Thor #602 Review

THOR #602
Written by J. Michael Straczynski
Art by Marko Djurdjevic

With the news of JMS's impending departure from Thor, I feel I should savour these last few issues as much as I can. God knows the delays between releases of each issue of this series really hurt the flow of the book, but it's been just so damn good, it's hard to justify switching to trades, similar to how I viewed All Star Superman and its release schedule woes.

This issue was a real treat for me due to the fact William received so much face time. As a refresher, William is the human currently in love with the Asgardian, Kelda, and the two left with the other Asgardians for their new home in Latveria.

Speaking of Latveria, William spends a great deal of time discussing the matter of making deals with Dr Doom with Baldur and the candid conversation between the two was probably the high point of the issue for me. However, not all Asgardians took a liking to poor Bill and, possibly at Loki's behest, several tried to provoke him into a fight, which felt a little forced to me, especially with everyone celebrating their new home.

The only problem I had with the issue was the sudden return of Loki's male body. He sort of mentioned possibly getting his old body back in the last issue when he warned Thor of Sif's current situation, but there was absolutely no indication or reaction from anyone towards his new/old male body and gender switch. As I was quite enjoying the reactions the female Loki could provoke from people and the more sublte manners in which he was able to proceed due to his new looks, I was just shocked to see him in the body without a single mention to the reader or any indication from the other Asgardians that, hey, he's not a girl anymore.

On the Thor side of things, the Dr Strange cameo to fix his hammer felt a bit forced, but might just be my knowledge that JMS is a huge Dr Strange fan and pushed to have him in his Amazing Spider-Man run previously. With everything going on in New Avengers and the whole no longer being Sorceror Supreme, it just didn't seem right to have him here doing such high level magics to fix the hammer, even robbing Thor of his Odinforce to do so. Speaking of which, that's a huge nerf to his power levels. I assume Sentry is officially the top dog on Earth now that Thor has been depowered.

Verdict - Must Read. Some minor nitpicking aside, this was another excellent issue of Thor and it should be interesting to see what JMS does with the few issues he has left.

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