War of the Realms #3: War Ensemble

The War of the Realms continues to escalate and feel more like the global/ multidimensional war I have been wanting. I really liked the incursions into Jotunheim and Svartalfheim the latter is explored more deeply in this week’s Strikeforce: The Dark Elf Realm one shot tie in, you definitely get what you need here though, i would consider that one semi skippable with one exception.

All in all this main series book continues to impress me although it didn’t have the highs (Odin’s entrance) or lows (the Death of the Valkyries) that last issue had. It does seem like the main series sometimes settles in to that well trod event book path where the main series just serves to launch tie ins, which is fine I guess. Some neat stuff did happen, I’m not trying to say NOTHING happened per se and in general this event is pretty good overall.

I will say there are points where Aaron’s dialogue feels off, specifically Blade (which I have mentioned in my Avengers reviews as well) talking in the third person, a blaxploitation detective or vampire punisher in a random rotation. Spider-Man is like a bottomless pit of stupid jokes. Venom is a drooling monster like he hasn’t been in years, he sounds like Gargan Venom, which is bizarre and undoes a ton of character development in Cates’ book a caveat being maybe Eddie isn’t in the suit as they separated in his series, for all we know it is Gargan haha, doubtful, but maybe.

Eddie talks with all the class and attitude of a pissed off hooker for some reason.

I can’t really say anything about Russell Dauterman’s art I haven’t said the last two issues, it looks so good, I wanna say my favorite page is the splash page of the Fantastic Four defending Yancy Street (next FF issue is a WOTR tie in) they look great!

I will also say the timeline of this event feels really off with events happening out of sync, with characters being in two places seemingly at once (Punisher being the worst offender). This kind of stuff takes me way out of the event and makes me ask why I’m buying all these tie in books if they don’t matter?