The Fellowship of the Cliché
Of all the MARVEL NOW titles, Thor God of Thunder has definitely been one of the overall strongest and solid month after month. While it did have its share of problems, the first maxi epic revolving around the figure of the Gorr the Gods-Butcher is almost an instant classic, one of those big evergreen stories you can give a newcomer to help get into comics. So it’s with a heart filled with sadness that I read these last few issues and realize how far we’re from that great beginning.
Writing
As the Accursed keeps running around the universe causing massive mayhems, the great races have a big Tolkien’s reading session and decide that to fight him off they need to band together a group of warriors with contrasting morals and backgrounds, so that they may resolve their differences, learn to cooperate, and maybe defeat the bad guy when they have time. And so Thor is introduced to the League of Realms, a band of five heroes who do everything in their powers to appear as uninteresting as possible.
I was barely able to register the info dump regarding each of these guys, their races being the only things left in my mind to help me recognize them, almost like I was in a D&D game. We have the elf, the dwarf, the giant, the troll and the one token woman, a rather stock set of characters taken, again, from every single D&D session ever, and while it’s definitely too much to ask for deep, complex characterization right on their first issue, they do nothing but leave a really bad impression. They act like a bunch of bickering children, each one of them is convinced that they can deal with the Accursed on their own, the dwarf is a one joke note obsessed with explosions, the woman talks tough because that’s what women in these setting do, the elf is a racist prick. It’s the fellowship of the cliché.
The plot overall is nothing but every single fantasy novel in the world, only starring Thor. I guess you could say the God Butcher was nothing but a serial killer’s mystery, only starring Thor, but the time travel aspect, the Godbomb’s plot and the presence of three conflicting main characters made for a much more engaging read, something that here is lacking.
Aaron’s narration boxes still manage to create in our minds the great scope and give an epic atmosphere to the whole deal, but the rest is significantly weaker than what we already saw, with the League’s dialogue being stock phrases we heard dozens of times and our main villain being nothing more than a cackling maniac. You could make the argument Aaron is going for a lighthearted, jokes-based fantasy story, sort of like in the vein of Skullkickers, but there’s plenty of darkness and carnage, with a rather horrific cliffhanger page, so that can’t be it either.
Art
Ron Garney artworks are rather sketchy and are often completely drowned by Svorcina incredibly bright colors, but for the setting and story, it does kind of works, although some of the barely draw facial expressions can be a little bit frustrating, and near the end some panels almost look unfinished. The final action scene is rather choppy and hard to follow, but I blame that more on the script, as clearly none of the characters is given something really interesting to do. Compared to previous issue is kind of a step back, but still, he creates some nice atmospheres when he’s allowed to.
Verdict
Thor #14 is not “bad”, but it provides such an acute sense of déjà-vu that calling it good either would be a lie. I’m disappointed, a little bit sad, and I have a lingering feeling that maybe I’m being too harsh. This is barely the intro chapter of a long story, so there’s still plenty of time to fix things, but I certainly don’t remember being so uninterested and apathetic when we were in the intro chapters of Gorr’s tale.
