First Appearance: Thor #129 June 1966

Powers and Abilities: Ares possesses the superhuman abilities shared by all Olympian deities, including enhanced strength, durability, invulnerability and nigh-immortality. As the god of war, he is an exceptional hand-to-hand combatant and strategist, and an expert in multiple forms of weaponry, from ancient weapons to modern day fireams. 

Comic Book Chronicles

In Marvel Comics, the Greek pantheon of gods has always played second fiddle to the Norse pantheon. As a result, while Ares, the Greek god of war, is a significant villain for DC Comic’s Wonder Woman (even featuring as the villain of her first cinematic outing), Marvel’s Ares has, a few notable storylines aside, been something of an afterthought as a villain.

Certainly, he made semi-regular appearances as a villain in Thor and Avengers stories (chiefly when his half-brother Hercules is a member of the team), including the centenary issue of Avengers. Often, Ares would team-up with other semi-villainous members of his pantheon, like Pluto or Hera, to try and overthrow Zeus or generally harass Hercules, but he was rarely a featured player for long. 

That changed in the wake of the Civil War event, when Iron Man recruited Ares — who had given up his godhood but not his powers or immortality to live on Earth with his son — to serve on his government-sponsored Avengers team, featured in the series The Mighty Avengers (while the concurrent New Avengers title featured the “rogue” Avengers team that lost the superhero civil war but refused to register and was living on the lam).

With Thor dead at the time and Hercules off on his own adventures, Ares served as the token “superhero god” on Iron Man’s team. This makes Ares unique amongst Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers, as the one member of the team with actual experience serving as an Avenger prior to “going dark”. Ares also didn’t adopt an established Avenger identity, continuing to operate simply as Ares.

In fact, much of Ares’ character development in Dark Avengers revolved around the fact that, as both a god and a patron of war, he saw little difference in darker, more morally compromised tactics of Norman Osborn’s Avengers relative to Iron Man’s. He was in it for the violence, and defending the planet against supervillains and global threats. He helped train HAMMER soldiers, worked with Osborn to mold the Dark Avengers — who, as a collection of villains themselves, struggled with working as a team — into a more cohesive unit. 

Ultimately though, he had a falling out with Osborn during the events of the Siege crossover. Tricked into leading the attack on Asgard by being told Loki had taken control of the city and the Asgardian pantheon, he turned on Osborn for misleading him and tried to kill him. He was stopped by the Sentry, who tore Ares in half, killing him, in one of the more grisly beats of the storyline.

As is usually the case, Ares returned after that seeming death a few times, though currently, he is dead again, at the hands of the Punisher and some enchanted bullets. But whether drawing on his more recent history as an improbable Avenger or his older routine of hassling Marvel’s gods-turned-superheroes, it’s probably only a matter of time before he comes back again. 

Fit & Finish

Ares debuts with three different variants to his name. Unfortunately, they all pretty much feature variations on the same look, his 00s/10s Mighty Avengers/Dark Avengers appearance. Which makes sense, given the , but it still would have been nice to get at least one “classic” look amongst the variants. 

Form & Function

It remains to be seen if Ares’ random effect — gaining six power if your top 3 cards total power is higher than your opponents — is consistent enough to make the card anything more than novelty. There are ways to manage it — Quicksilver & Domino can help keep big cards in your deck until closer to when Ares is played, Maximus & Crystal can have the opposite effect on your opponent, putting Ares in Mill could give him the edge by emptying your opponents deck — but it may just be more trouble than its worth. 

All that aside though, Ares’ ability is a masterstroke of creative fun from Second Dinner. Ares is the God of War, and all other considerations aside, the card’s On Reveal ability triggers a mini game of War between you and your opponent. That’s just an utterly brilliant marriage of card ability and character.