{"id":5789,"date":"2011-05-07T14:32:51","date_gmt":"2011-05-07T19:32:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=5789"},"modified":"2011-05-07T14:32:51","modified_gmt":"2011-05-07T19:32:51","slug":"on-things-ive-been-reading-34","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5789","title":{"rendered":"On Things I&#8217;ve Been Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.previewsworld.com\/public\/catalog_images\/stk_images\/stk420001-440000\/stk435499.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"384\" align=\"right\" class=\"alignright\" \/><b>Captain America\/Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers<\/b><br \/>Marvel Comics<br \/>Written by Roger Langridge<br \/>Art by Chris Samnee<\/p>\n<p>This is why comic books exist.<\/p>\n<p>Present-day Thor and World War II Captain America are transported back to the time of King Arthur so they can fight a four-headed dragon and keep Loki from claiming the Holy Grail.<\/p>\n<p>If you read comic books (or even if you don&#8217;t) and that description <i>doesn&#8217;t<\/i> excite you, there&#8217;s something wrong with you.<\/p>\n<p>And the fact that this comic, available today for Free Comic Book Day, is basically a bonus issue of Roger Langridge and Chris Samnee&#8217;s acclaimed <i>Thor: The Mighty Avenger<\/i> (the debut issue of which <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5241\">I blogged about here<\/a>) is a <i>huge<\/i> point in its favor &mdash; <i>Thor: The Mighty Avenger<\/i> was a truly <i>awesome<\/i> comic that unjustly went before its time.<\/p>\n<p>If <i>Captain America\/Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers<\/i> has a flaw, it&#8217;s that it&#8217;s too <i>short<\/i>.  Langridge and Samnee have a <i>lot<\/i> to fit in &mdash; they have to introduce Captain America, they have to set up the situation in fifth century Britain with King Arthur, the Grail, and Loki, and they have to further Thor&#8217;s emotional growth and maturity.  Fortunately, they avoid the whole &#8220;Heroes meet, heroes fight&#8221; cliche all too common to Marvel comics; it takes the first third of the comic for Thor and Captain America to meet, but once they do they get right into the story and the action.<\/p>\n<p><i>Thor: The Mighty Avenger<\/i> centered around Thor&#8217;s relationship with Jane Foster, a curator at a museum in Oklahoma and an expert on medieval history and Norse mythology, and <i>Captain America\/Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers<\/i> continues that development by finding a hook for Thor in brotherhood &mdash; Jane&#8217;s brother needs some help moving, Thor has his own troubles with his brother Loki.  The result explores Thor&#8217;s filial love for Loki in a way that is both quite gentle and quite touching.<\/p>\n<p><i>Captain America\/Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers<\/i> is mainly a Thor comic, and I mainly approached it as a Thor comic.  That&#8217;s not to say that Captain America doesn&#8217;t play a role, as he does, but the focus isn&#8217;t on Captain America and he doesn&#8217;t grow as a character from this adventure.  (And it spins off, I believe, from a recent special, <i>Captain America; The Fighting Avenger<\/i>.)  Though the eight issues of <i>Thor: The Mighty Avenger<\/i> have been collected, I hope <i>hope<\/i> <b>hope<\/b> that Marvel will collect those eight, plus this ninth issue, into a single volume oversized omnibus hardcover.  In my opinion, Langridge and Samnee have had one of the great runs on Thor, and they should be recognized as such.<\/p>\n<p>Someone watching <i>Thor<\/i> this weekend would love this comic.  Someone anticipating <i>Captain America<\/i> in July would love this comic.  Someone who loves Indiana Jones or <i>Prince Valiant<\/i> would love this comic. Someone who loves storytelling with a lot of heart would love this comic.  And someone who loves something free would love this comic.<\/p>\n<p><i>Captain America\/Thor: The Mighty Fighting Avengers<\/i> is just plain fun.  It&#8217;s the reason comic books exist.  Check it out. :h2g2:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Captain America\/Thor: The Mighty Fighting AvengersMarvel ComicsWritten by Roger LangridgeArt by Chris Samnee This is why comic books exist. Present-day Thor and World War II Captain America are transported back to the time of King Arthur so they can fight a four-headed dragon and keep Loki from claiming the Holy Grail. If you read comic<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5789\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On Things I&#8217;ve Been Reading&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[608,432,230,755,743],"class_list":["post-5789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comic-books","tag-captain-america","tag-holy-grail","tag-king-arthur","tag-roger-langridge","tag-thor","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}