marvel comics reviews
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.
After the chaos of the Secret Wars, not much has changed for Kamala Khan, the current Ms. Marvel. She’s still in school, still fighting the good fight, and trying to balance being a superhero with the other parts of her life. Her mother is aware of her secret and is something of an ally now, which was a really nicely done reveal a little while ago.
At the end of the last volume of Thor, they finally revealed who the new Thor is. The new status quo is being established, but it’s ugly. Thor has a heavy burden to bear- every time she picks up Mjolnir, the magic of the hammer wipes out Jane Foster’s chemotherapy, but not the cancer she’s suffering from because it’s so much a part of her now. It’s a nasty twist on an old idea.
Marvel has done a lot of different versions of the Squadron Supreme. The Squadron themselves started off as fairly obvious knock-offs of DC’s Justice League. Of the ones that are in this book, the analogues are fairly apparent- Hyperion is Superman, Nighthawk is Batman, Power Princess is Wonder Woman, Whizzer is the Flash, and Doctor Spectrum is Green Lantern. The Squadron had has several incarnations, and now, after Secret Wars, five survivors, each of a different Earth, bad together to make a new version of the team.
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