Matt Fraction Takes Over Thor
- Posted by David Harper on Tuesday, December 15, 2009

It's been confirmed by L.A. Times' Hero Complex blog and then by Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 - Matt Fraction will be taking over Thor at the close of Kieron Gillen and Billy Tan's run. While this has pretty much been known for over a week after Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley effectively said it in an interview, we now have official confirmation. So what do I think of this?
Find out after the jump.
I have an odd relationship with this choice. While I love some of Matt Fraction's work (I did pick him as the writer of the next decade - mostly based off what I think he'll do, not my opinion on his writing), I do think he's a fairly inconsistent writer. One thing I have really liked that he has written were a series of Thor one-shots that came out while JMS and Oliver Copiel were working through their incredible run. We know he can write the Asgardian God of Thunder, we know he can handle the cast, and we know he can do so exceedingly well.
So I have faith in Fraction.
We'll see though. I'll without a doubt be picking this up and it has the potential to be an exceptional run, but I will remain a skeptic until Fraction proves himself to be more consistent (aka Uncanny X-Men ceases to suck).
Now I just want someone to explain to me why Kieron Gillen and Billy Tan couldn't just keep their run going. Their first issue was awesome and I was really looking forward to a nice run between the two of them.
Note: We found out later that John Romita Jr. is only actually working on the Free Comic Book Day Thor/Iron Man comic, not the Thor series itself.





5 comments:
I have an odd relationship with Romita Jr's art as well, but I do in general really enjoy it, so I'm excited about the pair up. I love Fraction's writing. And I actually only ever read one of the Fraction one-shots, so I'm excited to pick up the trade of them this week.
Well, that's you.
Some people compare Romita to Kirby, you find him "boxy"...
I hope this series will make us forget Strazinski's (as in being better).
And I guess Gillen being the new guy at Marvel, it's the one to do the ugly work of ending someone else's storyline. Fraction will start his own story as the star writer he is now.
I know Romita is very similar to Kirby in terms of style. The "boxy" comment is solely referring to the cover above, in which everything looks to be at harsh angles and not very natural feel to me. But yeah, I'm definitely excited for it and will most certainly give it a chance.
I personally quite liked JMS' run on the title and thought Oliver Copiel was a perfect fit as artist. Gillen and Tan, as you said, have the tough job of wrapping up JMS' run even though it wasn't something they started, but I feel as if they started it off quite well with the first issue.
I have a lot of faith in Fraction on this title. The one-shots he did were superb and really make me feel he has a great feel for the world Thor comes from.
I think so far Romita Jr. is only confirmed for the FCBD issue that the image is a cover to. Not sure he's been confirmed for the ongoing with Fraction though.
This is what Robot 6 had to say:
Update: So it looks like I jumped the gun a bit; John Romita Jr. is drawing Marvel's Free Comic Book Day book, whose cover is featured above, featuring Iron Man and Thor. The regular artist for Fraction's run on Thor has yet to be announced.
JRJR sucks. there i said it