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With the overflowing amount of crossover events from various comic companies flooding the shelves, the people have cried out for help in keeping up with the many-issued madness! Well, that call has been answered by two guys who have answered a call or two in their lives! Infinite Man and Aron Fist are here to save your sanity, and hopefully save you from picking up that really crappy tie-in book that has absolutely NO REASON to exist! So sit back and check us out as we give you SCARED S#!@LESS: THE FEAR ITSELF EDITION, on just about everything pertaining to this event, while we also try to figure out what the hell everyone is so afraid of!

Fear Itself: #7
Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Stuart Immonen
Cover: Steve McNiven & Stuart Immonen

**Spoilers**

This issue brings it all together for the final battle between The Avengers, The Serpent, and his enforcers, The Worthy. I’ve got mixed feelings about how everything ends, and actually feel like we were even cheated out of several things after I finished reading this. Starting with what I didn’t like, I’ll go ahead and say that Marvel shot themselves in the foot on this one with solicits that cited Thor’s death way before this issue came out. Not only did they strongly hint at it, they actually released an image of Thor’s replacement (as god of thunder) a while back in Previews. So they effectively killed ANY element of surprise in Fraction’s story, and if you ask me that would have been a nice BIG surprise to have in this issue. Another thing that bothered me were the FIVE epilogues which served as advertisements for the events spinning out of Fear Itself. Again, Fraction’s story suffered here because most, if not all of those pages could have been used to further the main story in this issue, and maybe even given us a lot more action. This didn’t make much sense, because those five epilogues could have been collected and given away as a freebie like we’ve seen them do many other times, or the pages could have been saved for those titles themselves.

Now, there were things about the issue that were great, and that fight between Thor and his uncle, The Serpent, was pretty spectacular. We also find out that Odin really was only trying to protect his son from fulfilling a prophecy that would kill him, so he crossed some lines and did some questionable things. Things that any reader who is a parent would be able to identify with when it comes to protecting their child. Fraction also gave us some big moments as things were moving at a pretty fast pace, like seeing Cap wield Thor’s hammer once again, or the Avengers getting their enchanted weapons. All of this was enhanced and made awesome by Immonen’s beautiful artwork which never faltered throughout the seven issues. Though I’m wondering how many artists are going to forget that Steve’s shield now has a huge crack in it. So we have an issue that had everything it needed to be great, and Marvel cut the writer off at the knees once again by spoiling a big part of the story early, adding too much fluff at the end, and charging $4.99 for it all. Maybe if the book was the same price as the previous issues I’d give it a higher score. IS – 2.5/5

Fear Itself: Captain America #7.1
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Butch Guice
Cover: Butch Guice & Bettie Breitweiser

There were two reasons why I didn’t roll my eyes and pass on yet another Marvel point one issue. That would be the creative talents of Brubaker and Guice who consistently took things to exciting levels in Captain America. So there was much hope that this wouldn’t be another useless tie-in/point one issue that served about as much purpose as gerbil cage lining. Here we get Nick Fury coming clean about something that really shocks the hell out of Steve while he’s attempting to write Bucky’s eulogy. What could have turned into a blatant exploitative issue ends up a much better read than expected. Brubaker manages to find the soul in this book and tells a story worth reading. The story bounces around a little bit to show us what happened to Bucky Cap after he received his death blow in Fear Itself, though everything plays out pretty smoothly. Brubaker takes a little time to briefly explain what’s been going on in the life of Bucky recently, and things start to make a lot more sense as you read through the issue. The funeral scene was another plus for the issue, and the bit of banter between Hawkeye and Vision was pretty amusing and well placed.

There’s something about Guice’s artwork that just gives you that feeling of old school coolness, especially the way he choreographed the fight scene with Steve and Nick. It reminded me of the old Cap issues from decades ago, but we also get a contemporary flavor to some of the panels. Like when Natasha (Black Widow) is crying over Bucky’s body in the helicopter, which was a very strong scene in terms of visuals. Though I was a bit disturbed that Mr. Fantastic had to stretch all over the place during the funeral. Just seemed a bit odd.

Now we’re getting two more books like this in Fear Itself: Thor #7.2 and Fear Itself: Iron Man #7.3, and I’m just hoping that they’re as good or if not better than this one here. Though there have been a couple of gems in terms of Fear Itself tie-ins, I think we’ve sat through enough useless crap for this series to have to do it two more times. At least we get a decent one in the Captain America book, and I’m pretty cool with that. IS – 3.5/5

Infinite Speech
infinitespeech@comicattack.net