After a long hiatus, the Mighty Thor returns in style. Following the events of Ragnarok (the awesome storyline written by Michael Avon Oeming & drawn by Andrea Divito) and the events of Civil War, J. Michael Straczynski has brought him back with epic style.
And what can I say about the art? I'm fastly becoming a major fan on Olivier Coipel's style. This guy can draw. Love his take on the gods of Asgard. They actually look like Norse gods of myth & legend. My favourite part of this particular trade would be the battle between Ironman and Thor (following the events around Thor's cloning).
I highly recommend this trade paperback. It's one of my favourite books issued by Marvel.

So... Thor's dead. Great, I think. Marvel has officially screwed the pooch. Then Captain America's dead. Now that poor pooch is.. well, something explicit and nasty. Maybe it was all those scornful letters I wrote to the writers of Civil War. Maybe it was the gods... who knows. Anyway, perhaps out of shame, the house of M decided to bring back at least one of the reasons I was interested in Marvel, oh so many years ago. Thankfully, he's got Wings again, although that's about the only way he resembles the brilliant Thor arc of several hundred issues last century.

So, the good. Well, Thor's back. He's Don Blake again, he's got wings, and Mjolnir is Mjolnir. He trashes Iron Man, although why exactly the writers didn't have CA do that I'm not sure. Perhaps they didn't know what old Captain's powers actually were. But I digress. Thor. Uhm, well, we've got a lot of lightning on these pages, so that's kind of exciting. Also, there's a few moments of genuine humor on these pages, something that I haven't seen very often in Thor volumes. Of course, big T doesn't really crack a smile, himself... There's also several pages of the townsfolk of OK recalling their encounters with the Aesir (asgardians, I suppose, if you must) that are quite poignant. Except for what I mention below, the art is quite good, although somehow... less fantastic than I had hoped. And of course we've got Loki, in the shadows, prating about the powerz of darkness.

The bad. Despite Asgard being restored, ahem, in uh, Oklahoma... it's a... well, dim echo of what came before, hopefully something they can turn into glory... There's an idea here that I first encountered in the pages of Gaiman and Pratchett that it is man who decides whether gods exist. While doubtlessly interesting, and appealing to our pride, I'm not exactly sure where they can go with this idea.

The ugly. Thor doesn't actually resemble the old form that I used to *cough* love. He's drawn in a very different way... for contrast, I suppose, there's a few frames of the old way of drawing him. The new guy, well, his features are, how to say this... less noble. In fact, I can't help thinking that he looks somewhat primitive. His nose is wide, for a wide face, almost cave-manny. Hard to get used to. Maybe it's his recent brush with death, but Thor seems rather... detached. I don't get much of a feeling of, well, passion, I guess, and careful thought that went into his earlier appearances. It's almost as if someone is saying, see, here's your god, and look, he's not that interesting. Probably Loki.

So, I'm not really sure what I think about this. I mean, yeah, Thor, woohoo... but... well, I guess they've got nowhere to go but up. Let's hope they do so.

All I can say is WOW!!!! JMS has produced his finest work here, hands down. Spider-Man has got nothing at all on Thor! What a much needed make over for the thunder god! He's not just powerful anymore, he's violent and lonely and got something of a bloodlust. I mean he's not just willing to incapacitate his enemies anymore, but to totally do away with them. Not to mention the arse whoopin that Thor puts on the "Tin Man". Awesome story line and awesome art. Keep up the great work. Peace and Love, Jake

It seems like an eternity ago (for me anyway) that Thor and his fellow inhabitants of Asgard met their demise in Michael Avon Oeming's excellent Thor: Disassembled arc (co-inciding with Brian Michael Bendis' disassembling of the Avengers), so seeing the classic Marvel hero make a return is something I've been anticipating. Babylon 5 creator and former Amazing Spider-Man writer J. Michael Straczynski gets the writing duties pretty much by default (the first, excellent review on this page will fill you in on the details), and he doesn't do a bad job as he begins to re-establish Thor's place in a post-Civil War universe. Thor/Donald Blake has made Oklahoma City his place of operations, as he attempts to locate his fellow Asgardians in this first storyarc of the new ongoing series. While it is a solid new beginning for Thor, not a whole lot really happens in this storyarc. In fact, some may find it kind of boring really. I appreciate what Straczynski is trying to do here, but it just feels like there was more that could have been put here, and it also feels like there are just missed opportunities aplenty. House of M artist Olivier Coipel provides some great artwork though, so this first arc isn't a total loss. All in all, J. Michael Straczynski makes a promising, albeit flawed, first impression with this Thor relaunch, and here's hoping that things will get better from this point forward.

