I'll try doing comics again.
Fear Itself
Tags event series, fear itself, marvel comics
The Fear Itself event has been over for a while now. The post Fear Itself new titles are now at issue 2-4 depending on which one we are talking about. Since the Fear Itself event is a done deal, I am going to assume that people have read it or know what happened in it. There will be spoilers.
At the core of this event series was an interesting sort of idea. Odin has a brother who may or may not have been the real All Father. Odin's brother, named Skaldi (not associated with the Skadi Norse goddess of Winter and hunting apparently), is not a nice fellow. Long ago, he was locked away deep beneath the ocean. Now he has been revived by the daughter of the Red Skull and he is going to have his revenge on his brother and destroy everything in the process. He is powered by a general climate of fea which is where the series ges its title. He can make magic hammers too and summons 7 of them which, in addition to the one Red Skull Girl (ok her name is Sin) has makes eight of them. The bearers of the Evil hammers, called the Worthy, run amok to cause fear and power up Skaldi. It's the end of the world...again.
When I think of this event, one phrase comes to mind to encapsulate it: cop out. The entire event is one huge cop out. They cop out on every single major, dramatic event in the series. Bucky, as Captain America, is killed by Sin. He isn't really killed though. That was a fake. In the end, Thor dies as prophesized. He doesn't really die and is shown alive in the denouement issues. The Thing is one of the Worthy and is taken over by the hammer. They use Franklin Richards' retcon power to undo this and return him to normal in the end. The entire population of Paris is turned to stone to show how serious this all is. It's a pretty ballsy move or it would be if they hadn't copped out on it and had everyone turned back in the end. Marvel copped out of everything.
The Fear Itself title is, despite all the dramatic (though, in the end, temporary) things that happen, remarkably dull. It was just boring. It's amazing how boring it manages to be considering what happens. I'm not even exactly sure what made it so dull. The way the premise is handled makes it all seems rather contrived. This brother just sort of appears out of nowhere. Marvel even hangs a lantern on it by having some of the other Asgardians ask why there was no sign of him before and why Odin never mentioned this. Odin, and by proxy Marvel, never answers these questions. Chunks of the story happen in titles spread all aross the Marvel super hero line so it is often not really clear what is happening unless you read pretty much every Fear Itself tie-in that came out. People say this about all these events titles but I could follow most of them easily just reading the core title. Fear Itself actually lived down to this cliche. The Fear Itself event spread out and took over several other titles even ones like New Mutants with only a thin connection to the event. Oddly, titles that I would have expected to be tied into Fear Itself, most of all The Mighty Thor, had almost no connection at all.
I would have to say that, in the end, Fear Itself was a dud. It was boring, contrived, poorly executed, spread out everywhere with no ryhme or reason and in the end meant nothing much at all. Some good things did come from it in the end. Some of the new series like the new Incredible Hulk are good. We got a new Defenders series which is promising and fun so far.
At the core of this event series was an interesting sort of idea. Odin has a brother who may or may not have been the real All Father. Odin's brother, named Skaldi (not associated with the Skadi Norse goddess of Winter and hunting apparently), is not a nice fellow. Long ago, he was locked away deep beneath the ocean. Now he has been revived by the daughter of the Red Skull and he is going to have his revenge on his brother and destroy everything in the process. He is powered by a general climate of fea which is where the series ges its title. He can make magic hammers too and summons 7 of them which, in addition to the one Red Skull Girl (ok her name is Sin) has makes eight of them. The bearers of the Evil hammers, called the Worthy, run amok to cause fear and power up Skaldi. It's the end of the world...again.
When I think of this event, one phrase comes to mind to encapsulate it: cop out. The entire event is one huge cop out. They cop out on every single major, dramatic event in the series. Bucky, as Captain America, is killed by Sin. He isn't really killed though. That was a fake. In the end, Thor dies as prophesized. He doesn't really die and is shown alive in the denouement issues. The Thing is one of the Worthy and is taken over by the hammer. They use Franklin Richards' retcon power to undo this and return him to normal in the end. The entire population of Paris is turned to stone to show how serious this all is. It's a pretty ballsy move or it would be if they hadn't copped out on it and had everyone turned back in the end. Marvel copped out of everything.
The Fear Itself title is, despite all the dramatic (though, in the end, temporary) things that happen, remarkably dull. It was just boring. It's amazing how boring it manages to be considering what happens. I'm not even exactly sure what made it so dull. The way the premise is handled makes it all seems rather contrived. This brother just sort of appears out of nowhere. Marvel even hangs a lantern on it by having some of the other Asgardians ask why there was no sign of him before and why Odin never mentioned this. Odin, and by proxy Marvel, never answers these questions. Chunks of the story happen in titles spread all aross the Marvel super hero line so it is often not really clear what is happening unless you read pretty much every Fear Itself tie-in that came out. People say this about all these events titles but I could follow most of them easily just reading the core title. Fear Itself actually lived down to this cliche. The Fear Itself event spread out and took over several other titles even ones like New Mutants with only a thin connection to the event. Oddly, titles that I would have expected to be tied into Fear Itself, most of all The Mighty Thor, had almost no connection at all.
I would have to say that, in the end, Fear Itself was a dud. It was boring, contrived, poorly executed, spread out everywhere with no ryhme or reason and in the end meant nothing much at all. Some good things did come from it in the end. Some of the new series like the new Incredible Hulk are good. We got a new Defenders series which is promising and fun so far.
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