Mighty Thor Vol. 3: The Asgard/shi'ar War

by Jason Aaron

[Quirky Cat]

I’ve been super anxiously waiting for the release of volume three, and now I finally have it! I have to say, the cover art made me even more excited to read it (I mean, look at it! It’s beautiful!). The Asgard/Shi’ar War doesn’t spend anytime going over backstory, so you really need to have read the previous volumes in order to follow all of the intricacies of what happens (and even then I found myself a little befuddled, as I haven’t read extensively about the Shi’ar or a couple other characters that make cameos). Also, reading Unworthy Thor may be helpful, but it isn’t really required (though it is fantastic, so there’s that).



First things first, I cannot say enough good things about the artwork for this series. Steve Epting is an absolute genius. So even though I don’t think this was the strongest of volumes, plot wise, the artwork supporting it certainly held up.
The whole Malekith plot sort of gets put on the backburner for this volume, while Thor is forced to battle it out with a couple of arrogant Shi’ar gods (though the reason they focused on Thor brings everything full circle). Sharra and K’thri challenge Thor to a challenge of the gods in order to see who the best god is. The tests are clearly designed for gods that care next to nothing for their people, as the death toll almost directly positively affects the gods score. Needless to say in those specific challenges Thor gets her butt handed to her.
The whole thing makes it pretty clear that we’re supposed to be seeing Thor, a human, caring and compassionate goddess in comparison to two spoiled gods who care nothing for their people. From there we’re supposed to extrapolate that Thor may be better than most of the gods we’ve seen (as at least she can rally gods in a way that we’re told is not possible). In truth it just made me realize just how human Thor can be made, courtesy of Jane Foster.
I mentioned earlier that there were some cameos for characters I haven’t read extensively on, including the Shi’ar gods, there was also a cameo from Quentin, who is intended to inherit the Phoenix Force (another plotline I haven’t touched yet. It’s on the list). In this case I feel like I was able to infer most of the important parts about his character. What will happen after the deal he struck at the end? That I’m less sure about.
While this volume didn’t have a lot of intricate or deep plot, it certainly had an abundance of one liners that literally made me laugh out loud. So this is a huge bonus in my mind – sometimes you need humor to balance everything else out.
Additionally there were a couple of pretty awesome appearances from the League of Realms (now joined by Angela and Sif) and Roz Solomon. Speaking of Roz, she gets another position to add to her resume, as well as take up even more of her time (where does the get the energy to deal with everything she’s dealing with?).
Jane is struggling more and more to keep up with both her normal life and her Thor life. It doesn’t help that being Thor is literally killing her faster either. In the end she has to admit her own limitations to herself, despite her wishes otherwise. The very human struggle that goes on for Jane is the reason why I love this series so much, even though I dread the predicted outcome of it.
I can’t wait to see what volume four brings us, and am anxiously awaiting for January 30th (I hope it keeps that release date!). I think it goes without saying that I’ll be continuing this series.


For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks