Marvel released a new ongoing starring the one and only Jane Foster! Join me as I review this new gem that has showed up in my pull list this week.

What’s In A Name?

I have to admit, I never expected to review this book. I picked it up on a lark, it being a slow week for my pull list. I thought “What the hell, Avengers was fun, Thor was fun, I’ll give it a shot”. Boy, am I glad I did! I was hooked from the very first panel (who can resist a good space baby?), and remained riveted throughout the first issue. You can see there are a lot of creative credits on this, and that’s because this looks like it will be split between two sets of stories. One follows Jane Foster in her dual life as Earth mortician/Valkyrie, and the other follows the only other known Valkyrie, who is searching the cosmos for her lost name. The Foster stuff will be written by Aaron and Gronbekk, while the unknown Valkyrie story is only written by the latter. Lulis does all of the art for the Foster side, and D’Urso and Menyz share duties on the backup.

The first thing that grabbed me was the art. I mean, look at that detail. Every panel is lovingly detailed, and fully immerses you in the story. This is painterly style comic book art, which seems to be Aaron’s preference (or maybe that’s just how it’s shaken out for the series that I’ve read), and it’s executed perfectly by De Iulis. Faces are clear and full of natural expression, backgrounds are really detailed and lovely, and it doesn’t suffer from the impossible body positions and posing that infect a large number of comics. When Jane has her game face on, she’s drawn as a strong warrior, as she should be, and neither the art nor the story infantilizes or degrades her. It shouldn’t be a rarity to treat female characters that way, but it still is, unfortunately.

There’s a backup story as I mentioned, but it didn’t really grab my attention too much. I call it a backup, but when you’re reading it segues into that story without any credits or anything. The only thing that tipped me off was the art change. Nothing wrong with D’Urso and Menyz as a creative team, but the cartooniness of the art in the second story did deflate my balloon a little bit after the amazing display in the first part. This story was also fun, but not nearly as impactful for me personally. We’ll see where they go with that, but the strength of the Jane story is enough for me to recommend this book. I would say if you like hero comics you should definitely pick this one up, unless the Marvel cosmic universe, or the sometimes confusing Asgardian plot-lines are just not your thing.