Fear Itself #5 - Big Brawls of Awesome

There's an old saying about big comic events. The bigger they are the easier they are to bash. Okay, it's not old. I just pulled it out of my ass while high. That doesn't mean it's wrong though. Whenever Marvel, DC, or anybody who pays a metric fuck-ton of money to marketing firms to hype up a product, it raises expectations so high that the flaws stand out like Snooki in an abstinence convention. You have to have balls of vibranium to hype up an event like Fear Itself, putting that big target on your ass and daring the haters to kick it. Marvel spared no expense in saying this will be the greatest story you can read without the aid of LSD. And for the most part, it's delivered.

I don't hide from it. I was one of Matt Fraction's crazy drunken critics while he was writing Uncanny X-men. I bashed everything from his characterization to those goofy glasses he wears at comic conventions, but I'm willing to take all that and shove it up my own ass for what he's done with Fear Itself. It's the kind of event I haven't seen from Marvel in years. It's big, it's explosive, it's dramatic, it's heartfelt, and above all it's fucking awesome. It has gods fighting superheroes, family secrets fucking up lives, giant Nazi killer robots, and Tony Stark getting shit faced. It basically has all the trademarks of a great Marvel event. It hasn't been perfect. At times, it has been a little mindless and low on depth. However, the sheer scale and impact of the story has more than compensated.

The previous issue of Fear Itself dealt with the death of Bucky Barnes. It was a powerful moment, one that led Steve Rogers to dawn his old Captain America outfit and fight in the name of his fallen friend. It also had Thor returning to the battle after Odin had been a divine sized dick and threw him back to Earth while he cowered from the Serpent, who was terrorizing massive amounts of shit from every bowel on the planet with his army of hammer-wielding minions. And as I previously stated, it had Tony jump off the sobriety wagon and hit the bottle again. That's three big name Avengers stepping up, allowing their superhero balls descend, and take on the Serpent in a battle that was as epic as it was flashy. There was a lot of style and a little bit of substance. I gave that book a high score because of how it came together. Now all that style continues with Fear Itself #5. I've already swallowed many a shit from what I said about Matt Fraction. I'm ready to swallow more and I had a light lunch! So here we go!

Fear Itself #5 skips needless banter and soap-opera bullshit and gets right down to business. By that I mean Thor is going hammer to hammer with Hulk and Thing, two old buddies of his who were air mailed a couple of the Serpents Asgardian hammers and like dip-shits they picked them up. Now they're not just mindless minions of the Serpent. Their mindless minions with god-like power capable of liquifying bones with their pinkie toe. And Thor has to take them both on. Needless to say, Thor gets hammered in ways you can only get in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

While Thor is getting the kind of hammer treatment that only MC Hammer's bankruptcy lawyers could possibly comprehend, Captain America (keep in mind this is Steve Rogers and not Bucky) is facing off against Sin. The bitch killed his best friend so he's got plenty of incentive to fuck her up. Never mind the fact that she started this shit and is responsible for the Serpent in the first place. Just for killing Bucky, Captain America has plenty or reason to take her on. He skips the speech about how she killed him. He just lets her boast like Charlie Sheen at the bank and goes right after her. It's raw, it's basic, it's a little dumbed down, but it's still awesome.

But not all action need be mindless hammer bashing and revenge killings. Tony Stark got his ass kicked a different way. He picked up a bottle of booze again and went graveling to Odin, who is still hiding away and letting Earth get fucked worse than Bankok tranny on meth. In the last issue, Tony called him out in a very memorable moment that showed Iron Man at his most vulnerable. Odin heeds his call and it's here where Fraction shows some interesting characterization.

Keep in mind that this is a god and a man of science. One uses magic. The other uses machines. The contrast here is striking and it shows in how they carry themselves. Odin scoffs at the need for tools because he has magic. Iron Man scoffs at magic because he has tools. He doesn't ask Odin for help. He doesn't even ask him for a secret weapon. He just asks to use his workshop. That's it. He'll build the shit himself. That's like a guy saying "Fuck your fancy blow-up doll! Give me some silicone, a cow heart, and a car battery and  I'll build one myself!" It's one of the most powerful moments to date for Fear Itself and it sets the stage for a big moment for Tony Stark, hopefully one where he keeps his pants on.

