for the “Tales of Asgard” feature that backed up Thor’s early adventures in the mythology-as-superheroics comic book Journey Into Mystery, Volstagg usually appears as one of the Warriors Three, a Three Musketeers-like team of Thor’s pals. But he’s also very much the sidekick of the other two Warriors, Fandral the Dashing and Hogun the Grim: the guy they’re there to prop up. When they show up for a fight, he announces that “valorous Volstagg shall turn about and guard the rear!” (“Aye,” Hogun snarls, “since all our foes now stand before us.”)

Both artist Jack Kirby and writer Stan Lee took individual credit for coming up with the Warriors Three (Lee’s claim is, for once, substantially more convincing than Kirby’s). Kirby gave Volstagg his form — round and red-bearded, dressed in a bulging purple shirt and a beribboned helmet, prone to chewing scenery and everything else, visibly the comedy-relief character in any scene where he appears — but Lee gave him his note-perfect voice. When Thor starts helping Volstagg break out of a stone cage, the old braggart indignantly replies “How now?!! To speak so of giving aid to Volstagg is akin to giving the peacock an extra feather… the porcupine an extra quill!”

For his first five years or so — the Kirby/Lee period — Volstagg was a miles gloriosus, and a very funny take on that stock character. But later creators of his comics have figured out how to make the joke even funnier by deepening his character a bit, and observing that an over-the-hill god is feeble only by comparison with his peers. (“In his prime,” Marvel’s official handbook dryly notes, “he could lift about 50 tons; now he can only lift about 35 tons.”) Volstagg is buffoonish, cowardly and gluttonous, true, but if he’s forced to fight, he will win, every time — if sometimes by knocking his foes over with his mead-gut. Walter Simonson’s 1980s tenure as Thor‘s writer and artist introduced the idea that Volstagg is, in fact, a steadfast defender of children (who find him hilarious rather than pathetic). And Kieron Gillen’s 2011-2012 run as Journey Into Mystery‘s writer found the virtues in Volstagg’s vices: a serial exaggerator and prevaricator may also be a glorious tale-spinner, Gillen suggests, and a sidekick who knows that he’s the real hero’s comedic foil has room to find a way of his own to bend events to the best outcome.

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KICK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (8)

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