War of the Realms Strikeforce: The Land of Giants #1: Build me up Buttercup

The team fights their way through Jotunheim, the Giant’s Realm, to find the God of Thunder. I thought this issue was great with some really funny moments and a ton of action. It’s pretty funny that if almost any other writer had entire pages devoted to jokes it would bother me, but that Spidey talking to a horse page is hilarious! That isn’t to say this issue isn’t without some feels as apparently not unlike Star Wars although our heroes are immune to injury their mounts are not, and all the Valkyries horses die.

I loved the joke that Logan picked Spider-man the dumbest looking helmet he could find and it ended up being useful, hilariously on second reading I noticed when Logan hands it to him he has a huge grin on his face, it’s totally a joke. Super funny. I also really appreciated how complimentary each weapon was for each hero, it made total sense that Spidey wouldn’t want a killing implement and Logan wouldn’t need one. I do have one complaint in that Jarnbjorn is a much larger 2 handed battleax and in this it’s just a bit bigger than a hatchet, fire ax size? I don’t know axes. This probably would have skated by me if I didn’t own a young Thor action figure and it wasn’t sitting on my desk watching me type this.

This is Jarnbjorn

Compare it to the size in the first panel

The art by Jorge Molina, Adriano de Benedetto and David Curiel is excellent, with a lot of work clearly going into every panel, I loved the fight scenes and the Asgardian armory was really well rendered. The big Thor page really made me smile too, with his nub of a hammer and one arm, so badass!

I will say due to the timing of this issue a lot of the impact of the actual mission is lost since we know how it ends, but that’s not any of the creator’s fault.