Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews for 04/23/08

This is a rather brisk update and definitely one of my shorter set of reviews, but I'll make up for it tomorrow with some more extended Quick Shot Reviews. For now, enjoy this edition of the Weekly Crisis Comic Book Reviews.

MIGHTY AVENGERS #12
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Alex Maleev

Not sure why they chose that cover for this issue, as not one of those characters appears in the book. In fact, not one Mighty Avenger, unless you count the recently defected Spider-Woman, shows up here. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's bad enough when they have fake or sensationalized covers for events that happen in books and now we're getting completely random covers altogether. I guess I miss older covers that gave you some idea of what a book was about.

This month's issue takes a break from current events and tells us what happened to Nick Fury post-Secret War. If you didn't read that mini-series, it was actually pretty good and worth a read if you're interested in what lead to Fury's ousting from SHIELD.

Anyways, the issue is comprised of flashbacks to various time periods, dating back to over 2 years ago, Marvel time, and deals specifically with Fury's first encounter with the Skrull infiltration.

During Fury's self-imposed retirement, Countess Valentina DeFontaine, the same one that recently killed and replaced Dugan in Secret Invasion, pays Fury a little visit. Fury, always the spy, follows her while using his cloaking watch and finds her talking to another human about getting Fury's access codes and doing it for the Queen and so on. Fury returns to the apartment and holds the imposter at gunpoint, demanding to know who she is and what she wants. When she refuses, he shoots her in the head, killing her. I'm a little confused at this point, as she bled green from the initial wound and I thought they bled red blood with the new undetectable replacement. The dead Countess reverts to her Skrull form, leaving Fury to ponder the situation.

Another scene showed Fury infiltrating the SHIELD Helicarrier and having a chat with the then newly appointed Director Maria Hill and giving her some vague advice on watching out for the Skrulls without actually mentioning Skrulls.

Finally, we get closer to the presnet where Fury hooks back up with Spider-Woman and she becomes a triple agent for SHIELD, Hydra and Fury. Fury actually tells her about the Skrulls, which makes me curious about her actions with Skrullektra.

The issue ends with Nick Fury looking over a bulletin board full of photos of numerous heroes. He has several circled in red and others in blue and, I'm assuming an artists error, has doubles of all the Young Avengers for some reason. My guess is red circles represent definite or high propability Skrulls and blue circles are either not Skrulls or people he is unsure of.

Verdict - Check It. There's no Skrull reveals here, there's no major revelations on Fury's underground movements and, while not a bad issue, this doesn't answer any questions I had about Fury or Skrulls and does nothing to bolster my interest in Secret Invasion. I did like this issue and it was a good read, but I expected a lot more from this considering we're smack dab in the middle of a major event.


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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