Thor #615 – Review

by Matt Fraction (writer), Pasqual Ferry (art), Matt Hollingsworth (colors), and John Workman (letters)

The Story: A new age for Thor and Asgard begins, as an ominous threat fills Asgard’s void and rages across the metaverse.

What’s Good: Thor fans can breathe a sigh of relief; Matt Fraction arrives and his first issue is a great one.

While it’s difficult to make sweeping judgments after only one issue, I think that it’s fairly clear that Fraction has a very good understanding of the characters and how to use them.  Thor is appropriately brooding and stoic; his bittersweet feelings about Loki, summarized this month in a kind of informal quasi-eulogy, are a highlight of the issue and are very well written and minimalist enough so as to be affecting.

Yet, Fraction also seems aware of the character’s potential as a comedic straight man.  Fraction shows himself to have an incredibly strong handle of the Thor/Donald Blake connection and dynamic.  I had forgotten what a joy this element of the series can be, what with Blake having been absent for some time.  The chemistry between the two is light-hearted and very funny, with Blake even serving as an unlikely adviser.  A couple of his comments on Thor’s behavior even border on making the comic feel amusingly self-aware.  And I’m not even getting started on Fraction’s Volstagg, who can make even the most otherwise boring scenes funny.

Perhaps the most promising aspect of this first issue, however, is what it does generically, mixing sci-fi and high fantasy.  The issue feels like several things elegantly melded together that should be utterly disparate, but somehow come together to form a kind of fresh, sleek, and completely distinct whole.  You have scenes of blue-skinned evils battling sword-wielding demonic barbarians on a snowy plain transitioning to a discussion of “quantum cosmology.”  It sounds utterly insane, and perhaps it is, but it gives the book a unique life and tone that make it unlike anything else out there.