Omni addition this week: Thor by Jason Aaron vol 2

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      As I've mentioned various times (and will many times again), part of a selective rebuild of my comics collection in large-format hardcovers, with a particular eye on the horizon of that life-transition clumsily called "retirement", has primarily been Omnibus editions.
     Perhaps foolishly I've mostly been just accumulating them rather than digging straight in, as I'm looking forward to days when my time will rarely be beholden to anyone I don't in some way love, and I can try to discover if I'm capable of recapturing some version of those long-ago years when I had the time to get lost in this sort of thing when and as long as I wished.
     There's a whole other quality of life, and the building of a life I want to live discussion I need to have with myself that relates to the timing of all this, but today's blog entry ain't for that.
     This week's sole new addition to the physical library is Thor by Jason Aaron vol.2, which came my way from Cheapgraphicnovels.com, and an order I placed I don't know how many months back when it was solicited.
     The typically hyperbolic ad copy from the solicitation - complete with an old school, somewhat goofy, tactic of ending all statements with an exclamation point or a question mark, as periods are too calm:
"Jason Aaron's Asgardian epic concludes with the final fate of the Mighty Thor, the return of the Odinson and the cataclysmic War of the Realms! But before Jane Foster lays down Mjolnir, she will join the League of Realms, lead Asgard against the Shi'ar and face the vengeful War Thor! But when final judgment arrives in the form of the monstrous Mangog, will Jane make the ultimate sacrifice? And as the realms fall before Malekith one by one, can Thor prove himself worthy once more? When the war reaches Midgard, everything will change for the God of Thunder! Plus: At the end of time, witness King
Thor's final confrontation with Loki!"
     Speaking of hyperbole, deciding to use handjob-level praise from a comics website as a cover blurb should make someone feel... unclean. The use different ones for various printings, encouraging these sites to try to heap blurbable praise higher and higher as they compete for prime toadying space.
     Back to the volume, this one collects MIGHTY THOR (2015) #13-23 and #700-706, UNWORTHY THOR #1-5, GENERATIONS: THE UNWORTHY THOR & THE MIGHTY THOR, MIGHTY THOR: AT THE GATES OF VALHALLA, THOR (2018) #1-16, WAR OF THE REALMS #1-6, and KING THOR #1-4.
     The issue numbering goes back to the marketing tactics of trying to please everyone, as high numbers help make long-time fans feel seen and appreciated, but especially in the 21st century publishers keep trying to draw in new or lapsed readers by relaunching series with new #1s, the low numbers intended to make them seem more welcoming to newcomers. A compromise move of including both - referencing the higher number as "legacy numbering" - is something they came up with some years back. They just tend to make it more prominent when they're approaching something divisible by 100.
     1368 pages, it wraps Aaron's run with these characters.
     Yes, there's certainly some double-dipping involved between this and the even heftier (1576 pages) War of the Realms omnibus I bought a few years back, but I'm fine with that. That event-centered one includes other tie-ins from runs of series I'll never want to collect in physical form unless I become unspeakably wealthy, and will be good for riding through the tale at the level of a Marvel Universe event.
     These are all vastly more modern comics than I'd originally intended to include in what was initially intended to be a nostalgia-driven physical exercise, which would have been nearly all Silver and Bronze Age (very roughly '60s, '70s and early '80s) comics, but I have my moments of consumer weakness, and I did enjoy much of what Aaron decided to do with Jane Foster, and the War of the Realms as an event everyone got swept up in at least briefly as the war reached Earth, which I was reading month to month in digital.
     The pics are my typical sloppy, uncropped phone photos, taken against my aged, worn comforter.

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