Thor (Ages of Thunder) SDCC 2010 Exclusive
There was a time when the crack of thunder rolled across ancient battlefields, calling men to war. This was the call to arms of Thor, ancient god of thunder. He was the master of storms that whipped the North Sea into frenzied whitecaps and drove the Norsemen to conquest. He was their strength and their armor. In the millenia since, Thor has turned his eye to the protection of all mankind, rather than the patronage of a select few. he weilds his hammer as a defender of Earth, and protector of the weak, calling down the fury of his storms on the evil that plagues mankind.Wait... Ages of Thunder? What exactly is Ages of Thunder? It's obvious that I haven't been reading much Marvel (or DC, for that matter) recently. According to the book's writer, Matt Fraction, in an interview on Newsarama:
"It's a Thor graphic novel, told in parts, that plugs the pure Stan-and-Jack interpretation of Thor and the Asgardians into the Norse myth cycle. It sort of exists outside of any current incarnation of Thor – one of my favorite things about the Norse myths is that it's cyclical; that Ragnarok has survivors and the stories begin again."Interesting. So it's a Thor prequel incorporating the actual Norse mythology. After a quick Google Image Search, I can now talk about the figure.
I won't go into the packaging in this review since it's basically the same as the one used for the Captain America figure and I already talked about the packaging in that review. Thor was still a pain to take out of the tray though, because his cape was pulled through it.
If Cap was made entirely from new parts, Thor is a very nice and not so obvious combination of parts. The head is new, of course, but the torso and arms are from Thunderball and the legs are from the comic pack classic Thor. The cape, strap, belt, and loincloth are new and are made from softer, rubbery material. The sculpt, especially the face, doesn't reflect Patrick Zircher's art from the interior of the book as much as it does Marko Djurdjevic's painted covers. Although, for me, the face looks alot more like classic Thor than any of the previous Marvel Universe Thors.
The paint applications on Thor mirror the coloration in the book: dark, subdued, and cold. And I'm not just talking about color temperature: the book, and this figure, have frost on Thor's arms and face! The dark shading of the figure is achieved with a black paint wash and kind of looks like the inking on the interior of the book.
Thor comes with Mjolnir, but it's the smaller, stumpier version included with the comic pack Classic Thor, and not the larger (but still stumpy) Uru hammer included with single carded modern Thor. Mjolnir has some undecipherable writing etched into one side, with only the name Thor, legible at the bottom.
For me, this figure is easily the best Thor figure in the Marvel Universe line, and may even be better than the Showdown/Legends version.
- JM
