Review by C.J. Bunce
One of the first new books out in the Marvel Now! line-up is Jason Aaron, Esad Ribic, and Dean White’s new series Thor, God of Thunder, a smartly written and drawn saga taking place over three time periods that moves with the feel of a classic fantasy Marvel comic book series.
Beginning with Ribic’s stunning cover art, we meet this updated version of Thor–confident, arrogant, and cocky as you’d expect, humorous in his observations, and sporting the look of any number of long, blonde haired rock stars from the 1980s. Requiring no prior knowledge of Thor or his backstory, readers will be pulled in as Jason Aaron begins in the year 893 on the western coast of Iceland, where Thor, son of Odin, has destroyed a frost giant, and almost as if coming off some kind of a high, he’s revelling in his successes with wine and women, when a murdered god washes ashore.
We then flash ahead to a far off planet in the present day, where a girl alien on a far off planet prays to the god Thor for rain to save her dying planet from certain doom. A surprisingly touching story. Thor asks why she didn’t prayer to her own pantheon of gods, and learns this is a planet of no gods. Or is it?
Aaron ends his first issue in the future, Thor now a lonely old god with an eye patch sitting on his throne like we’ve seen Conan the Barbarian similarly before, he is in fact the last of the gods and he is about to face off against Gorr, the butcher of gods and his black berserker beasts.
It’s impossible to distinguish between the work of Ribic and that of White, Ribic labeled as “artist” and White as “color artist,” as the color is so powerful and the imagery so clean and bold. The result is painterly imagery you’d find in high fantasy art of the past. Thor has hardly looked better than in the images of his future self. The lettering also features a nice medieval typeface.
For new readers interested in cosmic Thor stories or the Thor of classic Norse mythology, Thor, God of Thunder will serve as a good entry point, featuring humorous writing of a legendary figure and good looking pages throughout.
