marvel comics reviews
There’s a big change coming for the Agents of SHIELD in “Parting Shot.” There’s a lot of tense plotting, with cuts back and forth between now and several hours in the past. The number of hours ago each segment takes place gets smaller with each flashback, making a sort of countdown to “How did we get here?”
The Squadron, made up of survivors from different Earths before the forcible integration that is the current Marvel Universe, has had a lot of trouble on the main Marvel Earth. In a bad spot on Earth, they were offered an escape route by Thundra, who wanted to get their help in the horribly named Weirdworld. Once there, the Squadron suffered a lot of immediate setbacks, such as the apparent death of Dr. Spectrum and Hyperion losing his powers.
Things get complicated for the Agents of SHIELD in “The Inside Man.” Quite a bit of the show involves the creature that was exiled to Maveth, which is now inhabiting Ward. Malik isn’t sure what to make of what he got, and the creature doesn’t really seem to care what Malik thinks.
Tension has been building for a while now, and things finally go over the edge in this issue of Thor. Thor has had enough of Odin, and the two of them fight. And “fight” isn’t anywhere near a strong enough term. I think they did some damage out Jupiter way, but Aaron did something amazingly…
“Smoke and Mirrors” goes into a lot of background for our two main female characters- Peggy Carter and Whitney Frost. It was interesting to see that they grew up on different continents and took very different paths in life, but had a lot of similarities. Let’s face it, the early half of the twentieth century wasn’t a great time to be a smart, gifted, driven, and strong woman.
The first issue of this book was largely set up. It established Red Wolf as an Old West sheriff and man of action, very much a man of his time. Then, near the end of the issue, he runs afoul of a magic using bad guy. The evil doer worked his spell, and Red Wolf was banished to a strange and mysterious land- the present.
A good bit of the last arc was Luke running around trying to find Ben Kenobi’s journal. He found it eventually, and will probably get a chance to read it if he ever gets time to catch his breath. Whether or not Luke gets to read it, we get a peek inside this issue as Jason Aaron takes us back to Tatooine for some more detail of Ben’s time in exile.
With the Secret Wars (third one, I think) event over and the Battleworld bit ended, the Marvel titles have all rebooted. Another chance for a number one issue, yay (yes, I’m being sarcastic). Agents of SHIELD continues to try and walk the line between the comic book setting and the continuity from the tv show.
If you read comics long enough, story types cycle around. This is especially true for origins and the founding of a team. The “All New, All Different” Avengers come together through the “many heroes cross paths during a fight” type that goes through the first three issues.
The new Thor has been around a while, and has crossed paths with various parts of the Asgardian mythos. In the age of the Marvel movies, you can’t go too long without a certain God of Mischief popping up. This issue has Thor clashing with Loki in several iterations. It’s really interesting seeing all the different versions pop up, although it doesn’t go as smoothly as Loki himself was probably expecting.
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