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It’s a good birthday when you get to kick back, feet on the bed, and read Matt Fraction’s Thor: Ages of Thunder. I’ve been waiting all month to get to it, and it was completely worth the wait. I can only imagine that it has already gotten better with age, the awesomeness fermenting between the pages.

For the last few months I’ve been working through my brother’s trades of Busiek’s Conan. I think the Conan stories are awesome, and I will only ever see Cary Nord’s Conan in my head forever more. There’s an ancient quality to it all, and the art just knocks me out of my seat and I finish it like Oliver Reed’s last bottle, on the floor. I get the same feeling with Fraction’s Thor.

The cover. Marko Djurdjevic, a dude I just love the shit out of, nails a fantastic cover. The fallen frost giant just looks insanely cool. Sharp, broken teeth and crazy pattern on the cheek. Check out the cover here! He also makes Thor, a character I have never loved in the Marvel Universe, look pretty imposing. I guess Thor will always make more sense in ancient stories to me then he will fighting Ultron in New York, call me a purist. The cover just rocks the shit, pure and simple!

The opening page. A map spread of the different worlds that spread from the worldtree Yggdrasil. It’s a wicked page, and Patrick Zircher should be commended for it. He continues to shine in a lot of widescreen action splashes that really grab the eye for so many different reasons. He nails the hell out of the time and the feel of the myth. My only complaint is with his Thor, his face seems too broad…or something. He just doesn’t seem right. Loki looks fantastic, better than usual, and Odin comes across very well, not to mention his sweet frost giants as well. But Mjolnir, Thor’s hammer, looks so hardcore, I expect it to have Bad Mother Fucker written on the handle, and some of Sam Jackson’s face smashed across it.

The stories. They are really more like vignettes, and that’s awesome, I love short stories. You get a small sense of who everyone is, and if the writer is good a little tale that spins along well and comes to a good conclusion. I don’t know if people are aware, but I think Matt Fraction is just about one of the best writers getting around comics right now. He gets the language right, and has just the right amount of lines that it sounds like some ancient crusty guy telling the story at a pub and hitting the right notes so that he sounds impressive just through connection of being the one telling the story about the wicked thunder god kicking major ass. It really is well written, especially the scene with Odin choking Loki, but the writing telling a passage of two people simply talking, very well executed.

The layout. There’s a lot of double page top half spreads, and panels below it, it comes across quite nicely. Both stories are well paced and I found myself getting lost in the pages, the first pages of ads kinda shocked me because I was not expecting them at all.

The Lettering. Chris Eliopoulos deserves a clap, the lettering captures the tone and time perfectly, without being indecipherable or taking you out of the story.

Thor. He comes across as an interesting character, something which has never happened for me before, but I have admittedly not read that much Thor. I like the progression of character between the two stories. I could handle seeing more of him smashing heads open with indiscriminate use of hammer and lightning alike.

Overall. This is a kick ass book, and well worth the wait. It has the feel of the old school, the lines of a very new school writer, and the art of two absolute pros. I am absolutely buying the next one, Thor: Reign of Blood. But, then again, I always was, Fraction’s writing it.

Posted on June 11th, 2008 by ryan
Filed under: comics