RAGNARÖK: LAST GOD STANDING

Story and Art by Walter Simonson
Colors by Laura Martin | Letters by John Workman

... Or, "The Adventures of Zombie Thor".

I feel bad about this one. I was ready to like it. I wanted to like it. But, perhaps because of the expectations I placed upon it, it really didn't do much for me.

Walter Simonson's THOR run at Marvel was something I missed out on the first time around. I finally checked it out two decades after the fact, in the THOR VISIONARIES: WALTER SIMONSON trade paperback series, and I found that it completely lived up to the praise I'd seen heaped upon it over the previous twenty years. So the idea of Simonson returning to the Norse pantheon for more sword-and-sorcery tales of heroism, epic high adventure, and occasional mirth sounded great to me.

Thing is, I came into this one blind. I really didn't read any advertising hype or interviews about it. All I knew was that it featured Simonson working on the Norse gods once more, and that premise alone was good enough to guarantee I'd check it out. Heck, I thought the character depicted on the cover of the collected edition (above) was some evil dark elf or something who had stolen Thor's hammer! (Spoiler: It's not. That's Thor as he appears in this story.)

SPRINGTIME GRAB BAG

As I've done in past years, I plan to spend the majority of the spring on various assorted mini-series from publishers other than Marvel or DC. The next four Fridays will kick this off, beginning with THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST, a reprint of the manga serialized in NINTENDO POWER magazine back in the nineties.

After ZELDA, we'll take a look two offerings from artist Terry Dodson and a pair of European writers, D-P Filippi and Xavier Dorison -- MUSE and RED ONE. Following the Dodson experience, I've lined up a review of the first volume in Walter Simonson's RAGNARÖK series at IDW.

Then it's into the realm of sword and sorcery for the month of April, and our gateway to that genre will be a MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE graphic novel I've owned for about thirty years, THE SUNBIRD LEGACY. Once that one's in the can, I'll be back to announce the second half of the Springtime Grab Bag, so stay tuned!

THE UNBOXING - DECEMBER 2015

2015 closes with a small month, which is fine with me since it's the holiday season. From Marvel, we have the WOLVERINE EPIC COLLECTION: THE DYING GAME, which collects issues 87 - 100 of the Canucklehead's ongoing series, written by Larry Hama and illustrated (mostly) by Adam Kubert. As I've said before, I really enjoy the year of X-Men comics between "Age of Apocalypse" and "Onslaught", and most of this material fits right in that window.

And IDW brings RAGNARÖK VOLUME 1: LAST GOD STANDING, Walter Simonson's return to the Norse pantheon -- albeit free from the Marvel versions of those characters. I've heard good things about this series and I'm excited to read it, so hopefully I'll have a little something to say about it in the near future.

That's a wrap on a year's worth of Unboxings, but the cycle begins anew next month and I expect to receive at least three or four trades from Marvel and DC to start the new year.