Whereas Tony uses his words to get a message across, Thor still uses a more direct approach. And by direct, I mean he uses a big ass hammer. I can say from experience that a hammer goes a long ways towards winning a debate with someone. For a while, Thing and Hulk get the better of him. But Thor shows that he's more than capable of wounding his friends when he summons his hammer and it goes right through Thing. I'll repeat that. The hammer goes right through Thing like a fucking blast of buckshot to the chest. I don't care how much holy mojo the Serpent shoots into your ass. That kind of shit is hard to heal from. Not content with taking down Thing, Thor goes on the offensive against Hulk. There's no "HULK SMASH" or "HULK STRONGEST THERE IS" bullshit. Thor just lets his hammer shut him up and it's quite a sight to behold.

The battle against Sin and Captain America is also quite a spectacle, but it's somewhat tapered by the fact that Sin just won't shut the hell up. She keeps boasting about how she killed Bucky and how Cap killed her father. Granted, her father was a complete asshole AND a Nazi, but that’s besides the point. Remarkably, Captain America doesn’t seem to bring up how pissed he is that Bucky is dead. In fact, he doesn’t say much either. I don’t know if that’s because Sin keeps talking over him or if he’s getting his ass kicked that much. But this is where a slight problem begins with the book. After having such great dialog with Tony and Odin, he really falls flat here. Maybe it’s because he’s written Iron Man before, but he has to know that Cap actually talks when he’s kicking ass or getting his ass kicked.

It ends up making little difference because while Sin is talking Cap’s ear off, the Serpent shows up. And he’s not a grizzled old man that looks like Christopher Walken without the makeup. He’s actually quite dashing in a way that says nothing about my sexuality. That’s the result of all that yummy fear fueling his power. I can already some phony doctor trying to patent this idea and pay a supermodel in cocaine to sell it on an infomercial. Unlike their money back guarantees, this shit actually works. The Serpent lands next to Sin, proclaims himself to having the biggest most godly balls in the world. He’s basically like Donald Trump, but with slightly more humility and much better hair.

No matter how big his godly balls may be, the rest of the Avengers (at least their second stringers) show up to help Captain America. Unlike the Bush Doctrine, they don’t expect the red, white, and blue to do all the heavy lifting and be an asshole about it. So they all move in to attack the Serpent in what promises to be another epic clash. However, it’s over rather quickly. Not because it’s poorly done or anything. It’s because…well, the Serpent is THAT fucking powerful. He calls Earth’s mightiest heroes children. So with the godly equivalent of giving them the middle finger, he unleashes the kind of power that Kim Jong Ill probably masturbates to every night.

Now this show of force is pretty fucking awesome. However, there is a problem. It doesn’t kill anybody. Now how is that a problem? Well if he’s really that powerful, why the fuck wouldn’t he just wipe out all the heroes like a competent powerful asshole? Stalin didn’t have any powers and he did a damn good job wiping out pricks that annoyed him. It’s an age old flaw that so many comic villains make, but in this case it just seems way too fucked up. Not only that, the Serpent disappears afterwards. He doesn’t even stick around to wave his dick in their face. Again, it’s an old gimmick, but one that really comes off as cheap in an event that has done such a great job of balancing such elements.

Now the issue could have gone downhill from here, but Fraction does make up for it somewhat. While the Serpent is treating the Avengers the same way Colonel Sanders treats chickens, Thor is still battling Hulk. Remember, Thor was getting his ass kicked when this issue began. Well now he’s showing that being cast out by his own father has a way of pissing him off. He doesn’t take him down subtly either. When the time comes to deliver the finishing blow, he reminds readers that he’s the motherfucking god of Thunder and the Serpent could suck it! That last part is implied by the way.

As for the heroes who just got pwned by the Serpent, they wake up from the ashes with remarkably minor injuries. Considering the explosion earlier looked like something from the Akira movie, that's grounds for calling bullshit. What they say is even more shitty. They just walk around, talking about how powerful the Serpent is and how screwed they are. There's really not much drama here. There's no heart in their words. It's quite a change from earlier when Fraction demonstrated that he could write drama into a moment with Odin and Tony Stark. So this is quite a shift and it ends the comic on a bit of a bland note. Nobody's dying. Nobody's seriously wounded. They're just standing around, musing at how fucked they are. Not a good way to end the book, but at least the beginning and middle were decent. It's like a slightly better version of the Matrix trilogy that wasn't fucked up by Keanu.

