Once again I’m caught in the terrible trap that is Jason Aaron. Thor: God of Thunder #12, and now #13, have both been wonderful. The latter has set up the return of Malekith The Accursed in a really dark, and twisted way. The trap Aaron always sets here is that his tales begin masterfully, drag on endlessly, and finally peter out to seriously anticlimactic resolutions. Once the crumbling mess that was Gorr The God Butcher mercifully ended, I looked to step away from Thor until Aaron was replaced. Now, much like Michael Corleone, “they’ve pulled me back in.”
Thor: God of Thunder #13 opens with a great deal of suffering. Often when Dark Elves are in the mix, bad things happen. When the Dark Elves are questing into the world of the undead, led by an elf named Scumtongue, in order to free Malekith – well, the bad times are about to get worse. The Dark Elves venture into Niffelheim, the frozen land of Hel. Cloaked from the all-seeing eyes of Hela, the goddess of death, the Dark Elves work to free their king, Malekith, from the pit of woe. It’s not an easy rescue; gigantic, venomous, spiders protect Malekith. Slaughtering all but Scumtongue, the spiders are finally bested, and Malekith is free to return to his kingdom.
Meanwhile, Thor is drunk. Vomiting, demanding more mead, falling-down drunk. He and his partners are celebrating the elevation of Volstagg to senator. The party rages until a local Dark Elf has a vision of his world burning. Not about to let that go down on his watch, Thor rounds up the troops and heads to Svartalfheim, the land of the Dark Elves. There, the thunder god and his army discover Malekith has been slaughtering his own people. Distressed at how peaceful the elves of Svartalfheim have become in his absence, Malekith has decided to hunt them down and kill them. Thor is having none of it, and the battle is on.
Aaron does a number of things right in issue #13. First, he doesn’t scale down the brutality. Malekith uses his knife to carve the bones of one of his rescuers into a ladder to get out of the pit. At another point, Malekith slices the arm off a female from Svartalfheim and Thor uses the power of the thunder to cauterize the wound. This is shaping up to become a bloody, action-packed battle. Problem is, can Aaron be trusted? The inside cover says The Accursed will only run five issues. Lets hope Aaron sticks to that and gives us a lean story not weighed down with wasted issues about Dark Elf cooking utensils, or the origin of the mead Thor vomited up.
Artist Ron Garney does a nice job of bringing the fantasy elements of the story to life. While not quite as awesome as Walt Simonson’s Malekith, Garney’s is grotesquely evil. The work here has a watercolor vibe to it, with the lines and details lightly sketched and inked. Thor: God of Thunder #13 has a light touch to it, one that goes hand in hand with older ’70s pulp fantasy books. I’m not sure how this will translate action, but thus far Ron Garney is doing an excellent job.
(4 Story, 4 Art)
