Thor: God of Thunder 25, Original Sin 5.5 - Thor and Loki

Thor: God of Thunder 25

Thor's granddaughters, by order of King Thor, must spend time daily in the library honing their minds just as they hone their bodies. One day in their required library time, they read the origin story of Malekith, watching him grow from a shy and scared young elf to the hateful and powerful magician he is today. They next read a story about young Thor, along with an army of humans, stopping Frost Giants from resurrecting Laufey, though they came awfully close and the king's head is still out there ready to be pushed the extra step. Finally, a hidden and chained book falls on to their table, which they eagerly dive into, learning of a dark time in Thor's history when he was deemed unworthy and an all-new Thor took up Mjolnir. King Thor bursts in and closes the book, sending his granddaughters out and closing the book again.

Jason Aaron ends this volume of THOR: GOD OF THUNDER in the sort of classic series ending way, where he tells a few single-shot stories with the ability to be extended later, and teases the next volume, but he does it well enough to keep the reader interested and invested and artists like Esad Ribic, Simon Bisley, and RM Guera provide an extraordinarily good looking book to go along with the stories. It's a nice ending for the series that brought us the epic Gorr storyline and created a couple of new and powerful supervillains like Gorr and Roxxon CEO Dario Agger AKA The Minotaur and it certainly builds a bit of hype (if there wasn't enough out there for you already) for the new THOR and the new Thor. Pretty good series, this one.

Total Score: 4/5


Original Sin 5.5 - Thor and Loki

Thor is free and wreaking havoc on Heven as Loki, having betrayed his new sisterhood in record time, leads Odin back into the tenth realm to end this fight once and for all. As Thor and Angela prepare to kill one another, Odin arrives and demands his son stop, revealing that Angela is very clearly his daughter Aldrif, alive after so much time thought dead. The news is pretty quickly met as true but isn't received well otherwise, as Angela is banished from Heven and swears she'll kill Odin the next time she sees him, leaving her out in the galaxy somewhere, trying to find a place she's welcome and wants to be.

As I said from the get-go, maybe some of the drama was ripped from this one given that the very first images of this book, that asked who Thor's sister was as it's main question, were images of Angela standing between Thor and Loki, as if shocked by some recent revelation. Kind of a give away and it takes a bit of the tension out for the reader, though it was likely a measured choice, with Marvel likely deciding that fans would figure it out early into the series even without the reveal and hoping that fans would still be interested in learning about how this could be possible and in learning more about Angela, Asgard, and Heven. It pays off well enough; though it's not something that particularly blows the reader away, it serves its purpose and establishes something of a new status quo in the Thor universe (which, coincidentally, is going to have all manner of status quo changes to contend with in no time at all). Solid Simone Bianchi art, teamed with Lee Garbett, Szymon Kudranski, and Marco Checchetto, carries this issue.

Total Score: 4/5

Original Sin 5.2 - Thor and Loki

Original Sin 5.2 - Thor and Loki

Aaron and Ewing (s) and Ewing (w) and Garbett and Bianchi (a) and Woodard and Dall'Alpi (c) and Sabino (l)

Thor and Loki know about their sister and adoptive sister, respectively, and know she's been in the Tenth Realm, the Realm of Heven where Asgard is not much liked, but know little else. Still, it's a fair amount to go on and the pair travel to Heven to meet this sister and promptly get into a fight. While Thor mows down the forces of Heven, Loki sneaks away and ambushes the queen of Heven only to strike a mutually beneficial deal with her. Angela shows up as Thor tires of fighting the Angels, who are eager to strike at Midgard now that their gates have opened again.

Like the last issue, this one struggles with keeping up with the solicits. It's not a bad issue in terms of helping us to understand Heven and the Angels. In fact, that's what I'd say makes this one worth reading. The Thor-Loki relationship isn't bad here but it's also not a particular stand-out and most readers interested in this sort of thing probably know it all already. However, Heven is kind of a new area for most readers and it certainly makes sense for Ewing to highlight it here. He does a good job giving us a sense of these Angels but the driving plot of the story, the meeting between siblings, is somewhat dragged out considering everyone knows it's going to happen and there's no sense of suspense about it thanks to all of the pre-release information everyone got. Still, Ewing makes it readable and builds a tone and a background for us and that's certainly commendable and he can hardly be faulted for the swell of information prior to the book's release.

Total Score: 4/5

(sorry for the late review today and the fact there's just the one but I warned you yesterday, slow week this week and this felt like the one worth bumping to Wednesday...in theory)