Thor: Heaven and Earth #4 – Review

By: Paul Jenkins (writer), Lan Medina (artist), Chris Sotomayer (colorist), Charlie Beckerman & Jake Thomas (assistant editors)

The Story: A Welsh Prince steals the wife of a Viking. The Vikings sail over to settle accounts. The Welsh, getting kicked around, call for help, by offering beautiful damsels for their dragon to eat. The dragon accepts the payment and mows down the Vikings, who call for help of their own: the Norse gods.

What’s Good: You’ll recall in my review of Thor: Heaven and Earth #3, that I’d been blown away by Jenkins’ powerful writing. This issue is no different. Once again, it is a stand-alone issue that is entirely focused on what makes Thor different. In this case, Jenkins focuses on the fact that Thor is part of an ancient pantheon of gods, who once had worshippers who could call them for help, worshippers who had enemies in a pagan cosmology. The second thing that’s cool about Jenkins’ story is that there is a strong moral element. The challenge in lending a moral argument to a tale of the past is that very often, to meet the moral needs of modern readers, an anachronistic ethic is inserted into a past it doesn’t belong to, making the story feel inauthentic. Jenkins gets around this by making the original crime (wife-kidnapping) something that will offend the morals of both modern readers and vikings. Clever and effective. The third cool thing about Jenkins’ story is the frame of the narrative. This is a story being told. There is a listener and a teller, and instead of being just a literary device, Jenkins makes the frame part of the story by having one of them change. So, there’s character change in the story, and character change in the framing story. Quite well constructed and satisfying.

On the art, I was quite pleased. I noticed the camera angle technique right on the first page: starting above the train, then in the train on the teller and the listener, and the close-ups on each of them. Big to small. Distant to intimate. I also liked the detailing of the expressions and the work on making average characters part of a heroic story. And on heroism and action, it was competently done, and I felt it really came alive when the Aesir and the dragon came on the scene. That just goes to show that superheroes and monsters are still the natural fauna of comic books.

GeNext #2 – Review

Christ Claremont, Patrick Scherberger (Writers), Norman Lee (Inker), and Chris Sotomayer (Colorist)

Where to begin with this one…

For the most part, I enjoyed the debut issue of GeNext. I thought the concept was pretty solid and the characters definitely had some potential. I had hoped that issue #2 would actually give the new characters something to do. Unfortunately, I found the neat pencil art of the usual X-Men characters placed throughout the book to be far more interesting than the story of this new class of students. To keep it short, GeNext #2 feels like a very average teen television drama and nothing more.

The majority of the book deals with the relationship between Pavel Rasputin and No-Name. We get some awkward, but well written, courtship, the requisite friend moments regarding “does she or doesn’t she” like Pavel, and then some shadowy figure from the past that throws a wrench into the relationship. This is some seriously generic stuff and, to be honest, I expected a bit more anything really. At least we are introduced to something of a threat that I have to assume ties into some X-Men history, though we get very little explanation regarding that. The book hints at some sort of direction, but seeing as how this is a limited series, I can see the next issue being something of a make or break point.

The writing does elevate the generic story in a way, but too often the characters really come across as overly emotional drama queens. There is something entertaining and even cute about the interaction between Pavel and No-Name, but that aspect of the storyline takes up far too much of the book. I enjoy good dialogue and all, but too much of it feels useless and doesn’t allow for any sort of subtlety. Disappointing all around.

Fortunately, the art fairs much better than the story or writing. The colors pop, the faces are expressive, and everything is just visually pleasing. The sketches throughout the book that fill in some history and explain family ties are extremely well done and almost threaten to overtake the GeNext kids. If I have any complaints, it is that the action scenes feel a bit disjointed and characters fail to real stand out. This is a nice looking book all around.

There isn’t a whole lot more I can add to this review. This book disappointed me in a big way and I am actually confused as to who the target audience for this really is. I can’t imagine that many X-fans are looking for a teen drama when anyone could turn on the TV to find one. (Grade D+)

-Kyle Posluszny