It's a pretty bleak assessment. Marvel's mightiest heroes came together in their usual Rocky IV moment only to get bitch-slapped by the Serpent's inner Ivan Drago. This issue was heavy on epic battles. Hell, that took up most of the issue. You had Thor vs. Hulk vs. Thing. You had Captain America vs. Sin. You had the Serpent vs. damn near everybody. In the end, the Serpent proved he's the pimp and everyone else are the hos. The Avengers have thrown everything they could possible throw at him and they were brushed off like Tiger Woods's clean cut image. It's a spectacle, plain and simple. It fits the whole plain and simple model that this series has demonstrated since the beginning. That's still a major part of the appeal, but this time that fragile balance between awesome and mindless is somewhat upset.

The problem is the dialog. For the most part, it was decent. Odin's conversation with Iron Man was Matt Fraction at his best. His dialog towards the end was the kind of shit you pay a drunk hobo to say in exchange for a shot of whiskey. It got pretty bland. The Serpent just showed he's got the kind of power that would make Galactus piss his cosmic underwear and the best he gets is Captain America saying "We're going to lose"? The impact is completely glossed over. The sheer weight of the Serpent's power is understated if not in the artwork then certainly within the characters. There are no memorable lines at the end. Nothing ominous is said to soak the panties for the next issue. Everything from the beginning and most of the middle was wonderfully crafted. It was the end that just fell flat and it's a disappointing shift in the momentum of this event.

While the end was pretty weak, it wasn't weak enough to bring down the whole event. I'm not saying it was so poorly done that it warrants dropping the event. If you give up on Fear Itself just because of one weak ending, then you're just being an asshole. But the lack of impact and the underwhelming sentiment of the issue makes me somewhat less excited for the next issue. I'm not foaming at the mouth, punching myself in the kidney's in anticipation for the next issue like I was early on (speaking of which, anybody in the market for a slightly worn out kidney?). I'm still excited to see where Fear Itself goes. But for this issue, I can't be as enthusiastic as I once was. So for Fear Itself #5, I give it a 3.5 out of 5. It's still above average on most levels, but the end is disappointing. It's like a good meal followed by a bad shit. One overly compensates for the other. Nuff said!

Fear Itself #4 - Assembling The Awesome

Four books in and Marvel has managed to keep me hooked like a Bankok transvestite hooked on meth with Fear Itself. I'll be honest. I didn't expect it to be as engaging. Big events involving the Avengers tend to get more convoluted and bloated than the Octomom when she's PMSing. Events like Secret Invasion and Siege have been needlessly complicated to me. They lack coherence. Fear Itself, like it's predecessors, has every other writer and their second cousin doing a spin-off book. However, the main title has kept things unified. You can follow just the main title and not get so lost that you wake up naked in an Amsterdam slum with toothless whore snorting blow off your ass. It's more basic without being too bland or mindless. It's just what Marvel has been missing in an event.

At the same time, the basic nature of Fear Itself has been a source of criticism. It's not unwarranted either. It's a book that has Nazi killer robots. That's as campy as it sounds. Yeah, it ditches the convoluted political undertones of Civil War. But Nazi killer robots? That's the kind of shit you would expect writers in the 60s to come up with during a bad LSD trip. I've still given Fear Itself high marks, but I have my reservations about how deeper this series can go and maintain the quality. So far I've been impressed. I want to keep being impressed. It feels good in a comic. Not as good if it came with a free bag of weed, but I'll settle for Marvel just keeping the damn thing interesting

Fear Itself #3 ended with some powerful moments. The battle against the killer Nazi robots in Washington DC went bad real fast. The Serpent grew his army by giving the wonderful gift of magic hammers to a collection of dangerous, pissed off superhumans who in turn used it to unleash an unholy terror on the entire planet. That terror feeds the Serpent the same way undeserved media attention fuels Charlie Sheen. As Earth's mightiest heroes weaken, the Serpent grows stronger. All the while, Odin is being a divine prick. He's shut off Asgard from Earth and basically insulated himself while all of humanity suffers. He knows what's going on. He knows just how fucked the world is and he's not doing a damn thing about it. He was nice enough to send Thor back with his hammer to help, but he still did it in a way that makes him a god-level dickcheese.

