Ares #1

[Velorath]

Ah, that poor son of a bitch Ares.  After stopping the forces of Hades from destroying Olympus he figures it'll finally earn him some respect amongst his pantheon.  The problem is they see him as something of a bastard.  They call on him when they have need of a guy whose nature is to go to any length to achieve victory in war, including the killing of women and children if need be, but as soon as the fighting is done they expect him to kindly fuck off.  Sure this guy has started shit before with Thor and the Avengers, but you kinda feel for him when he overhears just how much his own family hates him, moments after he saved all their asses.

Not wanting to put up with those ungrateful fucks anymore, Ares heads down to Earth to make a life for himself.  And he certainly does a better job of it than Thor ever has.  Years later he's single dad (or at least no mention is ever made of the mother), he's got a decent job, and acts much like a normal person (no Thor style dialogue or anything).  He's got a good relationship with his son, although his son doesn't know about Ares past nor does he know the power that he himself will have someday because of his heritage.

Things are going well until Hermes shows up to deliver a message.  With Asgard destroyed the enemies of Olympus are looking to take advantage of the chaos.  Zues must be getting a little nervous because he's sent Hermes to Earth to recruit Ares to protect Olympus.  Ares promptly shoots Hermes in the foot with a nail gun, and declines the offer.  Of course the Gods aren't taking no for an answer, and Ares gets word from the school that his son is missing.  To make matters worse, upon investigating the authorities notice that neither Ares nor his son have valid social security numbers.  The issue ends with Ares loading up on weapons from his stockpile to find his son and face the other Gods.

This mini has actually started off much better than I thought it would when I first heard Oeming was going to be doing an Ares book.  His work on Thor, which closed out the book and killed everyone off, was a hard book to judge.  Partly that was because it was part of the Avengers Disassembled tie-ins (none of which actually tied-in to anything really).  Being lumped in with such a failure combined with the fact that it killed off a lot of characters in a short amount of time caused some fan backlash, although sales on the final issues of Thor did increase.

Ares is off to a solid start though and it's nice to see some focus on Marvel's Olympians after so much focus on their Asgardians.  The art is decent, although the opening sequence and some panels here and there that look rushed.  Also I'm not a big fan of the Ares mohawk.  He looks more intimidating in his Aaron persona.  This book is worth picking up, although Marvel has said he will be joining a major Marvel team book later on.  The likely assumption would be New Avengers, which has no problem shoehorning characters onto the team even when there's no use for them nor reason for them to be there.  I'd hope for him to be on the Thunderbolts instead since there'd at least be a good justification for that (Thunderbolts being comprised of heroes who used to be villains).  If not Thunderbolts, than hopefully it will be a new team book.