THOR #3

KICK ASS! About time!

BLECHHHH. Another book I'll skip.

Using Iron Man as a punching bag in title after title may satisfy some, but I am willing to bet it leaves just about as many stone cold (count me among them). And this idea sound hugely, fundamentally stupid...Tony Stark, one of the smartest guys on the planet, goes to "confront" Thor, with NO backup plan, no backup forces. RIGGHHHTTT....LOL

I wish Marvel would either drop the whole SRA // Civil War thing, or have the guts to explore it realistically and three dimensionally. What would the REAL impact be of tons of anonymous, superpowered vigilantes running around, taking the law into their own hands whenever and however they saw fit? Would Tony Stark be the only one to find it a BIT disquieting that a bunch of Norse "gods" (and read Norse mythology sometime to see how "real" Norse gods might behave!) have set up camp in the middle of America, and don't feel they are subject to American law or authority? Think MOST people in the Marvel Universe would think it was cool that the Hulk is on ANOTHER destructive rampage?

But no..it is all strawmen, simplistic stories, and Iron Man getting trashed in book after book. Boring. Unimaginative. IMHO.

No thanks...I'll pass.

Shadow

I've been a fan of Iron Man since I was a wee one and I've been mortified with the abuses heaped upon my childhood by Quesada and co and this pleases me to no end. Ultimates...? drivel, same thing with Civil War, Cap killed by a sniper, ect... I'm going out and buying the 40 years of comics on DVD collection from www.gitcorp.com and letting the current Marvel p&*s and s@#t all over 'their vision' of things, I'll have the REAL Marvel, thank you very much. Thanks to JMS for bringing a touch of sanity to Thor (after the vegan one... WTF?!?! Thor cannot be a vegan hippie freak! His damn chariot was drawn by goats he could eat if needed and regen by first light!), I've loved all his work to date on B5. Thanks to Stan "The Man" Lee and all the other unsung heroes that created the rich world being destroyed one piece at a time. I'm going to date myself here... FOOM! and Make Mine Marvel! Now, get off my lawn! LOL

Well Tim, tell us how you really feel about CW and Marvel...

Kidding.

Well, i guess I'm not shy to say I loved the whole CW and the New Avengers and all that so I don't feel like you guys with all the hate and quitting comics and all that.

I do feel though that you touched an interesting point tim that needs to be discussed. In my view, the idea that for the past years, comics have tried to be a little bit more realistic for the goal to be closer to our reality. In that aspect, I think one of the drawbacks of doing something like this is that we loose the point of why these gyus are doing what they are doing. Comic heroes do it (in our view I think) because they have something that the ordinary people don't have and they can make a difference. Civil War presented the idea that even if you do it because you have advantages over the normal people, the logistic of the reality they try to impose in comics becomes the message that goverments would normally try to impose control over people who are more powerful then usual.

this whole thing almost killed the nobillity of someone giving his life for someone he doesn't know and in the Marvel comics these past few years, it's not really present as to why should ''heroes'' would even do what they do.

This issue of Thor was great because I was an anti-registration voters all along and to see Iron Man being beat the crap out of was excellent. I wasn't going to read this serie and only try the first or 2nd issue but so far, it's great and will continue to read it.

I just hope along the way more comics will go bad to maybe just be a little bit more heroic and less about fighting amonf themselves. It was done, it was great (in my view, CW was excellent but let's not go over THAT debate again), now it's time to maybe go back to the initial goal of these heroes.

Althought this wasn't a perfect issue, it was excellent. I really enjoyed it and the direction this book is taking. It's FUN! And that is something Marvel needs in this age of The Mighty Fascists.

I don't care about the "real" impact of multitudes of superheros running amok. It's a freakin' comic book. It can explore the human condition without being a documentary. Liberties can be granted.

I concur with with Tim. An excellent book, JMS is doing an amazing job. I fully feel that JMS is very, very upset with how Marvel is headed and is doing his best to keep things more heroic.

This book is very well done, and Thor lays it out to Tony. It couldn't have been any better.

The Heimdall story, with him guarding the bridge, talking about the end of the world, being unable to save his family - beautiful.

