Comic Book Herald

A Comic Book Reading Order Guide For Beginners & Fans

Thor

Jane Foster (Valkyrie) Reading Order!

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Until the last decade, the tale of Jane Foster wasn’t a particularly noteworthy one. She was nothing more than the usual example of a 60s love interest, used as a secondary character to a male hero for a few years before being pushed aside and fading to the background of the Marvel universe.

But this all changed in 2014, when writer Jason Aaron pushed his run on Thor in a whole new direction by replacing the god of thunder with a new Thor, the Mighty Thor, the Goddess of Thunder : Jane Foster. Accompanied by Russel Dauterman’s gorgeous art, Aaron reinvented her as a superhero, protecting Asgard and the Nine Realms as Thor, while battling breast cancer as Jane, with the complication that using Mjolnir cancels the effects of chemotherapy on her body, thus putting her life on the line even more each time she picks up the hammer.

When the time came for Jane to stop being the goddess of thunder however, she didn’t stop being a hero, instead taking on the mantle of Valkyrie to defend the Realms and accompany the souls of dead heroes to Valhalla. And now that she is is about to come back to the MCU in a big way as the Mighty Thor in the upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, it’s a great time to look back on the story of Jane Foster, both as the Mighty Thor and as Marvel’s new Valkyrie. [Read more…] about Jane Foster (Valkyrie) Reading Order!

Best 10 Thor Comics Of All Time!

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Mighty Thor Vol 2 #700, cover by Russell Dauterman and Matthew Wilson, 2017The least earthbound of Earth’s Mightiest, the God of Thunder has for most of his Marvel comics history been very difficult to write. After all, how do you make an ageless god interesting? Give him a hammer and a big burly target? That’s proven at least an acceptable baseline for fans across the decades. But if I really wanted to convince a modern reader on the fence to love Thor, I’d have to look to those stories where the hammer blows and lightning strikes are balanced by something like character development. [Read more…] about Best 10 Thor Comics Of All Time!

Thunderstrike Reading Order!

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What do you get when you cross the Thor mythos with grunge aesthetics? You get Thunderstrike, a new Thor variant made by the 90s, for the 90s. A beefier hero who traded his classic hammer in for an Asgardian mace. It’s a classic epic of a leather jacket fighting other, larger leather jackets.

First introduced as a side character in the pages of Thor, Eric Masterson quickly became the Thunder God’s new human alter ego (yes, the title was still doing the secret identity thing by the late 80s if you can believe it), before forging himself a new identity as Thunderstrike.

Created by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz in 1988, Eric Masterson is a rare example of a Marvel hero who not only has a clear beginning and end to his story, but has also maintained a pretty consistent creative team throughout his comic book history (with DeFalco writing virtually all of his comics, and Frenz drawing most of them). In 2011, more than a decade after Thunderstrike’s death, the duo even came back to continue Eric Masterson’s legacy in the form of his teenage son Kevin, who inherits his father’s mace and becomes the new Thunderstrike (still active today, as of his last cameo apparition in the pages of Annihilation Scourge: Omega). [Read more…] about Thunderstrike Reading Order!

Thor and the Eternals: The Celestials Saga Review!

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Roy Thomas’ run on Thor isn’t generally considered one of the all-time greats, but it sure is long, and this is where we start to see it all wrap up. Ending with #297, it goes out on a suitably bizarre note, with countless unresolved plot threads and more questions than when we first started reading.

Jack Kirby’s Eternals series ended only a year and change before this arc began, but it wasn’t the first time the Eternals made an appearance in the pages of Thor. In fact, the Eternals and the Celestials played a fairly large role in Roy Thomas’ run, and this edition recaps recent events involving our beloved demigods. The long and the short of it is that the Celestial Arishem has begun a fifty-year-long judgement of humanity that will wrap up sometime in the far-flung future of 2026. Considering how the last forty-five years have gone, the idea of a cosmic judge overseeing and evaluating us based on their merits sounds a bit horrifying, but we’ll see how the next five years go. Go easy on us, Celestials. [Read more…] about Thor and the Eternals: The Celestials Saga Review!

The Cates of Hel #4: What Happens if Galactus Dies? | Thor #6 Review!

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The first six issues of Donny Cates, Nic Klein and Matt Wilson’s relaunched Thor are now out, and the final issue is the strongest of the bunch, salvaging a meandering and disappointing back half with enormous Marvel Cosmic implications.

Today I’ll answer:

  • What does the “Devourer Herald” mean for Galactus in the Marvel Universe?
  • What insanely exciting Marvel Cosmic tease is revealed in Thor #6?
  • Where does the first volume of Donny Cates’ Thor fit into his Marvel Universe works?

*Spoilers For Discussed Comics Will Follow*

[Read more…] about The Cates of Hel #4: What Happens if Galactus Dies? | Thor #6 Review!