Mad Merlin!
Well, by now Journey into Mystery has settled into a kind of lull. The past three issues have stunk more than any we've seen to date from the series, and the same formula is more or less repeated month after month. It's with trepidation then that I acknowledge this latest rendition as something of a success. It's just as OTT and bombastic as other issues, and settles into the Journey formula neatly, but does so well enough to come off as a moderately fun read. Pitting Thor against Merlin (who interestingly turns out to be a mutant rather than a "wizard") might sound worthy of an eye roll or two, but it actually leads to some exciting moments that Joe Sinnott surprisingly manages to capture excellently. In fact, even Robert Bernstein's scripting is toned down here, leaving a much more elegant, flowing narrative that only rarely overdoes things (mostly when it comes to Thor narrating his wonderful solutions to Merlin's otherwise interesting power palette.) By no means a roaring success, and the series definitely needs to do something more with its secret identity tangent, but for what it's worth, Thor doesn't let down this month.
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