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Journey into Mystery

The year was 1962, and Marvel editor Stan Lee was feeling the pressure.

Stan had come out of the gate three for three: his first three new “Marvel Comics” had been met with unexpected success at the newsstands. THE FANTASTIC FOUR, the INCREDIBLE HULK and the AMAZING SPIDER-MAN were not only selling like hotcakes, but Stan was achieving critical success unlike anything he’d ever experienced. The fan mail was pouring in (in excess of a thousand letters a week), and Stan and Marvel were suddenly the darling of the press, with Stan doing print and radio interviews about the new generation of comic-book heroes.

The problem was, now what?

As Stan described in ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, he was a little stumped about where to go next. I’ll turn it over to Stan for a moment:

But what was left to invent? Who could be stronger than the Hulk? Who could be stronger than Mr. Fantastic? We already had a kid who could fly, one who could walk on walls and ceilings, and a female who could fade away whenever danger threatened – or whenever the artist ran out of ink. As you can see, we were hooked on superlatives at that time, always trying to come up with characters who were bigger, better, stronger. However, we had painted ourselves into a corner. The only one who could top the heroes we already had would be Super-God, but I didn’t think the world was quite ready for that concept just yet. So, it was back to the ol’ drawing board.

Stan was racking his brain for new heroes, but he kept coming back to the notion of “Super-God.” He knew there was no way to feature God in a comic without offending, well, practically everybody. In the midst of all this, Stan remembered one of those aforementioned radio interviews he’d been doing, in which the host had referred to the new Marvel stories as “twentieth-century mythology,” and compared them to Greek and Norse mythology. With that, Stan had his solution. Sure, there was no way they could publish a comic book featuring God as a super-hero. But a comic book featuring a god as a super-hero? No problem. Soon enough, Stan had settled on a mythological deity to give the Marvel treatment to, and the Mighty Thor was on the way.

Feeling that he was handling too much of the company’s writing himself, Stan turned over the Thor concept to his brother Larry Lieber, who had been working for the company on its line of monster comics. As for the art, Stan once again turned to Jack Kirby to bring his rough concept to life. Lee, Lieber and Kirby’s vision of the Norse God of Thunder made its debut in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #83 (August 1962), in “The Stone Men from Saturn!”

In the premiere story, we’re introduced to Dr. Donald Blake, a crippled physician vacationing on the coast of Norway. Coincidentally, also visiting the lovely Norwegian coast are the aforementioned Stone Men from Saturn. However, they’re not there for the scenery. A scouting force for a planned invasion of Earth, the stone chaps amuse themselves by uprooting and disintegrating trees. (A little-known fact: Saturnian Stone Men apparently hate trees.) The Stone Men are spotted by a local fisherman, whose warnings fall on mostly deaf ears, except for our good Dr. Blake, who decides to go investigate for himself.

Blake stumbles onto the aliens, but is quickly spotted, and the Stone Men are soon in hot pursuit. Running for his life, Blake stumbles and drops his cane, slowing him down even more. Seeking refuge in a cave, Blake finds the only way out blocked by an enormous boulder. Leaning against the cave wall, he accidentally activates a hidden trigger, revealing a secret chamber. Inside is only a “gnarled wooden stick – like an ancient cane.” When the stick turns out to be of little use in moving the boulder, Blake strikes the stick against the boulder in frustration, and with a flash of lightning, both Blake and the stick are transformed.

To his disbelief, Blake is now the Mighty Thor, Norse god of thunder. Looking down at the wooden stick, he sees that it too has changed, becoming a warhammer, bearing a peculiar inscription:

The boulder that had seemed immovable mere moments before is now lifted with ease, and Thor begins to experiment with his new weapon and physical form.

Thor discovers that he must continually hold the hammer to remain Thor (after 60 seconds without contact, Thor will change back into Blake, although the hammer will remain), and that by striking the hammer against the ground, both he and the hammer return to their original shape. Thor also discovers the hammer’s ability to control the weather, and that it always returns to his hand after it’s thrown. Best of all, Thor learns that by throwing the hammer, and then immediately catching the leather thong at the end of the handle, he’s able to hurtle through the air like a missile.

