Review: Chaos War #4

CHAOS WAR #4 PREVIEW

Cover: Dan Panosian

Writers: Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak

Pencils: Khoi Pham

Inks: Tom Palmer

Colors: Sunny Gho

Letters: Simon Bowland

Publisher: Marvel

Release Date: December 15th, 2010

The penultimate issue of this “event” by Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak sees the God Squad lost and a Cho/Galactus team-up while the remainder of those gods and “in-betweeners” surviving relax in Hawaii.

If it does not sound interesting, it is not.

CHAOS WAR #4 continues the cosmic mishmash whose decline really began in issue #2, where the fun seemed to vanish, the uniqueness of the God Squad was lost in Hercules getting to know his new self as an All-Father, and Cho constantly making like Hellstorm, screaming “end of the world” epithets when Herc needs a word of hope.

The sad part is I can imagine what this quasi-cosmic/mythic event could have been, given the right slant, a decrease in constantly reminding us who and what Chaos King is and wants, and, as Cho points out, a cease of Herc acting like his old self while elevated to the power set of an All-Father.

Now I know all these story threads are from Incredible Hercules, a book I never followed, but I know the Herc/Cho duo from Mighty Avengers (and of course, I have read Herc for decades) and I think if the Lion of Olympus had just found himself a lot sooner instead of constantly embarrassing himself in front of everyone, this would-be cosmic slobberknocker would have been out of sight!

Galactus here has been totally wasted until this issue’s team-up with Cho. I would’ve liked more cosmic abstracts included – where are Lord Chaos, Master Order and the In-Betweener? – and fewer Skyfather soap operas.

Finally this issue, Hercules realizes who he is, comes to grips with his new identity and maybe issue #5 will join issue #1 in the fun department. As it has been, Chaos War has had a couple of good sparks, some great offshoot minis and not much else.

“More cosmic than Annihilation,” indeed. Sigh.