Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Two NB's in One Week: Ultimate Spidey and Thor

As I argued with myself over which one was the better moment this week, I decided that I was gonna name 'em both since the NB's that followed were for different reasons. We'll start with the smaller one...
Ultimate Spider-Man #14:
This issue gave me what was probably the best single moment of the week. As Aunt May and the rest of her household found out last issue, Spider-Man has been replaced by "The Chameleon". Maybe. There are actually two of them, a brother and a sister, and they have the same shape-shifting powers that the normal Chameleon has so I can only assume that's what Bendis is going for. But I digress. Iceman and Human Torch go after the impostor and after following him back to his hideout, his sister and the real Peter Parker, they get the jump on 'em. Ice Man grabs the girl, encasing her in a block of ice, but Johnny goes a tad more theatrical. Busting through the floor behind the Fake Pete, he begins to burn all of the oxygen out of the air, rendering FP unconscious.... It actually doesn't read as bad-assed as it was when I read it, but trust me, it's there. And now onto the bigger one...

Thor #615:
After the whole Straczynski crap that went down, Thor started losing some steam. Kieron Gillen Took over the reigns and it wasn't that he was bad on it, because he wasn't. It was much better than I thought it would be. It just wasn't the level it was before. This issue we get the new creative team of Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry. Ferry has done art on Ultimate FF, Adam Strange and Action Comics over the years while Fraction has been writing Uncanny X-Men and Invincible Iron Man lately. His Iron Man has been great while his Uncanny run has been very much less than impressive so I was a bit hesitant. And I take that back with this issue. Fraction already seems to have a great grasp on Thor and Asgard. His first arc begins with a man trying to warm Volstagg of a coming doom. As Asgard now resides on Midgard (or Earth as we call it), that puts two of the nine worlds that Asgardians believe in on the same world, leaving one space empty. And as cosmic balance goes, that spot will be filled by something and that something looks like it's going to be a lot of trouble.
Great start to a new run on the book. Definitely gives me hope that Thor will move back to the top of my favorites list. If any of you read comics still, I would say to try it. However, I will now just tell you to go over to Hastings and read it there. It's cheaper.

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