All hail Jane Foster. Once a doctor, cancer survivor, the Almighty Thor, and All-Mother of Asgard. Now in a beautiful story by Jason Aaron she returns as one of the Valkyrie and something altogether new.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Marvel Comics Presents Jane Foster : Valkyrie #1
Writer(s) – Al Ewing, Jason Aaron
Artist – C Cafu
Color Artist – Jesus Aburtov
Letterer and production – VC’s Joe Sabino
Published July 24th, 2019
At the end of WotR saga, (spoiler alert) temporary All-Mother Jane Foster had taken the hammer of the War Thor and gone into the final battle with Malekith the Accursed. The hammer of the War Thor was broken and unstable. At the end, she laid the final blow of the hammer and it shattered. Thinking the hammer lost, she returned to her life as just Jane Foster, the Doctor.
The hammer of the War Thor was not lost, just transformed. Jane Foster absorbed some of the energy of the hammer and it reformed as the All-Weapon (Undrjarn) on her wrist. She is now Valkyrie, the last and first of her kind.
The issue opens up with The Fast Five (copyright much?) during a robbery. They have powered suits and roll on skates. I literately cannot make that up. Valkyrie shows up to foil the day. The Fast Five are all armed with weapons found in New York at the end of the war on Midgard. Most notably of those five weapons is the sword of Brunnhilde (former Valkyrie) Dragonfang. The sword is super enchanted to enhance the user’s natural abilities in war.
Of the Fast Five, none of them last long against Jane. Gold Rush is the member with Dragonfang. He takes off into an alley. Redline (not kidding) throws a car at Valkrie. She catches the car and drops a mace upper cut to the jaw of Redline. Time to find Gold Rush.
Gold Rush gets tripped on his roller blades. Someone from the shadows tells him goodbye, then you see a sword pierce his armor through and through in his chest. Dragonfang has been stolen. The man stays in the shadows. With all this excitement of being a hero again, Jane has lost sense of time of her human life, the doctor; most important…her performance review, for which she’s now late.
Her boss lets her know how disappointed she is with her lack of commitment to her patients. She feels like she is showing the same distance to them as she did her own cancer treatments (which she wasn’t attending because she was Thor). She reassigns Doctor Jane Foster to the morgue to get sorted out.
Newest on the slab was a young man who was run through with a sword. She prods some answers out of the head of the morgue and finds out the guy came in to the morgue in armor. She knows who he is, Gold Rush, and she now knows someone else is in possession of the enchanted Dragonfang. Time is short.
Jane uses her newfound powers of the All-Weapon to go Valhalla. She needs to speak to Brunnhilde. She tells Jane of the power of Dragonfang and the mighty winged steed that the sword can command. She tells Lady Jane that being Thor was a job…Valkyrie is a responsibility. She hints at new powers that Jane has not tapped into yet. Brunnhilde wants Jane to look up Annabelle Riggs when she’s completed her mission of Dragonfang.
Valkyrie calls in for help Dragonfang from Heimdall, the Aesir. He wants to see how well his eyes have healed from being blinded in the WotR. She remembers what she was told…”look upon the world with new eyes“. She accesses a power of Valkyrie sight. She can see everyone, hidden or not. She can see a death orb above each person, determining how close they are to dying.
She stands in amazement until she turns to Heimdall, his orb takes up the whole box. She cannot express her words quick enough before Dragonfang is thrust through his chest. Heimdall is dead. “god of Seeing huh…” Raised up on a winged stallion is the wielder of the sword, Bullseye. Everything in his hands is a deadly weapon and now he has an enchanted hardcore sword of the Asgard.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I was terribly let down at first by the bearer of the Dragonfang was shown to be Bullseye. I mean, it’s Bullseye, but I’m over it after reading it two more times. The story makes sense. Why not put Midgard’s most deadly stolen weapon in the hands of a man who does not miss. I’ll be most interested in where this leads Lady Jane Foster, the Valkyrie. Overall, it was a great story and first adventure.
6/10
Beta Ray Greg is the Comic Critic for SoBros Network, the ‘Fangtastic 5K 2018 Mr. Irrelevant.’ The man has the single most impressive spreadsheet in existence that is used to document his historic collection. He’s a big time Spider-Verse guy. Follow on Twitter: @BetaRayGreg.
Check out the SoBros Shop. Subscribe to our Patreon. Give us money for no reason. Like us on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter @SoBrosNetwork. Listen on SoundCloud. Watch on YouTube.
