Thor: Latverian Prometheus

As you’ll recall I generally enjoyed J. Michael Straczynski’s run on “Thor,” except for the fact that its ending was so rushed and abrupt that it sucked most of the enjoyment out of the experience.  Now we have interim writer Kieron Gillen picking up the threads from Straczynski’s run with Billy Tan joining him on art duties.  With three issues before the tie-in to “Siege” starts, one would think that this would be an exercise in clearing the deck and making sure everything is in place before the big crossover event comes in and starts smashing things.

And you’d be right.  Still, Gillen does a decent enough job of picking up where Straczynski left off with the Asgardians now wise to the machinations of Doom and Loki.  While their leader Balder has numbers and righteousness on his side, he’s still up against Doom who (as the title implies) has turned the butchered Asgardians of his experiments into cyborg-zombie killing machines.  Naturally Thor has to get involved despite his status as an exile and the end result is a decent enough superhero fight-fest.

Gillen doesn’t really get to show off his inventiveness and wit as a writer, but he gets the plot and characters from point A to B with a maximum of efficiency.  He does give Tan some real opportunities to shine as the fight scenes between Doom and Thor really have an epic feel to them.  So while this volume cauterizes the gaping wound that was the end of Straczynski’s run, it does so in the most workman-like fashion possible.  I don’t think anything more would’ve been possible given the constraints I imagine Gillen was under, but it is what it is.

This volume also contains a single-issue story featuring Thor’s lady love Sif as she battles through Beta Ray Bill’s sentient starship in order to reclaim her honor after having her body possessed by Loki.  It’s not bad, but it doesn’t really make the character any more interesting to me.  We also get Stan Lee and David Aja’s collaboration from “Thor #600” which is amusing enough though it’s more interesting to see how Aja’s dark and gritty style plays against Lee’s bright and happy script.  Chris Giarrusso closes things out with his own take on Thor’s return — Mini Marvels-style!  Coming at the end of the volume, it was nice to see something so unabashedly silly close things out after the grimly serious events of the Thor and Sif stories.  It’s certainly not worth the price of admission by itself, but you’ll finish this collection with a smile on your face.