In 2004, Marvel initiated a major reboot of the Avengers franchise, with "Avengers" becoming "New Avengers", the new "Young Avengers" title, and new volumes of "Captain America" and "Iron Man". Thor's title was also cancelled, but no new reboot was immediately forthcoming, as, behind the scenes, such creative talents as Neil Gaiman and Mark Millar came and went, before it finally arrived in the hands of J. Michael Straczynski. After an absence of three years or so, Thor finally made his return to publication in the summer of 2007, with JMS writing and Olivier Coipel on art (in the intervening period, Millar had gone on to do a fakeout return in "Civil War" that turned out to be a cyborg-clone created by Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, and Yellowjacket).

Michael Avon Oeming's excellent 'Ragnarok' story arc that concluded "Thor v.2" ended with the twilight of the Gods, where Thor realized that they had been enslaved in cyclical birth and death for years by beings known as Those Who Sit Above In Shadow. Thor broke the cycle, allowing him and his fellow Asgardians to at last rest. It was a brilliant story, and it left a new Thor series to go in virtually any direction it wanted. JMS opts here to advance into a new status quo, making the explicit point that the cycle is now broken, and the Asgardians' future is now completely open for them to decide; to a point, at least. Men, it is argued, decide if the Gods exist, and Thor's old alter ego Donald Blake, somehow now a mystical entity, recalls Thor from the void in order to revive the gods and face the future, which without them is perilous. So Thor returns to Earth, merged with Blake in a relationship that now resembles that of Rick Jones and Captain Marvel (the Marvel one). Establishing the city of Asgard in Oklahoma, near a quaint town, Thor ranges out to recover his fellow gods and, little by little, reacquaint himself with the world of men.

As far as an epic return goes, this has its moments, but it ultimately opts for a more sedate approach, one which conveys the mystical and mythical nature of Thor and his people, though at the same time it can be more than a bit slow (something aided by the erratic shipping schedule due to artist Coipel, though that is not an issue reading in trade). This arc sees Thor gather most of the pieces of his former life, with little action (there are maybe three fight scenes, total, one of which isn't a fight at all), and only two real instances of the greater Marvel Universe intruding. One is brief, and a major piece of setup, which I will leave for readers to see for themselves. The other one is major, and it represents JMS' biggest misstep on the series so far. As mentioned above, Iron Man, the leader of the pro-Registration side in the "Civil War", created a Thor clone, and here JMS drags him on stage so that Thor can beat him up. Some kind of reckoning was due for that, obviously, but, quite simply, when it comes to writing Iron Man, J. Michael Straczynski is a hack. He is incapable of treating the character, one of Marvel's oldest heroes, as anything other than a fascist punching-bag Snidely Whiplash allegory for the Bush Administration, and it drags down every single appearance the character makes in his works. He is, perhaps more than anyone, responsible for the "Iron Fascist" that many fans decry, and he shows here that he hasn't learned a thing about treating the character with respect. The confrontation, which needed to happen, is so badly written that it loses any meaning (not that that stopped many fans from cheering Thor on anyway).

Elsewhere, the story JMS chooses to tell is generally quite good, if, as said, slow. He concocts a series of amusing interactions between the Asgardians the local townspeople, while do a great job of portraying the nature of real gods, not just powerful superheroes. All this is rendered with beautiful detail by Olivier Coipel.

All in all, it is a worthy reintroduction for the Thunder God, though one hopes that, having brought Thor home, JMS will pick up the pace in future volumes, because there is so much for Thor to do.