War of the Realms: Journey into Mystery #1
John Jack
Recap
War of the Realms: Journey into Mystery features a ragtag team of heroes as described by the Silent Norn (she talks now) whose instructions are poorly followed by a comically inept Balder, who manages to accidentally assemble a team straight out of Marvel NOW in defense of his super stupidly conveniently just now introduced baby sister. That's right folks, as the issue goes way out of it's way to establish, Odin and Freyja have a new baby, guess there's a new god in town, and Odin is yet again A TERRIBLE FATHER?
Review
What even is this issue? Who asked for it? Why does it exist? It’s fine for what it is but my main issue is capable characters like Balder, Wonder Man and Kate Bishop (who can be a bit quirky at times) act like doofy morons to achieve a light tone that I’m not a huge fan of. All in all a lightly comedic tone is fine but after last week’s stellar War of The Realms #1 I was expecting more.
The inclusion of a random new baby Asgardian could be vaguely interesting (she is a god after all) but it seems like the cheapest of cheap ploys in order to justify another 5 issue miniseries in an already pretty stacked event slate. This issue is a total attempt to woo the goofy West Coast Avengers crowd without having a West Coast Avengers tie in (assuming that series is still going? I actually don’t know).
The art is fine but a pretty solid step down from any of the books leading into this series, from Thor, WCA, wherever this magician guy came from and whatever marvel NOW nonsense series’ the rest are from (other than Wonder Man, love him). Now is normally the point I say I’m never reading another issue but I’m reviewing every War of the Realms tie in so here’s to hoping it improves if it’s five issues like this it better be damn funny.
The more I look at it I kinda like the art, Wonder Man looks like Bruce Campbell and that’s hysterical. I still don’t like a lot I see but that’s funny.
Final Thoughts
I genuinely hope I like this better going forward, I really do want to like it I just currently don't.
War of the Realms: Journey Into Mystery #1: Nobody Asked for This
- Writing - 4/104/10
- Storyline - 4/104/10
- Art - 6/106/10
- Color - 6/106/10
- Cover Art - 8/108/10
I would have liked it more if they just told the story in a linear fashion. It really feels like they cut and pasted the end of the story to the beginning and then just shuffled up the middle of the story. The edition of the baby was very weird. All-Mother and All-Father haven’t been in sync with each other for a very long time. All though Odin did lock himself in a room a lone with her after Loki stabbed her maybe we have a Buck and The Bride from Kill Bill kind of baby making going on here.
If you are a big fan of Saturday Morning cartoons for the pre-k set, this comic is for you.
It so far is just stupid, because the writers don’t take the subject matter seriously enough to write a story worth reading. Instead of crafting a decent tale they turn it into something resembling a Saturday Morning Cartoon comedy. What’s worse is they clearly think they are just too funny when their humor mostly falls flat. This is yet another Marvel comic that uses familiar comic book characters to tell a story that completely throws out everything that has been written before about the characters, in effect creating new characters using old names. It doesn’t work. It’s no surprise that in transferring Marvel stories to the big screen the movie studios have to go back to the 1980s to find stories worth telling.