The Good
I really enjoyed the interactions between Loki and Hellstrom, even though there was some pacing issues that I felt dragged them down (see below). However, these are two characters that play off of each other extremely well, and bring a fusion of new and "old school" mentalities.
Loki's journey through his nightmares was actually quite beautiful, and his face-off against "Thor" was sufficiently creepy for the purpose of the story.
The Bad
While I've nothing but good things to say about JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY for a couple months now, this issue fell a little bit flat with me. A lot of the lines of dialog that came out of Loki's mouth felt very anachronistic, like the writer was trying too hard to make a "culture clash" joke. The references to the Internet and the "hateful people within" were just painful to read.
This issue also had a problem with trying to tell too much in too little pages. Last week's AMAZING SPIDER-MAN was great because it did the opposite: we got a full-featured story in X number of pages without it feeling cramped or rushed. However, there were some instances in this issue where the dialog felt on rails, speeding us along to the punchline in a couple panels instead of just slowing it down.
The Verdict
This book has been consistently awesome in recent months, with this issue being the only major stumbling block. I'll have to see what happens next issue in order to make a solid judgment on whether quality is sliding, but for now there seems to be no cause for alarm.
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