Man, between this book and New Avengers it was a truly great week for avengin'.  I'm no long time Thor fan, having always been put off as a kid by all the thees and thous.  Still, I always viewed the concept itself with a certain amount of awe.  Gillen gives us nice and accessible Asgardians, who speak with a certain formality, but without the Shakespeare.  In this latest issue we get caught up with Asgard's reactions to the various elements of Siege, after the Latverian escapades.

So we have Volstagg on the run/in the slammer, the high council of Asgard deciding what to do next, Loki scheming, Heimdall imprisoned and a(nother) fake Thor running around by the name of Ragnarok.  The thing is, despite only regularly reading the title since Gillen came on, I'm not lost at all.  In fact I'm loving the interaction and squabbling between these characters, and Volstagg's one of my new favourite characters.  There's a fantastic sense of building tension and mounting doom as the book progresses.  In some respects there's less action than in some of the other Siege books, yet I'm absolutely gripped.

I've less to say about the art, as I'm no fan of Tan., although there's a single page shot of Asgard which is kinda cool.  He alternates with someone named Rich Elson, who's decent enough.  Still, none of it really destroys my reading pleasure.  In the end, my reaction to this book was kind of instinctive in that I suddenly realised that, without expecting it, I was really tearing through the pages to get to the next part.  What greater praise is there than that?

"He is only a serious threat to roasts..."