Advance Review: ‘Odin’ #4 Will Have You Guessing About What Is Really Happening

In the real world, journalists are having a rough time with the closing of newspapers and the distrust of many new outlets. In storytelling, though, reporters make up a disproportionate amount of the population.

That’s partly because they see a lot and often make for interesting characters. It also helps that they are largely non-believers. Something must be proven to them before they buy into it.

That’s why Adela Weber makes a fitting protagonist in Odin. Despite her youth, Adela is a seasoned undercover journalist, who we learn has exposed everything from dog fighters to pedophiles. Now this disbeliever has her lack of faith challenged when she infiltrates a group of people seeking to bring the Norse god Odin to Earth.

In the story, written by Marguerite Bennett and James Tynion IV, the group has seen plenty to make them wonder what’s true and what’s fiction. Several of their group has already been killed under mysterious circumstances while in Norway trying to summon the deity.

Adela has an explanation for most of the odd deaths, even if it’s unclear whether she truly believes her own words. But when Odin’s wife, the gigantic Skadi the Grim, shows up to test the group’s worthiness to see her husband, Adela runs out of explanations.

Watching this strong character be broken down is a smart choice from veteran writers Bennett and Tynion. This is the end of the limited series’ first story arc, and we need that tension to hold us over for the book’s return in a few months.

Letizia Cadonici’s illustrations work well in this issue. Cadonici isn’t particularly detailed in her drawings, which makes us question whether this is a dream, a drug-induced hallucination, or something far worse.

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xpect a significant pivot when this series returns later this year. Until then, believe what you will about what is actually happening and what is fiction.

Odin #4 — written by Marguerite Bennett and James Tynion IV, illustrated by Letizia Cadonici, colored by Jordie Bellaire, and lettered by Tom Napolitano — will be available in comic book stores and on digital platforms Wednesday from Image Comics.