Thor’s lesson in hammer-handling comes none too soon, because before long the full Saturnian invasion force has arrived in Norway. Thor quickly dispatches the Stone Men’s ground troops, and handily dismantles the invaders’ “mechano-monster” as well. The Stone Men are freaked out but good, and split for Saturn pronto, not knowing how many more like Thor may be on Earth.

Larry Lieber, and after him Robert Bernstein, left the scripting duties after the first 14 issues, leaving the book, like most of the Marvel line, firmly in the hands of Stan and Jack. Once Stan took over the scripting, a distinct difference was noticed in the dialogue: Thor, (and later his fellow Asgardians as well) began to speak in a sort of archaic pseudo-Shakespearean old English, which may not have made sense when you considered that they were Norwegian, but which gave the character a sort of regal nobility that served the character well in setting him apart from the rest of Marvel’s costume-types.

Early on, Thor remained more focused on Earthbound villains and threats, but the series really kicked into gear when Stan and Jack began to focus the series on Thor’s Asgardian heritage. It was later revealed that Don Blake had never truly existed, that Thor’s human identity had all been a lesson in humility from Thor’s father Odin, mightiest of the Norse gods and ruler of Asgard.

Despite this, Thor continued to live a double life as both Thor and human physician Blake, partly because of the strong bond he’d forged with Midgard (that’s Earth for you non-Asgardian types) while in temporary exile from Asgard, and partly because of his love for Blake’s nurse, Jane Foster. With the new emphasis on Asgard, Stan and Jack began to introduce a whole new cast of supporting characters.

Aside from his father Odin, Thor found new allies in Balder the Brave, Thor’s loyal right-hand man, and in the beautiful but deadly warrior Sif, Thor’s intended bride since childhood.

Also introduced was Heimdall, the guardian of the rainbow bridge Bifrost, which connects Asgard to Earth. So finely honed were Heimdall’s senses, it was said, that “he could detect the flapping of a butterfly’s wings a thousand worlds away.” Man. That’s gotta be distracting.

Making their debut as well were the Warriors Three. Never really cool or interesting enough to support their own series, the Warriors Three would consistently show up at any sort of large gathering of Asgardians whenever Thor needed some backup. You had your Fandral the Dashing, an Errol Flynn-type swashbuckler, your Hogun the Grim, a dark brooding type, and your Volstagg the Voluminous, who was, well, fat. Really fat. John-Goodman-and-a-half fat. He wasn’t much on the hand-to-hand combat, but sometimes he’d sit on people. Anyway…

The central conflict of the series involved Thor and his half-brother Loki, the God of Mischief.

Loki, always bitterly jealous of Thor and longing for Odin’s throne, would unleash evil scheme after evil scheme in efforts to either destroy Thor or discredit him in the eyes of Odin the All-Father. Some of Loki’s plots have resulted in the creation of new foes for Thor to deal with. Let’s take a look at a couple:

In JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #114, convicted felon Carl “Crusher” Creel is slipped an enchanted mickey by Loki. The potion grants Creel the power to absorb the physical properties of anything he comes into contact with. Grasping the steel ball and chain which was locked to his ankle, Creel takes on the form of solid steel, and promptly busts out of prison, taking off on a rampage of destruction that quickly gets the attention of Thor.

After a classic Kirby battle, Thor decides to outwit the newly dubbed “Absorbing Man,” (not too difficult from the looks of it,) by using his control of the elements to surround Creel with helium gas, which he involuntarily absorbs, becoming a gaseous entity which helplessly drifts away. A popular villain, mostly on the strength of his visually striking powers (not to mention one of the oddest-shaped heads in all of comics), Creel would return again and again to duke it out with Thor.

