Review by Karl Verhoven
The Complete Collection Vol. 3 picks up during the second stage of Jason Aaron’s long and acclaimed run on Thor, where he’s really begun to mix things up.
At the start it’s known to readers at least that the new female Thor is Jane Foster, despite her suffering from cancer in her human form. Aaron doesn’t trivialise this with an easy solution via some Asgardian magic, and the scenes of Jane undergoing treatment deliver the full horror of cancer as a disease. A different form of horror is provided by her treatment being interrupted by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents determined to get to the truth. With their bullying tactics they’rr little better than the alliance of criminal businessmen also seen in suits. The good aspect of this plot is the use of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Daisy Solomon as fair minded and gung-ho, and the poor is the eventual rabbit from the hat solution as Aaron introduces a new wrinkle guaranteed to have any reader asking why there’s no previous evidence of this convenience in decades of Thor comics.
The slimmer paperbacks Thunder in Her Veins, Lords of Midgard. and The Asgard/Shi’ar War are combined in this collection, with the excellent and ever-improving Russell Dauterman as primary artist. The minor flaws marking his earliest Thor art have been eroded and this is a collection featuring page after page of beautiful art, yet produced with a discipline ensuring pin-ups and decorative elements, of which there are many, never interfere with the basic storytelling. The choices made by colourist Matt Wilson enhance the glamour. When Dauterman needs a brief break the fill-in artists are well chosen and match his standards.
Aaron runs through several plots, but the scheming of Malekith the Elf is always running in the background, a constantly simmering threat that occasionally bubbles to the surface, but never with a resolution. This may prove frustrating, but it continues into Volume 4, and Malekith and his allies aren’t fully dealt with until The War of the Realms. Other problems for Thor include Malekith’s pawn Kurse (“It’s like punching a dumpster full of car batteries”), those greedy businessmen, a tyrant taking over Asgard and Asgard invaded by the Shi’ar Empire and their Imperial Guard.
Everything is very readable, and a massive collection of Dauterman’s art at a reasonable price is nothing to be sniffed at. If you’d prefer the content in a more luxurious format, it’s also found in the oversized hardcover Thor by Jason Aaron Omnibus Volume One. That, though, cuts off before the Asgard/Shi’ar War, as does the paperback Jane Foster: The Saga of the Mighty Thor.
