Written by: Jason Aaron
Art by: Russell Dauterman, Mathew Wilson, and VC’s Joe Sabino
Cover Price: $4.99
Release Date: April 17, 2019

I really liked the first issue of War of the Realms, enough so that it got me fired up for an Event that I was kind of dreading. That isn’t true…I was actually going to avoid it completely. Well, I am not avoiding it anymore and was pretty excited to read this issue. Am I still gung ho after reading #2? Let’s find out…

The issue opens up in Greenwich Village and we see that our heroes are not just kicking butt, but are trying their darndest to save the people of New York City while it’s being attacked. We get Jane Foster, Batts and some talking snakes that are obviously not up to speed on what is acceptable behavior nowadays!

We then go off to my favorite scene of the entire issue…Frank Castle pumping hot lead into Dark Elves! That is so cool and only get’s cooler when Wolverine joins the party. Speaking of cool, we then head off to see Captain America taking down Frost Giants in a crazy way that involves a bit too much stair climbing for me to ever think I could emulate my hero!

All of these scenes look spectacular thanks to Russell Dauterman and Mathew Wilson’s art and if you didn’t know any better, you might think that our heroes are getting the upper hand here. That’s when Jason Aaron shows you that is not the case. Malekith may not be in this issue a ton, but his planning for taking down Midgard is.

Roxxon has pretty much hacked every network on Earth so Black Panther can’t use any Wakandian or Avengers tech to help them and a coven of War Witches is negating Doctor Strange’s spells. The heroes are putting up a good fight, but it’s obvious which side was more prepared and thus has the upper hand.

They aren’t down, though, and the issue continues with an unexpected ally showing up (unexpected after the last issue that is) and Blade and Jane Foster breaking up Malekith’s magical defenses. Doctor Strange is back in the game, but unfortunately, his teleport spell is turned to eleven and everyone gets teleported away…leaving New York less a whole lot of heroes to fight the fight.

I only have a couple of nitpicks about this issue. One is that we don’t see Thor at all. The other is that once the heroes are in Avengers Mountain, it seems obvious that this issue was just set up to get all the heroes together so they can be sent out in teams in subsequent issues and tie-ins. Granted, some of these teams seem awesome and the mention of the Agents of Wakanda has me excited that we will finally see the awesome characters teased by Aaron in his Avengers book do something, but it still didn’t progress the overall story much,

However, we do get the scope of Malekith’s attack at the end and the cliffhanger is a bloody scene that upset me a bit but seems to pave the way for Jane Foster to keep on kicking butt in the future.

I really enjoyed this issue. I am so excited for it to continue and can’t wait for issue #3. I already said that this issue felt like a lot of setting up and I understand that things do have to be set up, but what has me pumped up the most is that Jason Aaron can get me in a story like this so I can’t imagine how fired up I’ll be when things really get moving!

Final Thoughts:

One ties-in aside, I am really enjoying the War of the Realms early on. Jason Aaron is putting his pieces together but also did a great job of showing that Malekith is way more prepared to take down our heroes than they are to stop him. This already feels huge and we’re just getting started!

8.5/10