Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Incredible Hercules: The Mighty Thorcules TPB

What a fun, fun comic. I've been loving Hercules more and more as the months have gone by, and this might be the best story so far.

Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente split up the dream team, with Hercules and Kid Zeus heading off one way and Amadeus Cho in another. Hercules and Zeus are quickly misled into backing the wrong horse when they throw in with the Dark Elves of Asgardian myth. The best part is that in order to make it work, Hercules allows himself to be disguised as the Mighty Thor. This leads to some awesome moments where Herc gets to act like his normal doofy self, but he can blame it on Thor. Naturally, Thor hears about this and disguises himself as Herc. There are some fantastic moments in this story. Herc's skill in the sack actually gets him a big win; he does it without fighting. In fact, I'm not sure he effectively fights anyone in this whole trade.

Meanwhile, Amadeus is searching out the man who killed his family. More importantly, he believes his sister is still alive and he wants to find her too. His story is lead by a book about the heroic journey and with a role-playing game. The thinly-veiled D&D references are great, I love hearing how Cho wasted his youth playing Excello role-playing games. The story wraps up nicely too, and again, Cho wins not through his skill or his brains, but with a pretty neat way to deal with his foe.

The art throughout is fun. I'm glad Reilly Brown has hit on a new regular gig, he's too good to be out of Marvel's regular stable. His Thor, Herc, and dark elves all looked tremendous.

Good

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