Chaos War #2 – Review

By: Greg Pak & Fred Van Lente (writers), Khoi Pham (pencils), Thomas Palmer (inks), Sunny Gho (colors) & Simon Bowland (letters)

The Story: The Chaos King continues his assault, taking on underworld as Herc tries to raise a squad of immortals to defend the universe.

What’s Good: There was just something wrong with Chaos War #1.  If you were not following the overall Hercules story for the last couple of years, you felt a little like being at a cocktail party where you don’t know anyone and no one is really making an effort to include you in the conversation.  BUT, after reading through this issue #2, you feel like you know everyone and that this is a party that you won’t mind hanging out at too much.

It was just a lot of fun seeing Herc trying to raise a team of gods to do battle with the Chaos King.  Of course, he’s going to get Thor and that’s kinda fun because neither of them is the sharpest tool in the shed (moreso Herc).  And there is a fun little scene of Venus trying to revive the fallen mortals by singing Bob Marley (“Get up, stand up…” it must be a LOT of fun to pick these slightly inappropriate songs for Venus).  But from there the fun really begins as Herc starts using his new supergod powers to summon a raft of big-time powerful folks to help in his battle against the Chaos King and they’ll need it because the Chaos King has some serious firepower on his side too (as if he needs it).  This issue just clicked in a way that the first one did not, so if you were really down on the first issue understand that you might want to give it another chance.