For the longest time Thor was one of my least favourite Marvel characters as my only real exposure to him was when he was a simple hero type who speaks Shakespearian English, it took a while for the comics to find a way to make him “cool”, so to speak, or to add any real interesting layers to the character… or any kind of layers at all, really. For that reason I wasn’t really looking forward to these first fifteen or so Thor issues but brought and read the collection however many years ago for complitionist’s sake, and now I’m looking at them again for review’s sake! So let’s take a look and see if early Thor really is a drag or not…
Those only familiar with the MCU version of Thor will no doubt be confused a bit by his original comic appearance as it starts off focused on an American Doctor called Donald Blake visiting Norway only to see, ahem, “Stone men from Saturn” (later called Kronans, one of which is Korg who has obviously go on to have his profile raised thanks to the films!) who are planning an invasion of Earth. He flees into a cave but loses his walking stick on the way, luckily though he finds another one in the cave but no exit, only a large boulder. He strikes the boulder with the stick in frustration and transforms into Thor (the stick also transforming into Mjolnir) who then lifts the boulder with ease and takes out the Stone Men and their various traps, getting them to flee Earth in a panic. Thor then transforms back into Blake to avoid the potential questions from the authority. It’s played off like Blake transforms into him rather than a different person takes over, but he still seems surprised at it. Later retcons reveal that, like the film, Odin sent Thor to Earth and stripped Mjolnir of its power it’s just he also erased Thor’s memories and placed him on Earth in the guise of a crippled medical student. Thor actually spent 10 years as Blake before this issue, and it would be some time before all his memories return…
Thor’s very first panel, truly an origin! (not including flashbacks that take place before this retroactively, obviously…)
As with all of these 60s comics Thor’s next enemy is communists from Russia, in this case one simply called “The Executioner”. It includes a scene where he takes Blake’s stick leaving him helpless until he outsmarts him and gets it back, transforming into Thor and saving the day. It also sees the debut of nurse Jane Foster, who Blake fancies but she only has eyes for Thor (classic!). Thor’s third appearance brings us our first look at Asgard, where Loki laments his father Odin trapping him inside a tree until “someone sheds a tear for him” (that’s got to be straight out of Norse mythology…) but tired of waiting he gains just enough control over the tree to force a leaf to fall and hit a passing Heimdall in the eye, causing him to tear up a little bit, freeing him. Loki then heads to Earth to get revenge on his brother Thor, trying to steal Mjolnir, but fails when he’s caught unaware by Thor’s new duel persona and how he transforms between the two if he’s away from the hammer for too long. Thor actually takes the captured Loki to the top of the Empire State Building and throws him upwards, where he somehow lands in Asgard for punishment. The fourth issue has “Zarrko the Tomorrow Man” arrive from the future and steal a bomb Thor was helping the US military test, leading to the Thunder God spinning his hammer “faster than the speed of light” and travelling to the future to stop him. Not surprised that plot hasn’t been adapted yet…
Loki up to his tricks, like wearing a green suit with a brown hat. What a bastard.
Issue 5 (or well, “Issue 87” really, but for simplicity’s sake…) is more Blake/Thor being captured by Soviet communists, whereas the next issue sees Loki return already, disguising himself as a snake to sneak across the Bifrost rainbow bridge to get back to Earth and have another crack at taking out Thor, now he knows of his Earthling identity. Sadly for him though he falls for a really simple trick involving a mannequin and is once again captured and sent to Asgard. The next issue sees Thor deal with “Andrew ‘Thug’ Thatcher” and his basic criminal buddies, where as the story after that is your basic “hero encounters shape-shifting aliens who pretend to be people in power” story, though instead of Skrulls they’re the ”Carbon Copy Men”. The next story sees Loki give extreme mental powers to a circus performer called Sandu, who then uses it to steal entire buildings until Thor stops him with the help of the Valkyries, sent by Odin to give Thor a special belt that increases his strength, and that story is followed up with another issue of Thor vs. Loki, this time on Asgard itself. The next issue is Thor fighting Radioactive Man (jiminy jillikers!) who is from Communist… CHINA! Ha, that’s… a little different, which is then followed by yet another Thor v Loki story and once again it involves Loki controlling Thor’s mind for a while. I have to say at this point the setup of “Thor can’t reach his hammer for 60 seconds so turns back into Blake and spends a while trying to reach his stick before grabbing it, changing back into Thor and winning” was really wearing thin…
Hmmmmm…. That’s quite the enemy design. Bet that took… five minutes?
Wrapping this up then, the next story has Thor fight with Dr. Zaxton and his amazing duplicating gun (which includes Thor fighting a duplicate of himself, naturally), followed by issues pitting Thor against “Mad Merlin” after he wakes from a sarcophagus after 1000 years for some reason; Molto the Lava Man, who is freed from a volcano by Loki; a villain called Cobra whose plan to kidnap Jane Foster only succeeds in convincing her to return to Blake’s office after a brief love affair with another Doctor; and Mr. Hyde (over the final two issues in a rare cliffhanger ending!), who is just an on-the-nose take on Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde to the point of just using “Mr. Hyde” as a name. These stories do at least focus on Thor wanting to marry Jane only for Odin to frequently forbid bringing a human to Asgard and having his prized son marry “it”, which is at least a bit of a different plot thread. I’ll also say that unlike the previous couple of Origin collections I’ve covered there are no cameo appearances from any other Marvel hero or villain at all. I guess the more magic and mythical nature didn’t immediately blend with the other hero comics, at least until they came up with the idea of the Avengers as a crossover, anyway. There are a couple of “Tales of Asgard” stories included as well that focus on Odin defeating some of the classic Norse enemies like Frost Giants and Surtur which are… fine.
Overall Thoughts:
It’s funny that an actual Arthurian Merlin becomes part of the Marvel comics later as a good guy, meaning this Merlin is some random nutjob… from 1,000 years ago. Somehow.
While some of the Thor vs. Loki stories can be quite fun mostly these early Thor stories aren’t up to much, even for 60s comics. They quickly realised Thor was too powerful so began relying on him getting turned back into Donald Blake in the middle of the battle and trying to build suspense in him getting his Thor powers back before the predictable end. Given the stories all come from a multiple-story anthology issues they’re all quite short, which in some cases is good but doesn’t help the samey-ness when you read so many so close together (admittedly not the way they were intended to be experienced) Not a great start for Thor then, as I remembered, but it was still his start so it needed to be covered!
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