Journey Into Mystery #100

Featuring: Thor
Release: November 5, 1963
Cover: January 1964
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee
Illustrated by: Don Heck
13 pages

Congratulations to Journey Into Mystery on reaching 100 issues. The cover doesn’t see this milestone as something worth making a big deal out of. Nor does the story. This is just another Thor story, as far as I can tell.

For contrast, check out Superman #100 from almost a decade earlier. They seemed proud to reach 100.

Let’s celebrate the milestone by briefly reviewing the history of the title and peeking into its future.

February 1952. Journey Into Mystery #1 features 5 comic tales of horror, and one prose story. Most had a pretty similar structure. They often starred a bad person who did some evil deed and some supernatural twist that saw justice done.

June 1962. A decade later, the title introduced Thor with issue 83, who would star in the lead feature from then on. Backup features remained devoted to the type of one-off tales that had been with the title since its inception, though the focus has been shifting from horror to science fiction.

August 1963. Issue 97. A Thor-related backup feature “Tales of Asgard” would debut, telling the early history of Odin and Thor. There would still be room for a prose story and a single tale of science fiction. Starting with issue 105, the Thor stories will become longer, so the weird story backups will disappear completely, and the title will be dedicated entirely to Thor.

The title will last through issue 125. It will actually continue decades, just with a new name. Staring with issue 126, March 1966, the series will be called Thor. It will keep that name all the way until issue 502 in September 1996. When Thor is killed in battle with Onslaught, the title changes back to Journey Into Mystery with issue 503, focusing on the Lost Gods, and then changing its focus to a seemingly random rotation of heroes until its true final issue in June 1998, Journey Into Mystery #521, which stars Hannibal King.

That concludes our celebration of the milestone the comic itself doesn’t care to mention. Turning to the story itself, this issue sees the conclusion of Thor’s battle with Mr. Hyde. It resolves two other threads from that issue as well.

The first is that Thor had become a bank-robber. Turns out he didn’t. Mr. Hyde had framed him. This subplot isn’t resolved so much as written off. We just get a single sentence where a cop lets him know his name has been cleared based on some nebulous evidence.

We also resolve the subplot that Odin was considering making Jane immortal if she proved worthy. He deemed her unworthy because she helped Mr. Hyde escape, thinking that Dr. Blake was still in danger. I would actually call her act brave. She stood up to Thor to do what she thought would save Dr. Blake. But Odin likes his rash judgments that don’t consider extenuating circumstances. And thus we are back where we started. Don can’t ask out Jane because Don is Thor and Thor is an immortal and so cannot marry a mortal by Odin’s decree. I look forward to several more issues of him moping about it.

Last issue, Thor noted specifically that his hammer makes him the god of thunder. The implication to me was that he needed his hammer to summon storms. Yet, here we see him summon a tornado without his hammer. The first Thor story was pretty explicit that storm-summoning was a function of his hammer being tapped on the ground. It even went into detail how many times to tap to achieve various effects. So this is a bit confusing.

Thor last issue: “…my enchanted hammer has made me the god of thunder.”

Thor this issue: “Even without my hammer, I’m still the god of thunder and storm.”

Help me reconcile the two assertions.

I’m still trying to understand Thor and how his powers work, so keep looking for clues because the comic is very unclear. I have one other observation from this issue. Thor notes he can use his hammer to deflect bullets. I would assume Thor is actually bulletproof, but the fact that he needs his hammer to deflect bullets may indicate he is not.

Rating: ★★☆☆☆, 41/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆

I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor vol.1. It is also available in Thor Epic Collection vol. 1: God of Thunder. Or on Kindle.

Characters:

• Thor/Dr. Don Blake
• Jane Foster
• Mr. Hyde
• Odin

Story notes:

• Includes recap of last issue.
• It is Jane’s birthday; Don had promised to take her to dinner. They have plans to go to the Ritz Terrace, the most glamorous restaurant in town.
• Mr. Hyde has a castle. Given the relative paucity of American castles, super-villains own many of them.
• Mr. Hyde plans to steal Polaris submarine.

#136 story in reading order
Next: Journey Into Mystery #100, Story C
Previous: Journey Into Mystery #99, Story C