This post began its life as a retrospective of the first year of the revived Thor series, but as I started to type out my impressions, I realised there was way, way too much I wanted to say. So instead this is going to be a series of posts, one about each of the first thirteen issues of the series. I’m going to run them on Fridays – a nice, relaxing cap on the week, as it were.
So. Just as the furor of Civil War was fading from our collective attention, Marvel revived Thor, restarting the issue numbering. I can’t recall what spurred me to pick up the first issue, but I’m glad I did. It’s gotten astonishingly little attention – Chris Neseman of Around Comics, when looking back at 2008, murmured, “And didn’t Thor restart this year?”, like he wasn’t sure, and I think the iFanboy hosts called issue 600 (which is secretly issue 13 – more on that later) “disappointing”. And I have to wonder if these people are reading the same book as I did. I fell madly in love with it from issue 1.
Issues 1-13/600 form a solid, cohesive arc, and I’d like to look back at it, and show it some love.
The whole run is written by J. Michael Straczynski, and drawn initially by Olivier Coipel, then later by Marko Djurdjevic. They – and everyone involved – are in top form throughout, and I want to take a closer look at that form..
There will, of course, be spoilers.