GIANT SIZE THOR FINALE #1: Or, essentially, THOR #603 A. Considering than next week's issue of THOR technically ships in December, for the life of me I don't know why this couldn't have shipped as an issue of THOR. Was editorial that fearful that it would miss this ship date? Did they seek to avoid another fiasco like issues of WOLVERINE shipping out of order? At any rate, Marvel has risked this finale of the JMS run selling lower than usual because one-shots of ongoings haven't sold as well as regular issues in, oh, about 10 years. But the great thing about the Joe Q era is that simple realities of the business that are obvious to any pedestrian who examines the biz for five minutes are akin to superhuman ephiphanies for editorial. What any layman could figure out usually takes Marvel 2-4 years to execute, at swiftest. And this is a company that would publish comics criticizing slow politicians.
At any rate, this is the 17th issue of the JMS launch of THOR that now concludes, after about two years. I suppose that's fine in terms of Joss Whedon publishing standards, but surely Marvel expected this to be a faster book. JMS only agreed because he wanted at least 8 issues on his own without crossover tie-in's, and by and large Marvel more than doubled his request. When JMS leaves a book, he usually leaves it in three ways: hanging without a conclusion, in utter shambles, or unfinished. While such practices would have gotten him fired in the TV biz, Marvel editorial is a desperate sucker, willing to be endlessly stood up on proms by Allen Heinberg, so JMS has nothing to fear - and to be fair, DC is little better. For THOR, JMS delivers an exciting final issue for his run, which in usual fashion casts Thor as a supporting guest character, and has a lot of action. But it is not a conclusion. It merely sets up the next chap, K. Gillen, to maybe get around to a conclusion. It passes the buck, which for an A-List writer is not the best finale. The art is done by Djurdevic, who has proven slightly more reliable than the old regular artist, Oliver Coipel. He will be drawing SIEGE, and if Marvel editorial seriously believes that they can get 4 monthly issues out of him without one delay, then they either have given him considerable lead in time (like about a quarter of a year) or they're delusional beyond all hope of therapy. Every regular assignment he has had that was beyond one issue has run late after a while, two issues max.
"William the Warrior" becomes "William the Corpse" in a few pages (within the 5-6 page online preview of the issue, in fact), and while it is a powerful sequence and send-off for Bill, it comes with the idea that Balder the Brave needs the help of a half-dead mortal with a magical sword in order to defend himself from three random Asgardians. He also needs Bill to literally tell him what the plot of this series has so obviously been for 12 issues now under his dying breath. Balder, at best, has been a chump in this run, and this issue does nothing to change that. Balder declares that he'll actually, maybe, almost do something, while Kelda grows some stones and declares revenge against Loki for Bill's death. Her fate, which is revealed in the 5 page preview for THOR #604, is hardly pretty (Doom basically kills her in a few pages). There's a nice send-off for Bill, but if you read THOR for Thor and not the adventures of a fry-cook, you might grow impatient.
The climax of the issue are the attack squad of "Anti-Thor Doombots" flying into Oklahoma in Loki's desperate attempt to kill Donald Blake to eliminate any threat of Thor messing with his plans. Because lord knows if I was the God of Lies and was able to easily trick Thor into handing his entire kingdom into my hands, moving it into the lair of the worst villain Midguard has ever had, and successfully walked around in the corpse of his beloved for about a year, I CERTAINLY would reveal my hand in so crude a fashion as to send a fleet of ****ing robots to kill him. And in due fashion, Thor barely shows up in the fight. The man of the hour is Valstagg, who finally does something besides be the butt of fat jokes. It's an epic moment for ol' Valstagg the Mighty and he probably hasn't had a moment that cool in, well, ever. The art for this moment is well paced and it was executed well. It was the highlight of the $4 issue.
The rest, though, is a bit middling. Blake is blasted by the robots before he can summon Thor, and, hey, turns out his mortal form is crippled again and needs the "staff" to walk. Wow, that was worth four bucks. And nothing has been resolved. Thor is still exiled. Asgard in Oklahoma is still empty, and Sif and the Warrior's Three are still working in the diner. Doom and Loki are still laughing it up in Latveria, chopping up Asgardians for experimental purposes. I suppose with SIEGE what it is, there was no way JMS could have done a proper finale, and to be fair this issue was better than some of his last. But a run has to seem like it accomplished something, and outside of the first few issues, it accomplished little besides make Thor a guest star in his own book, make Balder look like a gutless, clueless putz, and make Loki even more invincible and unbeatable than the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT. There were many solid and even epic moments, but even the worst issue of the Pak & Van Lente HERCULES outdoes this run by a mile. JMS stretched an 8-9 issue story way too far and than has left a proper resolution to the next guy; passing the buck as it were. The fact that Gillen is willing to gracelessly kill off Kelda in his first issue perhaps vents the frustration of being tasked by some hot shot writer to finish HIS story for him. I tear into Joss Whedon a lot for his slow-shipping runs on RUNAWAYS and ASTONISHING X-MEN, but to give credit, he always finished his runs.
THOR's an alright book. Nothing in it is unreadable or horrendous. But it will likely become very overrated, and it proves that the only A-List writer that Marvel has that actually delivers A-grade work on a regular basis is Ed Brubaker. Jeph Loeb has quickly devolved into a clueless hack who seems to care more about a monthly deadline than writing a cohesive, readable story, and monthly produces overpriced work that flat-out insults the intelligence of the fans. Bendis has been an overrated hack for several years now, incapable of writing any character differently from the next and needing 7 issues to make the most mundane event happen, and treating every mundane, no brainer story twist as some Agatha Christy style ****ing masterpiece (all while writing characters poorly and killing off ones he doesn't like for shock value). Mark Millar waxes and wanes between "fun popcorn blockbuster" to "overrated preachy explosive Socialist drivel". Finally, JMS, who is DC's problem now, still has quite a lot of talent and a flair for dialogue and scene writing, but he drags things out too bloody long and then fails to really deliver the goods when it counts. THOR should have been a big event style book, but instead it was an over-budget high school play that took entirely too long to get to a middling conclusion. Not only is INCREDIBLE HERCULES a better Marvel god title, but THOR offers it little competition. I'll be fair and give Gillen a chance to wrap things up, but the writer after him may have to be terrific for me to remain. I've "fallen out of love" with this book a great deal within the last year.
A reprint of Thor's debut story and a 5 page preview that could easily be found on the internet are needed to pad out the price to $4. The next issue of THOR returns to $3, because apparently Gillen isn't worth the extra buck, or Marvel knows they can't suck an extra dollar from his readers. At any rate, JMS leaves the title he relaunched, and I won't miss him. Or at least, I hope I don't. Don't screw up, Gillen.
