A more appropriate title would be “Disappointment Itself”. Nothing about this feels new, or imaginative, or creative. It all feels retread and tired. And sadly I think it’s a given that by it’s very nature of being an Event book the bar is set lower (for me). Especially since Events have become a regular feature now of the yearly comic book cycle…Yay! Another world-changing struggle that will change everything…again. Pitiful.

So, the story itself drags. Who’s this old guy that’s threatening the world, the Gods, etc.? Who cares. He’s just another convenient retcon being pulled out of the closet. Which, if that turns out to be something cool and amazing, I’m fine with. But so far there’s no sign of that happening.

So far he’s just another nameless bad guy in a long line of random bad guys who’ve threatened the Marvel universe. Only this guy has no history, and has done nothing particularly different, or scary, or interesting. So I don’t care what he’s up to. I know there’ll be a lot of demolished architecture when it’s all said and done, but that’s pretty much par for the course. And oh yeah, we’ve got to have the prerequisite Nazis right? But where are the vampires and zombies? What happened to innovation in writing? Where’s the true creativity? Not here.

And about the art. Immonen is great. I love his stuff, but I’m thinking that he’s just not the right artist for this. For a book titled Fear Itself, I should feel some sense of fear and foreboding and dread, right? Some dark sense of bad things to come that are truly frightening. With a big baddy (or multiple baddies in this case) that evokes some new sense of fear and danger. But I think Immonen’s style here is too clean and crisp. Too comic booky. There’s nothing dark or menacing about it. It has the look of any other weekly title. Once again though, his work here is really good as usual, just not appropriate for the flavor of the title I think.

I hope this series gets better. I’m hopeful. But something really needs to take a sharp turn for that to happen I think.