Fear Itself #4 follows this divine dick move. Thor arrives where this shit began in Broxton. This time the locals aren't so generous with their welcome. They no longer give a damn about all the tourism dollars that having Asgard nearby will bring. Thor's buddies have triggered a global fear event and now he's about as welcome as the gay pride parade in Saudi Arabia. Thor just shrugs his shoulders and flies off into the sea of pants-shitting terror that the Serpent has unleashed.

We then get a nice assessment of just how far the Serpents reach has gone. All over the world, the lucky bastards who got a hold of his hammers are having a blast and scaring people to no end. With every pair of pants that are shat, the Serpent grows stronger. It makes for a truly global scale conflict, the kind that should be legally required of every Marvel event. Odin picks up on this as well. He still comes off as a dick, but he also comes off as being genuinely scared of the Serpent. His power is basically terror with the personality of a cranky old man who is sick of having to rely on pills to get a semi anymore. He's basically willing to throw Earth and everyone on it under the bus. I get it. People don't worship Odin anymore or kill in his name, but he still comes off as an asshole. He also offers a pretty cryptic warning. Mankind's faith will basically be crushed. So the Richard Dawkins of the world may finally get their wish.

It's not like the Avengers' spirits aren't already wounded. If you'll recall, Bucky Barnes got roughed up in a way that only every Nazi in the Call of Duty games can relate to. It was a cryptic ending, but it's not so cryptic now. Bucky Barnes died. And this time Marvel didn't polybag it and use it as a lame sales gimmick (see Ultimate Spider-Man for how shitty those gimmicks can be). For this, I'm somewhat relieved. I'm also somewhat curious because if Marvel isn't making a big deal of this that either means Bucky isn't truly dead or they're just undoing the elaborate story that brought him back. Given how Marvel has used death as a gimmick more times than the last ten Friday the 13th movies, it's hard to tell. But it plays into the basic nature of the story.

Iron Man, Fury, Black Widow, and Steve Rogers (the REAL Captain America) all stand over and take a moment to mourn their loss. It's not glossed over. It's not overly emotional either. Black Widow is the only one that cries and why shouldn't she? She was boning the guy. But before Bucky 'died' he did offer the Avengers the first clue. He revealed the Serpent as the main douche-bag behind this global display of douche-baggery. Now the Avengers know who to take their angst out on.

So with Bucky fallen, Steve Rogers ditches the old knock-off costume which might as well have been Captain America lite and dawns his classic look. It only took a few years since he was 'killed' off. Sure, we elected a black president since then, but still it's not among the brain cells I've destroyed. So that lends little credence to Bucky's death. But I'm willing to overlook that because in his old costume, Cap can now assemble Thor and Iron Man as the big three. Since Thor is now back, they know who they're up against and they're ready to start kicking his ass.

Before his asshole can even clench, the Serpent ups the ante. All that delicious fear strengthens him the same way democratic scandals strengthen Ann Coulter's evil. From a simple lake, the Serpent goes out of his way to scar for life some casual fisherman and rise up his own little castle. I say little by god standards because it's probably big enough to get Donald Trump to raise an eyebrow. Just not big enough to make him ditch that stupid hair. It shows that the Serpent has arrived and he's got style with him now. Every other one of his minions feels it and like a kid who was just fed a box of sugar cookies, they're even more hyped up.

The big three each fly off into battle. Thor goes right for the Serpent. Captain America goes after Sin, who was responsible for Bucky's so called 'death.' I'll stop using those goofy quotes when it starts getting believable. They're met with the kind of resistance you would expect. Serpent's forces are playing like the New England Patriots against the Detroit Lions. It's not even close. But their presence does more than just add another body to the crossfire. It inspires everyone to kick more ass. However, it's what Iron Man does that's a bit more curious.

Rather than find the nearest fight and start blowing shit up, Iron Man does something that may or may not be all that productive. He flies out to confront Odin. Now keep in mind that Stark is a man of science. He takes the whole concept of Asgardian gods and magic about as seriously as Paris Hilton takes a lecture on quantum mechanics by Stephen Hawking. He demands to speak to Odin, calling him out in the sense that mankind no longer burns his effigies or worships him. So he decides to make an offering of his own. By offering I mean he chucks a bottle of booze.

