Tessa Thompson changed Valkyrie for the better with her take on the character in 2017’s blockbuster, Thor: Ragnarok. Now, Marvel Comics is adopting her version of the warrior for new adventures.
Last week, Marvel Comics announced that Black Bolt writer Saladin Ahmed, along with artist Javier Rodriguez, were bringing the EXILES team back to life in 2018. The first look at the series included four of the five team members, Iron Lad, Wolvie, Blink, and Khan, but kept the fifth exile a mystery.
Marvel has now revealed that Valkyrie was the final member of the team, and the art clearly shows that Thompson’s style from Ragnarok made the jump back onto the page. As you can see above, she fits into the team very nicely.
“Valkyrie’s a character who’s always appealed to me. Her iconic warrior-woman look — spear! sword! flying horse! — but also the juxtaposition of a kickass ancient fantasy hero operating in contemporary New York City. She’s a classic Marvel heroine,” said series writer Saladin Ahmed. “But the EXILES version of Valkyrie is a bit different from what we’ve seen in comics thus far. Our Valkyrie is known as the Lone Defender of Asgard, and she’s a tankard-draining, maiden-wooing, giant-slaying thunderbolt of a woman. Though she’s not technically from the Marvel Cinematic Universe reality, she’s basically the literalization of the larger-than-her-physical-frame swagger that Tessa Thompson displayed in THOR: RAGNAROK, turned up to 11.”
The editors at Marvel were also big fans of the Valkyrie that Thompson and director Taika Waititi created for Ragnarok, so it was a no-brainer when they had the opportunity to give her some comic attention.
“Like everyone else who has seen Taika Waititi’s brilliant THOR: RAGNAROK movie, all of us on Team Exiles are big fans of Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie,” said series editor Wil Moss. “So when we realized that we had the perfect series — where the roster is made up of alternate reality versions of Marvel heroes — to introduce a comic book equivalent of that version of Valkyrie, we jumped at the chance! And how great is series artist Javier Rodriguez’s design? Such a nice combo of the classic Valkyrie look and the MCU’s, yeah?”
EXILES, written by Saladin Ahmed and illustrated by Javier Rodriguez, will hit stores on April 11, 2018.
