Thor vols. 2 & 3

I picked up the first volume of J. Michael Straczynski’s run on “Thor” last year at Comic-Con and found it to be generally entertaining, if not as brilliant as the online reviews and word-of-mouth had said it to be.  After reading the second volume, I came away much more impressed.  After the title character brought back all of the Asgardians at the end of the previous volume, he now has to contend with the problems that such an act entails. 

Whether it’s Thor dealing with the problem of resurrecting his father Odin, Loki enacting his master plan to ruin his brother, or Bill the short order cook who winds up falling in love with the Asgardian beauty Kelda, Straczynski shows that he knows how to make his characters interesting and relatable while telling a long-form story that pays serious entertainment dividends throughout these volumes.  He also knows not to take all of this entirely seriously as the comic-relief provided by the Warriors Three is applied at just when the story needs it the most.  These volumes also have impeccably detailed art from Oliver Coipel and Marko Djurdjevic, though it’s the latter who shines the most in these two volumes.

Regrettably, the third volume ends Straczynski’s run on the title without any real resolution.  It’s as if he heard about Marvel’s plans for Asgard in “Siege” and figured that it wasn’t worthwhile to stick around and make sure his run had a proper ending.  Whatever the circumstances were, the lack of an ending does a good job of devaluing his entire run.  While I’ve heard that writer Kieron Gillen did pick up a lot of the threads left by Straczynski’s departure, I can’t really recommend these volumes knowing that they ultimately don’t deliver any kind of satisfying payoff at the end.