Customer Reviews

Thor: Across All Worlds

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Once Walt Simonson finished his '80s run on Thor, I quit. Tom DeFalco ran it into the ground, and I felt nothing could ever be that good again. Recently, however, many people have recommended Dan Jurgens' and Andy Kubert's version of Thor to me, saying it continued in the spirit of Simonson's work. Upon finishing their trade paperback THOR: ACROSS ALL WORLDS, I can say with certainty that Thor still isn't what he was.

The only way I can see that this loose "storyline" harkens back to Simonson's version is that it tries to take almost every concept he used throughout his run on Thor and cram it into 8 issues. Beta Ray Bill, Malekith, the Cask of Ancient Winters, Kurse, the Wild Hunt, the Enchantress... they're all here, doing just what they were doing 20 years ago. Big deal. Throw in some major plot devices that are hardly explained at all (Thor's new alter ego; the fate of Odin; the scheme of Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man), as well as some page-eating battles with The Wrecking Crew, Gladiator, and "Thor-Girl" and you've got a writer who's struggling to make the character of Thor relevant again but just floundering. I love Jurgens' work on Superman, but Thor? He apparently doesn't get it.

As far as the art goes, it could be better. I am not a huge fan of Andy Kubert. While he is capable, I feel that he is only as good as his inker/embellisher (see Neil Gaiman's 1602). Stuart Immonen lends his beautiful pencils to one issue of this book, teasing the reader with what could have been. So, my advice: Get all of the Marvel Comics reprints of Lee/Kirby's and Walt Simonson's Thor, and leave it at that.

There is another book (X-Men Visionaries Joe Maduirea) I got that is basicly the same quality of paper as this one, and basicly I recieved one copy, and it was defective. As was the replacement order as well.
Marvel luckily uses better quality Glossy Stock paper nowadays - but really on this particular book, and the other book that is similar to this (which I recieved 4 defective books in a row), this book is just horrible paper quality and horrible glue quality. Pages fall out, and the cover comes off.

As with the other reviewers here I'm not going to talk about the comics themselves. The stories are fine but don't spend your money on these shoddy TPBs. This is not the only book of this series (glossy paper, black and white spine) that has come aprt on first read. I can't imagine why Marvel used such poor quality materials but BUYER BEWARE. Clearly this isn't isolated to either my edition or this title. Stay away and find editions with paper pages. In my experience they last. In fact, Marvelite though I am, DC collected editions are far superior in this regard.

First of all this trade fell apart the minute i got it, the glue is wrong or something and it seems all the copies have that problem, the pages just keep falling out..there is no excuse for this, i have almost 200 trades and only this one has ever given me any trouble, and with no age to it, right off the bat.

the story is pretty good and is part of the whole Jerguns story arc starting here with issue 28 and going till issue 79, epic and amzing and covering many trades, though this one is mostly forshadowing the later parts and thus not essential, so skip it unless you have a lot of glue handy.