Mania Grade: C-

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Info:

• Title: Thor #613
• Written by: Kieron Gillen
• Art by: Richard Elson
• Colors by: Jim Charalampidis
• Letters by: VC’s Joe Sabino
• Cover by: Michael Suayan
• Published by: Marvel Comics
• Publication Date: August 25, 2010
• Price: $3.99
• Series:

THOR #613 Review

THOR #613 Review
© Mania

When Asgard was brought to Earth, along with it’s reborn Gods, The Goddess of Death Hela lost her domain of the dead. Needing a realm to serve as her Hel, Loki convinced her to strike a bargain with Mephisto for the hosting of Asgard’s dead in his underworld. Of course, when you have a package put together by the Lord of Lies and the Trickster God, you can well imagine that something is bound to go wrong.

The feared soul-eaters called The Desir have been let loose and are feeding on the souls under Hela’s rule. Unable to stop them save by the use of a sword forged by Loki in Mephisto’s Hell, Thor storms the land of the dead to retrieve it in time to stop these monstrous creatures.

As Tyr, the God of War, tries to protect a weakened Hela and the souls of the fallen from the Desir, Thor may be too late to help them; for the sword called Eir-Gram is proving to be more difficult to free from Hell than he thought.

This issue is part three of Kieron Gillen’s “The Fine Print” storyline and it sees a return of the fantasy aspect of the book. Having been on Earth and concentrating on the Asgardians and how they were finding a new place in the Marvel Universe, through the events of Siege the title has been fairly “superhero” in it’s setting and style. Now that the original writer of the rebirth of this book, J. Michael Straczynski, is no longer on writing chores, it didn’t take long for the new guard to change things up.

The problem is that it’s falling kind of flat on the entertainment level now. Gillen writes well enough (though a bit too grandly in this issue) but his story isn’t really fun at all. He seems to have taken the setting of Thor as an excuse to overly shape his narrative and the dialogue of the characters. Sure, they’re Gods of fantasy that have been known to throw a “verily” out there amongst the peppered “thou’s”, but the commentary by Mephisto’s lackey verbally chronicling the events playing out before them is almost skim-worthy.

Cover art to THOR #613 by Michael Suayan

Yes the words are cleverly written and yes he proves he can craft words with thought and style, but it’s boring. Having Mephisto crack a snide joke about this commentary doesn’t mean it’s a get out of jail free card for doing it, it just points out that maybe he even realized he was trying to show off and was looking to make it appear to be something else. Even reading the summary of story events at the beginning of the issue is a lesson in convoluted type.

Thor has quickly devolved from a great book to one of mediocrity. The artwork doesn’t raise anything up to any particular heights, it just hits the beats. Richard Elson does pull out the stops with his camera angles, and he really does succeed at some great panels, but everything just comes together in a very un-exciting way. It’s an alright read when it seems like not too long ago it was a fantastic read. It’s by these standards that this issue falls so short for me. I’m giving it a C- and really hope that Marvel gets this title back into fighting shape pretty soon. Recent months have felt like it’s just toeing the line.