Another of Loki’s schemes gone awry took place in THOR #148 (the magazine’s title having changed from JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY along the way). The most recent of Loki’s transgressions against Asgard had resulted in his sorcerous powers being removed by Odin. Loki, in hiding on Earth, was laying low in a dingy New York hotel room attempting to contact a former ally of his, Karnilla the Norn Queen, in the hopes that Karnilla would grant him new power. While he’s in the midst of what passes for a transdimensional phone call, who should drop in looking for someone to rob but Dirk Garthwaite, a.k.a. “The Wrecker,” a former construction worker turned costumed criminal in the midst of a citywide crime spree. So the Wrecker knocks out Loki, and decides to try on his wacky horned helmet just as Karnilla arrives, looking to juice up her old buddy Loki. Apparently not paying too much attention, Karnilla grants the Wrecker the power intended for Loki (Hey, only one guy in the room with horns on the hat, right? Gotta be him…).

The Wrecker now had unimaginable physical strength and toughness and his trademark crowbar had become virtually indestructible. The Wrecker would also continually return to bedevil Thor, and later would inadvertently split his power with three other inmates in a prison break (that’s what happens when other people are touching your crowbar during an electrical storm; personally, I never let inmates touch my crowbar, but that’s just me…) and form the Wrecking Crew: The Wrecker, Piledriver, Bulldozer and Thunderball.

Other than the Lee/ Kirby Thor issues, the most acclaimed run on THOR is the mid-1980s issues by writer/artist Walt Simonson. Lasting for 30 issues, Simonson brought a new vitality to the series it hadn’t seen in years, and his classic, illustrative art style returned THOR to a scope and grandeur it had been missing since the days of Jack Kirby. As for the writing, Simonson brought two aspects to the series that were sorely needed: a return to the strong emphasis on Norse mythology, and a genuine sense that anything could happen. One need only look to Walt Simonson’s first issue, THOR #337, to see that philosophy in action.

Sent by SHIELD agent Nick Fury to investigate a mysterious space vessel nearing Earth, Thor engages in combat with a mysterious orange alien, and in the process is separated from his hammer. Thor changed back into Don Blake, and the hammer Mjolnir transformed back into a cane. That is, until the alien picks it up and whacks it against a wall, and in a flash is transformed into an alien version of Thor. Remember the inscription? “Whosoever holds the hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” Well, all of a sudden, Thor wasn’t the only worthy fellow around, and suddenly there was a new Thor in town: Beta Ray Bill.

In succeeding issues, it was revealed that Beta Ray Bill was the sole protector of his race, who had lost their homeworld and were in suspended animation aboard a fleet of starships while Bill, a bioengineered superbeing, stayed awake to protect the fleet. Bill was determined to keep Thor’s hammer to use to protect his people. And when Thor and Bill met in formal combat once more, by Odin’s decree, Bill once more triumphed, although he refused to kill Thor.

The hammer was his, although he felt guilty for keeping the weapon Thor was meant to carry. Odin solved the problem by commissioning the dwarves who forged Mjolnir to make a new hammer for Bill, which Odin named Storm Breaker.

Thor had his hammer back, Beta Ray Bill could retain his newfound power, and all was well. That is, until Bill started putting the moves on Thor’s babe Sif. But that’s another story…

Another example of Simonson at his innovative prime came in THOR #364, when Loki managed to transform Thor into a frog.

After a sweet little adventure in Central Park in which Thor rallied the frogs against the invading rats, Thor-turned-frog returned to the site of Loki’s attack, where the hammer Mjolnir still lay.

After a mighty struggle, Thor finally succeeded in lifting the hammer with his froggy frame, and with a flash of lightning, there stood a fighting mad six-foot-six frog in Thor’s costume, and soon the green slimy god of thunder was off to Asgard to track down his scheming half-brother.

When do we get this in the movies?!

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2 Responses to Journey into Mystery

  1. admin August 17, 2012 at 2:30 am #

    Yeah, The Absorbing Man later kind of became more of a HULK and AVENGERS villain, but he originated in THOR. Ang Lee took elements of his powers and used them (poorly) in his HULK movie for Nolte’s character.

  2. Arrow August 15, 2012 at 11:27 am #

    Is the Absorbing Man the same villain often seen in Hulk that was sorta played by Nick Nolte in the film?

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