Thor #8 Review

THOR #8
Written by J. Michael Stracyzynski
Art by Marko Djurdjevic

The more I read of Donald Blake, the more I feel he's either editorially mandated baggage or JMS added him into the book with no concrete plans for him. He's clearly the weakest link in this title and I found myself impatiently waiting for the next Thor or Asgardian related segment or shift of focus off of Blake.

Picking up where we left off last issue, Donald Blake and Thor are separated after Thor enters the Thorsleep, formerly known as the Odinsleep, to recover from his overexertion after freeing all the remaining Asgardians. Blake took this time to journey across the country to find an old acquentence in the form of his old flame, Jane.

The best part of the issue is the father/son heart to heart Odin and Thor have in this issue along with their battle with Surtur. Apparently, Surtur placed part of his essence in the underworld so that he would survive Ragnarok and Odin's eternal struggle with him is preventing him from returning to the land of the living and possibly heralding a new Ragnarok. We get another flashback to Odin's early days and how he came to "adopt" Loki. I loved the narrative for this, as it parralleled last issue's with the Bor's name replaced by Odin's for the 'why should we fear' type narrations.

It turns out Bor was coming to Odin in his dreams and constantly plaguing him after Odin left him to die and never tried to save him and Odin agrees to Bor's request to adopt a son of their enemy in exchange for Bor never bothering him again. Odin thought this was a compromise or forgiveness from Bor, but it is speculated at the end that it was Bor's revenge with the amount of chaos Loki eventually caused. In the end, Thor forgives Odin and offers to restore him now that he knows his spirit is not being held in a mortal, but Odin refuses, glad he did no suffer the fate of his father and that Thor would not forsake him. He opts to stay and battle Surtur and to leave Asgard to its new fate under Thor.

As for Blake, he meets up with Jane, they chat for a bit and it's revealed she was married, had a child and is now getting divorced after she felt Blake's return. It seems it was as if Blake had been erased from existence when Ragnarok happened, but Jane still felt him tugging at her. Sadly, Blake is only there to find out if she was holding onto Sif's essence and not allowing it to leave her body instead of some heartfelt reuninon. Jane takes it a little rough, but they reconcile before he leaves.

However, one of Jane's patients gets looked after by a black haired nurse as she speaks with Blake. It turns out the old woman on her deathbed is, in fact, Sif and the nurse is Loki, who seemingly knows this is Sif and taunts her with a mirror showing Sif's true self to the old woman.
To be honest, I was expecting Loki to be changed a bit with his return to the land of the living. He / she's Loki and it's inevitable that she'd return to her old ways, but this was a quick turn from how I feel she'd been portrayed up until now and I expected her to have a more morally ambiguous or less proactive approach this time around.

Finally, the art was still great, but I found there were several times where it was lacking or possibly rushed. It's hard to tell, to be honest. The Thor / Odin scenes were excellent, but most of the Blake pages feel barren and lack the same level of detail and Loki's breif appearance looked terrible compared to last issue. Now terrible is subjective. It's better than most books, but terrible in relation to the rest of the issue.

Verdict - Check It. For the Thor / Odin stuff, it's a Must Read, but the other half focused on Blake, I find it's a take it or leave it type of story and I'll be glad to see the two recombined next issue and more focus shifted back to Thor and company.

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