Thunder.

For some reason, whenever I’ve let my mind drift recently, a recurring word that comes up is “thunder.” Possibly this is because I live in Arizona, where rain is always an Experience; still in the middle of a years-long drought, we tend to freak out over precipitation in ways that would make anyone from New England or the Pacific Northwest look concerned and back away slowly. Anyway, my mind moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform, and I’ve decided to riff for a bit on the idea of thunder.

First, let’s just begin with the word. How much art, or culture anyway, can I think of with that word? There’s Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls and the Heartbreakers (but I like his solo stuff best). And speaking of which, there’s “Johnny Thunder” off the Village Green Preservation Society album by the Kinks, about a James Dean-like small-town rebel. There’s “Thunder Road” by Bruce Springsteen, and there’s also a song (or is it an album?) called “Such Sweet Thunder.” I vaguely associate it with Joe Henry, but can’t give a reason for doing so.

Moving into comics, there’s Johnny Thunder and his Thunderbolt (a slapstick inversion of the Aladdin myth, with the genie a magical pink sprite who looked rather like an advertising mascot for an electric company), a goofy 40s comic-book feature only remembered today by superhero fetishists because he was the comic relief in the first superhero team, the Justice Society of America. DC Comics used the name again for a Western hero in the 50s, with beautiful art by Gil Kane, and in the 80s came up with a variation on the original concept called, I think, Jonni Thunder a.k.a Thunderbolt, who turned into the electrical being herself, and was so much cooler because she was yellow instead of pink. There have been other inheritors of the Johnny Thunder mantle since (alas, Kiko, we hardly knew you), and apparently there’s a new version of the property on the racks in hardcore geek stores now. Whatever. There was also a stiff, unsmiling Wally Wood series in the 60s called T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and God no, I don’t know what the acronym stands for. Oh, also Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, by the elegant and canny Peter A. Morisi.

There’s a book called Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which I know nothing about. I think it must be some sort of Young Adult classic, possibly about a difficult African-American (or South African, or Australian, some primeval instinct warns me) childhood. There’s also Thunderhead, Son of Flicka, which is only in my memory because the Lux Radio Theater did a radio adaptation of the movie adaptation of the sequel to the book My Friend Flicka. Probably plenty of books now with the title Thunder Road, not all of which are biographies of Springsteen. There’s that quotation from Lear which I don’t dare attempt because I won’t get it right, but you know, it’s when the King’s madness breaks full on him in the midst of the tempest. Doesn’t the wicked Queen also allude to it in the transformation scene in Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs?

When I was a kid, I always wanted to see Thundercats (because I thought Cheetara was hot), but I don’t recall that I ever actually did. Oh, God, I just remembered fourth-tier villains from the 80s New Teen Titans comic book: they were twins, and one of them was named Lightning. Do I need to spell out the rest? And Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome was a movie, wasn’t it?

Thunderclap Newman had a hit with “Something in the Air,” and the rest of their self-titled (and only) album is pretty decent sub-Who (circa Tommy) psychedelia. Oh, and Garth Brooks had a hit with “The Thunder Rolls,” which is probably a pretty decent song if I would bother to listen to it. Either John Paul Jones or John Entwistle, and possibly both, did an album with thunder in the title. The phrase “thunderthighs” is hovering at the edge of my memory, but I don’t know what it's from; Spinal Tap sounds like as good a culprit as any other.

Now for the clichés. There’s thunderous applause, the thunder of armies or stampeding herds, stealing other people’s thunder, brows as black as thunder, dawn coming up like thunder (or is it just the Cowardly Lion who says that?), the sound of distant thunder, any number of comparisons to loud sounds being like thunder, a realization coming over a person like a thunderclap, what in thunderation?, thundering in the sense of morally outraged shouting, and a loud crack of thunder. Is the crack of doom a reference to the sound of the sky breaking that you sometimes get in a good storm, or is it supposed to be some kind of yawning abyss opening up in the ground?

That’s enough to start with. What thunders can you think of?