When a book is going well, I generally hate to see a fill-in issue, even from a creator that I like. However, while I did miss the continuing story of Asgard on Earth that has piqued my interest in Jurgens's run, this futuristic fable from Priest and Kaniuga has plenty to recommend it. For one thing, Kaniuga's artwork is unusual and beautiful, reminiscent of work by Sam Kieth or Todd McFarlane, and for another, Priest's "regular guy" take on super-heroes as well as his appreciation for their role as modern mythology blends surprisingly well for a concept like Thor. While the story is a little too ambiguous for me at times, especially when certain clues seem to suggest an answer one way or the other, this is a neat one issue tale.
While I'm a fan of Asgard in general, and actually really liked the work that Claremont tying the X-Men to the mythical realm, I generally find it dead boring in the pages of Thor. I also tend to find Thor in modern-day New York boring, which is why the book is such a hard sell for me, but just as Jurgens found a hook to interest me, so too has Priest in this issue. Specifically, he's done as he did in the past, which is to take the immortal Thor into a different time. Rather than going back to the wild west, however, this story examines what might happen to Thor in the far future.
The result? Plenty of nifty technology for Kaniuga to draw, a little social commentary on the treatment of the dispossessed and mentally ill from Priest and a story that has the feel of being a fable or a parable as much as a genre story. One of the points of the story, indeed perhaps the main point, is that it doesn't matter if Thor is real or not, as long as some belief in him exists. The story is as much about the hope that it gives the young boy named DJ as it is about any confrontation between Thor and Loki.
I would have been happier, however, if there had never been an exchange between the Colonel and DJ where the Colonel expresses a rabid need for the hammer. That is the only part of the book that doesn't leave itself open to the more mundane explanation, and it provides the chink in the "is he Thor or not?" aspect that is so important to the story. I would also have been happier if Kaniuga's color palette had been a little lighter on the browns and greens, because while he does give the future a sort of dingy appearance, the monotone colors are somewhat overwhelming.
Mind you, other than the colors, I was pretty pleased with the artwork. Kaniuga's characters are exaggerated and unreal, and while it's not a style that would work with any story, it works perfectly in a story about the fantastic and mythical, helping to empathize even with the down to earth nature of DJ's reality that there is magic in this world. His depiction of the world of 2026 A.D. is also a lot of fun, grounded very much in urban reality but with a few technological touches that make it more fantastic as well.
