Thor: God of Thunder #13: Review

Sep 2013

Jason Aaron, Ron Garney

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Story Name:

The Accursed, Part One of Five: The Great Niffleheim Escape, or, The Svartalfheim Massacre

Synopsis

Thor: God of Thunder #13 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Niffleheim, the frozen land of Hel: a band of Dark Elves enters the land by stealth, using a potion that prevents their being detected by Hela and her Valkyries. They head for the Hall of Nastrond, Hel’s darkest prison. The elves fight the giant spiders which guard the hole that serves as the cell of their king, Malekith the Accursed. Once he is released from his pit Malekith slaughters and eats the spiders, then leads his men back home to Svartalfheim to see who else welcomes their king….

In the Great Hall at Asgardia, Thor and his companions are celebrating the election of Volstagg as senator to the Congress of Worlds. Suddenly a dark elf in the room screams: Svartalfheim is burning. Thor and the warriors speed to the dark faerie realm to discover the site of a massacre. They are greeted by Malekith who holds a woman at knifepoint. The Accursed One explains that his people had grown weak and the slaughter is his way of strengthening them. Thor demands that he and his army surrender, Malekith responds by slicing off his hostage’s arm and hurling her at Thor. As the Thunder God uses Mjolnir to cauterize the wound, Malekith makes his escape….

Soon the Accursed One summons the Wild Hunt on a crusade to slaughter his people wherever in the Nine Realms they hide….

Review / Commentaries

Rating:

Thor: God of Thunder #13 Review by Peter Silvestro (September 22, 2013)

Review: A new story arc begins and, to promote the upcoming film THOR: THE DARK WORLD, it features the villain Malekith the Accursed, introduced by Walt Simonson back in the 80s. Par for the course, we don’t get a lot of story for our money and what we get doesn’t seem particularly creative (the villain escapes from jail and goes on a violent rampage, the heroes try to stop him) but we’ll see where Jason Aaron takes it. The big story is the arrival of Ron Garney on the art. Garney was one of my favorite Captain America artists from the 90s and he does a fine job here, his style a bit more realistic than in Cap to match what we’ve been seeing in Thor over the last few years. He makes a nice contrast to Esad Ribic’s grim and forbidding artwork; Garney’s heroes look heroic and his villains are villainous. Hope he stays around a while.

Comments: First appearance of Sif and the Warriors Three (save for Volstagg who was seen in a past adventure in issue #6) in this title. Issue includes a map of the Nine Realms by Haemi Jang.

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