Comic Info
Comic Name: Chaos War: Dead Avengers/Chaos War: Thor/Chaos War: Ares
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Fred Van Lente/J.M. DeMattheis/Michael Avon Oeming
Artist: Tom Grummett/Brian Ching/Stephen Segovia
# of Issues: 6
Release Date: 2011
Chaos War: Dead Avengers #1
Reprints Chaos War: Dead Avengers #1-3, Chaos War: Thor #1-2, and Chaos War: Ares #1 (January 2011-March 2011). The Chaos King is attacking and the dead are rising from the graves. When a group of former Avengers led by Captain Marvel return to life, they set out to protect civilians from the dangers of Grim Reaper and Nekra. Ares finds himself back alive after his death at the hands of Sentry and forced to serve in the Chaos King’s army. Thor finds himself suffering from amnesia and aided by a woman looking for a miracle.
Written by Fred Van Lente, J.M. DeMattheis, and Michael Avon Oeming, Chaos War: Avengers collects a number of issues occurring during the Marvel big event series Chaos War. Along with the two mini-series, Chaos War: Thor and Chaos War: Dead Avengers, the trade paperback also has the one-shot Chaos War: Ares. The series was met with ho-hum reviews and many just found it confusing.
The first series Chaos War: Dead Avengers is the most developed of the stories (and probably the best of all the Chaos War spin-offs in general). The Chaos War provided a great opportunity, to return characters to life that were killed off. Here, Dr. Druid, Deathcry, Captain Marvel, Swordsman, Yellowjacket, and Vision are restored. Each had their own problematic death, and they are coping with it. With only three issues, this really isn’t developed…also, there have been other Avengers killed throughout the year so how these characters were picked is a bit unclear. I always kind of liked the Dr. Druid portion of the series so that was fun, and Captain Marvel has been revived over and over again along with the Swordsman and Vision. Deathcry was a surprise, and Yellowjacket was pretty random but I enjoyed her brief stint on the team and her time with the Guardians of the Galaxy. The series is pretty simple but it does have a beginning and an end.
Chaos War: Ares #1
Thor’s Chaos War outing was not very good. Donald Blake has amnesia and just avoids Amatsu-Mikaboshi’s agents for the two issues until he remembers he’s Thor. The story about faith and prayer was pretty lame, and the whole series seems like a bit of a waste to capitalize on the upcoming Thor movie.
The Chaos War: Ares one-shot was a bit better. The God of War was ripped in half by the Sentry during the painfully boring Siege and finds himself forced into Amatsu-Mikaboshi’s army. Ares was one of the more interesting parts of Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers series, and it was good to see him back in the action for the one-shot at least.
The problem with Chaos War in general is that it was as confusing as hell. It was unclear at the end of the series whether any of the events really had any lasting effect. Alpha Flight remained alive so can it be assumed that the other dead heroes (who didn’t die in their series) remained alive also? It really isn’t made clear and Marvel missed a great opportunity to restore some characters to greatness. Most of this collection funnels into the last issue of Chaos War so this is almost a supplemental collection since they don’t necessarily stand on their own.
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