Now why is that significant? I know getting drunk solves a great many problems with life, but what good could it possibly do here? Well keep in mind Tony Stark is a recovering alcoholic. In the history of Marvel comics, few people have been made more a jackass by booze than Tony Stark. He seemed to get sober and stay sober. Now he's basically sacrificing that for Odin. It's symbolic, something that adds some complexity to what is admittedly a basic arc. It's a nice touch that revisits a story that hasn't been touched on in a while.

It's not clear what Stark is trying to accomplish. The fights with Captain America and Thor are much more basic. Captain America makes it clear that he's going to take on Sin and she makes it clear that she's ready to kill Captain America a second time if he has to. When Thor confronts the Serpent, he no longer looks like a grizzled old man who just got fired from his Santa Clause gig for being drunk on the job. He actually looks like a dashing young 80s make porn star, complete with a mustache. It shows just how much power he's attained. When Thor confronts him, he drops a few more little secrets. He says that Odin is his brother and he usurped the title of All-Father from him. It presents a rather interesting question. Is Odin really the true All-Father? Or is Serpent? While you're digesting on that, he also claims that Thor is his nephew. Well if Odin is his brother, isn't that a given?

This scene was an opportunity to throw in more mystery or expand on others. It was already known to a point that Serpent was someone who was once in the running for the All Father gig. Then somewhere along the way Odin got the better of him and wasn't very nice about it either. This is where the whole simple approach to Fear Itself falls a little flat. None of this is very ground breaking. It moves the story forward, but it won't shock anyone more than an ant crawling along your toenail. The only intriguing part is how Serpent is so power that he's able to knock Thor around like a pinball with minimal effort.

When he lands, Thor finds himself caught between two of the Serpents hammer-wielding buddies. Both Thing and Hulk got their new Asgardian toys in the past few issues. They haven't really demonstrated them in this title yet (although they have shown up in the spin-offs, but I'm too busy/drunk to review those at the moment). Now the two of them are about to take on Thor and rather than shit his pants like the rest of the world, Thor prepares to take them on. It's hard to tell whether this is the beginning of a new battle or just the middle of the first one. I guess it could be either, but the comic ending here feels a little abrupt. It's not the worst way it could have ended, but like Kim Kardashian's sex tape it leaves plenty to be desired.

After reading this comic, it's worth bringing up it's basic nature once more. It's not a very complicated story. Nor is it full of many twists or turns. The Serpent being related to Thor is somewhat of a twist, but it's nothing too groundbreaking. This being the middle of the story, it's likely some of those revelations are still waiting in the wings. Even if they are, a few hints or even a light tease wouldn't hurt. Readers like me aren't overly demanding. Not every money shot has to be full frontal. A simple nipple slip is more than enough to add some extra intrigue. This issue really didn't have that. It was an oversized brawl with some of Marvel's biggest names. It did offer some dramatics with Steve Rogers dawning his Captain America costume again and Tony Stark falling off the wagon again with alcoholism. But again, it's pretty basic. It's nothing you need to write a college theses on.

It would be easy to criticize Fear Itself for simply being too basic. Some critics and fans have already said this. I could say this, but I won't. That's because Fear Itself isn't pretending to be more than it is. Yeah, Marvel's hyping it up. But they're not trying to polish a pile of shit and call it chocolate pudding. Fear Itself is exactly what it's billed to be, a large-scale battle with the Avengers and the Serpent. That's really all it needs to be and Marvel isn't trying to make it into anything else. So in that sense I can't say the simple nature of the book is a flaw. It's a welcome return to basics that make this one of the most accessible Marvel events in recent memory. Then again, my memory is fucked from years of pot smoking so maybe I'm not the best source for that.

Fear Itself #4 still doesn't offer the same impact as the previous three issues. It's the midpoint so it's going to get a little forgettable at times. The story doesn't necessarily drag, but it doesn't fall flat either. It's still coherent, which in and of itself is an accomplishment. There are no huge revelations that will blow your mind and there aren't any hints at future revelations. That doesn't mean they won't come. However, on it's own this issue simply delivers the core basis of Fear Itself. For that I give Fear Itself #4 a 4 out of 5. It's an awesome addition to an event that has delivered as promise. It's a great time to be a Marvel fan or to get into the mainline universe. Matt Fraction has done something really special here and he deserves all the praise and a few Brazilian hookers on the side. Nuff said!