Valkyrie: Jane Foster #3 // Review
Jane Foster hasn't had much time to learn the ropes of being a connection between the earth and the afterlife. It's been a rough time for Foster, and it's only going to get worse as she's plunged headlong into the afterlife in Valkyrie: Jane Foster #3. Writers Jason Aaron and Al Ewing guide Foster and Heimdall through an adventure of multiple worlds and multiple artists. Before the heroes can make it to the beautiful, emotional depth brought to the page by CAFU, Ramon Perez, and Cian Tormey. They must struggle through the heavy sketch and shadow of Roberto Poggi and Frazier Irving. In a story that is well-written with poorly-matched art styles that make the whole issue feel quite jarring.
Having died the death of a god at a mortal's hands, guardian of Asgard Heimdall wishes to be taken into the afterlife by the Valkyrie Jane Foster. The catch: he does not wish to enter the halls of Valhalla. Being all-seeing, he has no wish to see what he already knows once death has claimed him. Thus Jane Foster must guide him on a journey which will take the two of them through the afterlife in the Marvel multiverse. Their first stop: the moon. Why? It's where Foster thinks it might be. Somewhere between a guess and gut instinct. They valiantly plunge through a sacred portal to the meeting place between Hades and the world tree Yggdrasil. Recent events in the Marvel Universe have left the Greek underworld a half-transformed, half-dead nightmare mirror of Yggdrasil. It's a diseased place. It is there that Foster and Heimdall's adventure begins.
The journey Aaron and Ewing are sending Foster and Heimdall through has a suitably epic tumble to it. Things are not right in the afterlife of the Marvel Universe. The fact that a mortal doctor named Jane Foster has been given the reigns as Valkyrie is indicative of much more significant problems elsewhere. Aaron and Ewing make the journey intriguing enough with bits of wit the glide through a breezy adventure with just the right amount of gravity to make matters feel quite ominous. Heimdall's ending is positively poetic. There's a grand sense of fantasy about it that might have been far weaker in the hands of a different writer.
Poggi's art style has a classy "neo-Kirby-eqsue" sort of a thing going on. The deep blockiness of the shadows is softened by graceful curves that feel like a nice mutation of silver-age style. The problem with Poggi being tossed-into this series is that his style clashes rather painfully with the sincerely fantastic emotionality of CAFU's style. The sudden jarring shift from CAFU to Poggi to CAFU feels gratingly ungraceful, which would theoretically be fine if the switchover happened at an appropriate moment in the narrative. While it DOES initially happen after Foster and Heimdall rush through a portal, there's really no narrative justification for the switchover from one artist to the other and back. It feels sloppy in a form very uncharacteristic of the young series.
Thankfully, CAFU is listed as the sole artist for the next couple of issues of the series. Which should see a return to the stylish visual form that had defined the first couple of chapters of the series. The story remains solidly entertaining as Foster embarks on an epic journey into an afterlife in transition. There's a very compelling premise at the heart of that journey which shows great potential for the months to come.