As an aside, a recent issue of Hulk has Choi (7th smartest person on the planet) outline and explain how the Hulk has never been a killer. Some may take the explanation to be a retcon or ridiculous, but this is a comic book where a man bombarded with radiation turns into a giant brute so I'll buy the "doing the math and protecting the innocents" angle.

Heroes are supposed to be heroes. Marvel heroes have a LONG history that has been turned into manure as of late. If writers like Bendis and Millar want to go this route, they should have done it in a different universe or with different characters. Alan Moore creates his own stuff when he wants to go all Watchmen or V. Sheesh.

A to the issue. Bang for the review.

First of all, I would like to thank all of oyu...or all of you except Shadowprime, I guess...for the nice comments about my review of Thor. It certainly seems a lot of you share my sentiments about the current direction of the Marvel Universe. Do we need comics to be rooted in reality? Isn't reality the reason we escape into comics or fantasy novels or movies? Do we need government intervention in our comic books as well as our everyday lives? I say hell no. But the fact is, and I've been reading comics for 35 years, there will always be the Marvel Zombies who think the company can do no wrong.

It is an insult to me for writers to come in and blow up a character who has been around for 50 years. Hell...Killing Superman was easy...writing issue #820 of Action comics...that's the HARD part! Making characters interesting without having to have one of these mega-cross over, year long events is the real challenge. And the Ultimate titles are yet another insult to long time fans in my opinion.

I'm not saying we have to return to the simplicity of the silver age, I'm all for gritty, more mature characters. But whenn's the last time a Marvel Hero actually went out and did something heroic? The sooner Bendis, Millar, and Quesada are on a bus out of town, the better!

When a tv show (Heroes) gets super-heroes better than comics do, its a sad, sad day for super-hero comics.
But a cool time for tv shows about super-heroes. :)

Comics have (especially in Marvel's case) become more about "people with super-powers and how the world reacts to them" than "people with super-powers and how they react to the world."

I prefer the latter. Some of the former is fine, sure, but I personally have had enough of it.

And if I have to read one more time where Bendis has Dr. Strange say something stupid (like "No, I can't do that") one more time -
well, I guess I'll just sit in an impotent rage. :(

Tim:

With due respect, your review of Thor was pretty much "Isn't it cool to see Thor beat up Iron Man and make him crawl?".

Er...no. Or rather, not to me. If that is your cup of tea, great. Not only isn't that something I am dying to see, it doesn't make any sense... as I noted above, one of the world's smartest and most dangerous men, a veteran of countless battles, decides to just walk up to one of the most powerful beings on Earth and confront him, with no backup and no plan.

Uh Huh. Sure he would.

And if he WAS that stupid, and Thor DID react this way, the NEXT issue, if the writers were trying for anything resembling realism, would be Iron Man returning to kick Thor around all book long, with a backup of a zillion other registered heroes in the mix. Cause there is no way someone as smart as Stark wouldn't have spent decades figuring out a way to take Thor down just in case Thor ever went bad.

As I noted above... I wish the whole Civil War/ SRA thing hadn't happened. It might have made for a good "WHAT IF" series. But I think it did a disservice to the Marvel Universe and almost every character they drew into it. In that, maybe we agree. You seem to question whether this MU is better than the "old one", and you seem to suggest the answer is no. If so, i agree with you.

Chocolate and Vanilla... we all have our preferences. Mine? Tired of the "Pro-Reg is evil" and "Lets Beat On Tony Stark" approach that seems to dominate Marvel these days, for reasons touched on above. But if you are into it? More power to ya! Honestly.

Shadow

Shadowprime...you missed the point COMPLETELY! it wasn't about Thor beating up Iron Man. it was about the symbolism of beating up Iron man. It was about striking back against oppressive authority. it was about striking back against the direction that TWO STINKING writers have steered the Marvel ship in the past few years. Maybe Straczynski wrote Iron man dumb this issue because he feels that's what he's become since Civil War.

You're looking at the smaller picture...I am hoping Thor's rebuff of Iron Man's ultimatium will have a carryover to the rest of the marvel Universe. Maybe Roy Thomas will come along and say the entired Avengers Disassembled and Civil War storylines were nothing but a dream...or a nightmare as the case may be