After a hugely disappointing Book 4, Fear Itself picks up the pace a little bit in this issue. It does however still suffer from the lack of character and emotion that makes Flashpoint so much better. Things just move so fast in Fear Itself and there’s really not a whole lot to it. There’s an evil Asgardian named the Serpent who is the anti-thesis of Odin who gives special hammers to his minions. Annnnnd he feeds off fear. Simple, right? Not to say I don’t like it but Fear Itself is lacking plenty of substance. But let’s get to the meat of this steak.

After Thor confronts the Serpent and fails, it’s a knock-em out, no holds barred, slug-fest between Thor and two of the Worthy: Nul (Hulk) and Angrir (Thing). Not good odds. This fight was easily the best part of the book, with Thor proving that he is one of the major powerhouses of the Marvel Universe, comparable to Superman in the DC Universe. His only equal is Bruce Banner in his Hulk form and Thor was even able to withstand an assault against him in this issue, but not without a price. It was awesome to hear Thor telling Hulk what a pain in the ass he always was and how he could never beat him. I think Thor is selling himself short on that one because those two seemed pretty evenly matched and this is Hulk in Worthy mode with a giant effin’ magical hammer!

Aside from the Thor triple brawl, Stark is in the process of trying to convince Odin to let him use Asgard’s workshop to make his own weapons to use against the Serpent and his forces. It makes sense, they need magical weapons to fight back against the Serpents magical weapons. That might be where the Mighty come in, which we have yet to see.

***Spoilers Below! ***

Here’s a little teaser of what Stark’s new weapons will look like. Who do we have in this line up? It looks like Iron Man, Spiderman, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Dr. Strange and Ms. Marvel. Who might the others be? Perhaps that’s Valkyrie with the gigantic sword….

Overall I give this issue a 2 out of 5 bears. Not much happened aside from more build up to the climax of the arc, but the fight with Thor, Thing and Hulk definitely helped. Immonen’s art is still pretty decent throughout the book. At first I thought he was the wrong fit for a story of this caliber and I never was crazy about his art to begin with, but I’ve definitely taken a liking to it in Fear Itself.