Wednesday 1 May 2013

Thanos Rising #2 Review

I don't want to be one of those killjoys who claim Thanos Rising is a story that shouldn't be told. There's definite merit to the idea of shedding more light on Thanos' formative years. It's simply not being told in as satisfying a manner as I had hoped given the creative team.

Issue #2 improves on the first by degrees, but it doesn't completely address any of its flaws. The script jumps forward several years (though neither the writing nor the art are as clear on that front as they could have been). Thanos has morphed from wide-eyed innocent to a sulky but highly intelligent teen who is reluctantly embracing his talent for killing. The book benefits from the fact that Thanos is a bit more in control of his actions and less prone to manipulation, but in general Jason Aaron still paints him as a boy being maneuvered by his female companion. The fact that the writing all but confirms her to be the embodiment of Death at this point helps. Still, Aaron casts Thanos as the prototypical serial killer, and that humbler approach belies the mythic quality he carries in most of his adult appearances.

The dialogue continues to be haphazard in quality. It's generally fine in terms of Thanos and Death, but many of the more minor characters on Titan sound entirely too much like ordinary, 21st Century Earthlings. There's little sense that this is an alien culture. One other major complaint with these first two issues is the almost total absence of Eros. Surely Thanos' relationship with his far more popular and beloved brother had a more profound impact on his development than this series would have you believe.

Simone Bianchi expertly captures the creepy, mythical aspects of Thanos that the script sometimes misses. In that sense there's a divide between the writing and art at times. Aaron seeks to provide ordinary, dialogue-driven scenes that Bianchi's powerful but not terribly emotive figures aren't well-suited for. On the plus side, Bianchi's page construction and sequential storytelling are leaps and bound above his early Marvel work.

Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.


Source : ign[dot]com

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