Thor: God Of Thunder #16

Writer Jason Aaron Artist Ron Garney and Emanuela Lupacchino

Introduction

Thor: God Of Thunder has been one of my favorite series in all of Marvel Now. In fact, it was a home to one of my single favorite issues of the year. Unfortunately, the title has slightly dipped in quality with the Malekith saga. It’s not that it is bad per se, the problem is that Malekith has never had anything close to substance as a villain. Even the recent Thor: The Dark World had a really hard time fleshing out the character, which ultimately failed. Where the comic book starts to read better, is when it is developed as a platform for the new League Of Realms characters. Hopefully scribe Jason Aaron can continue fleshing the team out throughout the crux of this arc, as it is the strongest aspect of this current iteration of the series. Issues #18 and #19 are set to point the series in a different direction, as they go back to focus on the different Thor’s throughout the years. Can the book turn around in this issue, or are readers going to be forced into waiting for the issues that are not out yet.

Writing

Even after a large amount of monologuing, there is nothing Malekith can say that will make him pose a larger threat. Aaron makes also makes some questionable decisions here in murdering the league members so quickly. The writer either needs to devote a larger amount of time to them, or move on. In the back half of this installment, the writer makes some pretty rash decisions that culminates in a really strange ending. It will be interesting to go back here and try to determine what exactly led to the turn of events here. Even with this fun turn of events, this is not the best installment of the book. It has slightly invigorated interest in the title, that will likely last at least until the final installment. Hopefully, some final surprises are in store for the very last showdown with Thor and Malekith.

Artist

Ron Garney returns to the pencils on this issue, and they still come off as incredibly uneven. The artist is actually assisted by Emanuela Lupacchino, whose pages at the end look absolutely stunning. Garney uses a lot of shadow, and many of his pages just come off looking unfinished. Unfortunately, this is the way that Marvel is going, due to practices like double shipping and being dead set on not getting a single issue out late. While I can appreciate the pencils of Garney in the context of a time restraint, I still think that something should be coordinated differently to get better work out of these artists. Lupacchino draws a sequence on Midgard that looks great. It is filled with lush detail, and contains some bold layouts. Gone are the stark shadows of Garney, in place of well lit vistas. The only detriment is that the book can look inconsistent, when comparing the first half to the second half. The last page in particular is quite stirring, it contains an evil snake/worm that is rendered in such lush detail.

Conclusion