Chaos War #2
When I saw the cover to Chaos War #1 all I needed, from the comic, to make me happy was a full-fledged knock down drag out fight between Hercules and Thor with no gimmicks. I have nothing against either one of these characters and I didn’t want there to be any lasting consequences but sometimes I just want to see my heroes duke it out. Well, I didn’t get that in issue one but I did get a lot more. I got an easily accessible, quality story, where the heroes acted like heroes and I thoroughly enjoyed it. This must be a mistake, Marvel event books are never this easy to get into, the stories are never this well thought out and the characters always act out of character (a necessary device to more along the poorly conceived plots).
Well, after getting off to such a great start in issue one I thought for sure issue two would let me down. I’m happy to report issue two was every bit as good as issue one. SPOILER WARNING With most, if not all, of the mortal heroes out of the way the Chaos King moves against Earth’s populace while his army of alien god-slaves attacks the underworld. With things looking bad for Hercules and his few remaining allies he reaches out for some immortal help. The first immortal he reaches out to is the entity known as Eternity who unexpectedly turns down Hercules’ plea for help. This leads Hercules to his decision to call on allies he is more familiar with. This results in him assembling a new God Squad consisting of Thor, Sersi, Amadeus, Galactus, the Silver Surfer and Daimon Hellstorm. No sooner does Hercules have his new team in place then they must face off against all the generations of the damned that are now under the control of the Chaos King. END SPOILER WARNING
I don’t know if writers Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente can keep up this level of story telling for the whole series but they are off to a great start. If you have been confused and let down by the last couple of Marvel’s endless stream of mega events give Chaos War a try. If the rest of it is as good as the first two parts it may just restore some of your faith in mega events.
Keith Forney