By: Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak (writers), Khoi Pham (art), Sunny Gho (colors) & Simon Bowland (letters)
The Story: The Chaos King ramps up his attack on the godly realms.
What’s Good: If you were not a religious Hercules reader (and perhaps even if you were), Chaos War #1 was pretty uneven. After reading it, you couldn’t help but think that Marvel had screwed the pooch by having FOURTEEN tie-in issues (one-shots & minis) associated with this event. “Those aren’t going to sell at ALL”, thought this reviewer. But then Chaos War #2 was quite good and now Chaos War #3 is seriously excellent. Those tie-ins are looking very purchasable right now!
This comic is everything you could want in a big event comic: the stakes feel very large and it has big action. And I mean BIG action…..like Zeus punching Galactus in the face!
Catching up on the story, the Chaos King, in the form of Amatsu-Mikaboshi (Wiki it if you’re confused) has laid waste to the planes of Hell and now is turning his attention on the various realms of “heaven” leaving nothing but Herc and his God Squad to save the universe. It is very good and has lots of big, “hell yeah” or “Oh no!” scenes as well has some trademark Van Lente humor (Amadeus and Thor getting a little friendly when Venus sings a love song).
This was Pham’s strongest issue of the series thus far and there are a few really spectacular splash pages (i.e. you don’t feel ripped off that you sacrificed an entire page of story for that). He and Palmer give this comic an almost throw-backy feel with all the cross-hatching as contrasted with the heavy shadow we see in so many Marvel books these days. But, it is throw-back with modern sensibilities in terms of panel construction, perspective and coloring. It is very nice.
What’s Not So Good: If you have not been a long-time Herc reader (like me), you still feel a little left out. But that’s fair and Van Lente and Pak are striking the right balance for an event: accessible but not dumbed down. Other than that, there really isn’t much to dislike about this issue.
Conclusion: Why isn’t Van Lente on a “major” Marvel title? The dude is currently writing 4-5 titles per month scatted across the Marvel U. and they’re all pretty darn good. As for the Chaos War event, this issue really picked it up at the right time because the tie-ins start next week. If you dropped it after the first issue, you might want to give it another chance because this issue was really good.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion