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Thor #1 / Sub-Mariner #1-2 Posted 20 Jul 2007 Writer: J. Michael Straczynski / Matt Cherniss and Peter Johnson Artist: Olivier Coipel / Phil Briones Publisher: Marvel  5.00 out of 5 Stars Reviewed by Adam McGovern

Two major returns from Marvel will keep readers coming back for much more.

The company has played the disappearance of Thor very right, keeping him mostly out of sight (except for the odd clone and out-of-continuity mini), to give his eventual return a sense of real

How does Marvel handle Thor’s return? “Without a flaw.”

moment — the kind of opportunity DC, usually the much better of the Big Two at character reboots, missed by bringing back the JLA simultaneous to the 52 series which should have built suspense and anticipation for it. Marvel has played Thor’s absence just right — but how do they now handle his return? Without a flaw. Straczynski confronts head-on the truth that comic characters, like those of other folklore, spring straight from the fabric of fantasy, and he comes up with an entirely satisfying, fairy tale-ish means for the thunder god’s return to this plane. It’s too elegantly simple to describe without spoiling, but suffice it to say that the whole first issue unfolds like some mystic rite that the reader is in the middle of. The solemn grandeur of Olivier Coipel’s imagery incarnates this nicely, and the book overall provides a blueprint for the meaningful status-quo restoration. This is not a comic I expected to care about, but now I’m anxious to see what happens next.

On the other hand, Marvel’s first superhero is someone whose adventures I always look forward to and am seldom satisfied by. Few scripters since Sub-Mariner’s creator Bill Everett have gotten what his story is about — it’s not an underwater superhero series and it’s not a palace melodrama (though that’s exactly what it’s been made into at one time or another). It’s more like a saga of the kind of secret society or perilous planet you’d find in an old movie serial, only with the Ming the Merciless figure as the goodguy. Namor is that strange kind of goodguy, though as complicated and compromised as most world leaders are. He’s a high-tech version of an ancient conqueror (frequently updated to be an ecological or anti-imperial avenger). He’s the embodiment of a nation; heroic (and often foolhardy) because he takes its burdens upon his lone shoulders. Writers Matt Cherniss and Peter Johnson on the character’s new miniseries get all this, and artist Phil Briones and colorist Paul Mounts give the undersea society a great high-tech/tribal design and an astutely eerie nocturnal glow. The story suits Namor’s rightful role, as he races against time and suspicious international forces to foil a coup at home and rogue Atlantean terrorist attacks abroad that will bring disaster on his kingdom. He pursues this mission of salvation in typically prickly and world-provoking fashion, with as much grim superhero skirmishes as political intrigue to please many kinds of readers.

With these quality series, two of Marvel’s oldest characters are showing their youth.

 

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