War of the Realms: War Scrolls #1: Days Gone By

My main issue with this first story is it appears out of sync with the main title and tie in series, jumping forward in time to show us the aforementioned power up prior to it happening in the main series, this type of out of time storytelling takes me right out of the story. The art is phenomenal and I don’t hate the story, but it is a bit on the nose on a couple levels which detracts from the actual story in my opinion.

Joshua Trujillo and Ricardo Lopez Ortiz take us to a more comedic tale of The Warriors Three (or Four!), as Hogun the , Fandral and Hildegarde fight to carry the comatose Volstagg the Voluminous (injured in battle with Mangog as War Thor!) to the Sanctum Santorum and safety. Assailed by frost giants they are aided by some familiar faces, Cloak and Dagger, who are keeping their particular turf safe since no one else seems to care to.

I really liked this story, the art was a bit on the stylized side but the tone was just right for the story and I loved the organic feel of Cloak and Dagger’s intervention. Probably my favorite of the three stories, I’m a sucker for a good Warriors Three story.

Punisher and Wolverine star in the second to last story, titled Nice Shot Frank, by Ram V and Cafu (are those people’s names? unimportant, the story is great), features Wolverine defending some children from Dark Elves with a sneaky assist from Frank.

A nice story with the conventionally best art in the issue, again I liked this story showing how the war is effecting normal people. I do feel like Frank in particular is maybe a little oversaturated in this event, showing up in 3 out of 4 WOTR issues this week, I’ve enjoyed all 3 appearances but the point stands.

The last story is a Howard the Duck tale by Chip Zdarsky and Joe Quinones, was a bit of a letdown, Zdarsky is on such a hot streak lately I think I had higher hopes for this. I’m sorry to say although not actively bad it just wasn’t at the same level of interest for me as the other three stories, and really could have been a backup in last weeks Squirrel Girl issue and probably seemed less out of place. Unfortunately in my opinion this is the low point of the issue. I hope to see better things from this team in the future.

My biggest complaint across ALL of the War of the Realms books, 3 weeks and 8 issues in we still haven’t left the 5 boroughs wtf gives is this a global conflict? I’m sure this will be resolved but can we get some dang throwaway panels of other places? Please?

Also annoying is the super misleading cover to this issue, almost none of those characters even appear in this book!