Thors #1

by Jason Aaron, Chris Sprouse, Karl Story and Marte Gracia

One a scale of one to Fin Fang Foom, Thors #1 rates high. For whatever reason, likely the beard, Jason Aaron has an uncanny knack for writing Thor, in any form. Thors puts that to the test with a Groot-Thor, Storm-Thor and various other Thor Corps members from Marvel’s long history–and, of course, many new ones as well. Think of Thors as something like CSI meets Law and Order, with hammers.

Iconic Thors make appearances throughout the book, many met with giddy, unrecognizable noises, as Aaron uses the full arsenal to tell his story. The story takes a back seat to seeing how the Thor Corps works and getting a glimpse of, frankly, one of the coolest things to come from Secret Wars yet. In fact, the main crime, as it were, that brings these Thors together is almost forgotten and even when it’s revealed who this person is, there are many more worrying things happening on the page to really care about the victim. But, hey, maybe that’s just an odd love of Thor in his various forms.

Chris Sprouse on pencils, Karl Story on inks and Marte Gracia on colors do a helluva job developing this world of Thors and how they’re really just flying cops with hammers. Considering the ridiculousness of some of the characters and, indeed, the situation Sprouse and Story manage to give Thors and a very real tone and feel, as if at any moment the Law and Order music will hit and the comic will come to life with this odd assembly of hammer wielding gods. Gracia maintains a color palette worthy of a Walter Simonson book and really adds to the stellar work laid out by Sprouse and Story.

The ending might have been pure cheese and absolutely predictable, given the cop show overtones, but for some reason it still ended up being exciting and more than enough to rope a reader into the follow-up issues. Really, Jason Aaron is a hard guy to say no to. He’s done such a stellar job in the Thor-corner of the Marvel Universe, not to mention his creator owned work, that you’d be a fool to ignore this chapter of Secret Wars, especially considering all the mystery and intrigue that Secret Wars writer Jonathan Hickman has put into this gang of Hammer-Cops. Thors is yet another feather in Jason Aaron’s cap that comes with stellar art from a great team who all come together to make this part of Secret Wars extremely enjoyable.