Superior Spider-Man 26, Thor: God of Thunder 18

Superior Spider-Man 26
Slott (w) and Ramos, Rodriguez, Martin, Olazaba, and Lopez (a) and Delgado, Rodriguez, and Martin (c)

It's a story on three fronts as Goblin fights Hobgoblin, the Avengers demand answers from Spider-Man, and Peter Parker tries to navigate his way through a now barren mindscape. Each story is rather self-contained (though obviously part of the bigger story that's happening) and each one is illustrated by a different artist. Goblin and Hobgoblin battle mano y mano to decide who will lead New York's Goblins. The battle culminates in Hobgoblin deciding, after seeing a scar on Goblin's chest, that Goblin really is Norman Osborn and then promptly getting his head cut off. Good news for Roderick Kingsley, though, it wasn't really Roderick Kingsley but a surrogate he had trained just like the new one he's training. Story two has Spider-Man answering questions from the Avengers about why he'd delete the tests the Avengers ran and the camera footage of his tests. He rebuts these questions by saying that he doesn't want people to know his identity more than they have to and wasn't that the point of Civil War and also he's done weird stuff in the past and they haven't asked questions so why should it be any different now and oh, it's because he's an Avenger now, well he quits. So that's that. Meanwhile, in Spider-Man's mindscape, Peter wanders around, weak as he's ever been and missing the memories that made him him. The only memories of Peter that remain are the ones Otto had to look at back when he had the full range of them. Fortunately, these are all memories of great strength for Peter and it gives him the inspiration to keep moving forward and to find a way to retake his body.

OKAY, so apparently we're NOT actually fully at GOBLIN NATION yet and somehow this is lasting longer than the buildup to INHUMANITY and other such stories (but it's not as long as FEAR ITSELF, nothing is as long as FEAR ITSELF). Despite that, all three stories are interesting and important, not to mention well-presented. The secret of the Green Goblin's identity persists, even if Hobgoblin is sold, and Slott clearly wants us to keep asking. On top of that, only former Hobgoblin associate Phil Urich knows that the Hobgoblin his new boss killed isn't Kingsley and he can't spread the news around without Goblin losing claim to Hobgoblin's men. Back to Spider-Man, it seems like the Avengers are more suspicious than ever and things may be turning in that direction soon. Finally, there's the added twist that, even when Peter gets his body back, he likely won't have his full range of memories available to him so his messy life may not get cleared up quite so quickly. Good issue, plenty happening and lots to look forward to.

Thor: God of Thunder 18
Aaron (w) and Pastoras (a and c)

A one-off issue (though we've said that before only to have that one-off come back and mean everything in other series) as Jason Aaron closes out arc three with a tale of young Thor attempting to assist some worshippers on Midgard by finding out who has been attacking their dogs and their crops. The worshippers blame the dragon Skabgagg but Thor discovered that Skabgagg wasn't the problem, a group of trolls were. He and Skabgagg teamed up to defeat them then were both celebrated by the worshippers (a tribe of viking women). They return a few days later to their respective homes where Thor rests and recovers and presumably gets reamed out by Odin. Skabgagg, meanwhile, goes home and immediately fights with his father about what it is to be a dragon. He storms off and goes back to the vikings to keep partying. However, his drunken spiral gets worse and worse and the vikings have to call Thor back to deal with it all. He tries to talk the dragon down but the dragon won't be talked down and Thor has to fight Skabgagg with, if you know Thor, pretty predictable result. Thor returns home a bit sobered by the experience.

It's not a bad little story and Dan Pastoras' art is certainly a good fit for it. Unless Skabgagg and the other dragons of Skabgagg's family return down the line, I can't say this will have a lot of bearing on the title as a whole but it's another in a seemingly endless supply of "Thor grows up" issues littered through his history. The fact we've seen these lessons before, though, doesn't preclude the possibility that this one is worth reading. It's still a pretty good story, maybe a little heavy-handed at times, and the art shines through on Pastoras' little one-shot issue. We get a bit more of Thor's character as he grows up just a little bit and edges ever closer to the Thor we know. Next issue, Jason Aaron promises in a somewhat oddly timed letter to the audience afterwards (the letter itself is pretty neat, in terms of replacing a fan letter page with a letter from the writer to kind of say where we are and where we're going but it's a somewhat unusual thing for a Marvel book to have and it almost makes it feel like Aaron is asking fans to stick with the book), we'll see another big storyline that pits Thor against a threat to Earth and teams him with SHIELD agent Roz Solomon (from WAAAAAY back in issue twelve) and will also bring back King Thor and introduce us to Old Galactus all with the incredible art of original series artist Esad Ribic. Should be neat.