Thor: Disassembled

I borrowed this just to prove that I don’t only borrow the more “high-brow” or indy stuff from the library. Okay that’s a lie, I just wanted to read some Thor that I never read before. Which is a surprising amount actually. I was never the biggest fan of Thor even though I love the idea and I like mythology of almost any kind. Anything relating to ancient legends that involved swords and dragons is generally fine, on principle, by me. However, this is a modern genre that while fine on principle is lacking in execution. I don’t want to debate anyone but I generally like to pronounce the names of the characters I’m reading about.

But this has nothing to do with the book so I’ll get back on track. This was a somewhat lackluster return to the character for me. I’m not sure where the blame lays as I like Oeming’s work on Powers and can’t recall if I’ve ever read anything he’s written. It may simply be that he wasn’t up to the task of writing this bookend story, but I have a bigger suspicion that it was a Marvel editorial fiat that made some of this story less than enjoyable. Because for the most part, it was good, there were just a few areas that kind of left me bewildered.

For instance, Thor goes to get his avenging buddies Captain America and Iron Man to help him with the troubles on the homefront. Loki kicked some ass and Thor managed to get away with his life – barely. So he turns to his powerful friends for a bit of backup. There was one fight with Loki’s thugs and then Thor decides that Cap and Tony should be involved in the fight for Asgard. Wha huh? You need their help, they help, they want to continue to help but, no, you change your mind and decide that they shouldn’t be helping anymore after they proved invaluable. Fickle minds of the gods, I guess…

That whole thing just feels like a, “hey Mike, you need to put them into the story. I don’t care if it’s already complete, I’ll do it for you if you don’t. C’mon, printing only starts in like 2 hours – here I’ve got the art add some dialogue.” So, last minute, is what I was getting at there.

Not knowing all Thor’s background, enemies and allies was a bit of a pain as well since I didn’t really follow who died and what their relationship was. Again, a lot of this happens off panel so I couldn’t really place any of the importance behind the characters. And not looking up any of this was really my failing but I just wanted to read some punching and talketh of the smacketh.

But under all this is a great bone structure. It’s a simple and brutal story of Loki finally getting his own godly weapon to match Thor’s and conquering Asgard. It should be brutal and unforgiving which the story was at times. The simple amount of destruction was handled well and Thor’s quest in the last few issues is fairly cool if I do say so. It’s a decent Thor story for me, it just suffers from Marvel crossover-itis with a few random characters dealt with randomly. That’s unfortunate because I think Cap and Tony could have added more to the story than they did because the journey of a former hero turned king is a classic story that can be told again and again fabulously especially when they have Thunder Hammers and stuff.