Journey Into Mystery #107

Featuring: Thor
Release: June 2, 1964
Cover: August 1964
12 cents
Written by: Stan Lee, who needs the money
Drawn by: Jack Kirby, who enjoys the practice
Inked by: Chic Stone, who loves the publicity
Lettered by: Art Simek, whoever he is!
18 pages

We get a significant new addition to the canon of Marvel villains with the Grey Gargoyle. He’s got a pretty cool hook; he turns people to stone. In whatever early comics I first saw the character in, I didn’t fully appreciate the name. I got the alliteration and that gargoyles are often rendered in stone. But there’s a little more to it that I think later artists would fail to capture. We see in this initial image of the character that Kirby really has gone out of his way to make it so he can look like a gargoyle in the right pose.

It’s a particularly good opening splash page, and that’s before we even get to the light poetry of the narration rhyming: “small” with “all”.

The drama between Jane and Don carries over from the previous issue, suggesting not too much time has passed. She is angry with Don because she thinks he betrayed Thor. Don/Thor is agonizing over this circumstance and is uncertain what to do. I can think of a pretty obvious solution: change to Thor and tell Jane that Blake didn’t betray you. He goes with the opposite tact. He changes to Thor and tells Jane that Blake did betray him. That won’t solve your problem, buddy.

Jane confesses to Thor what she has apparently not told Don, that she loves Don. While she may never have been explicit, I don’t think she’s ever been subtle about her feelings for him.

Thor is pretty excited about this news. He flies through the air excitedly shouting, “She loves me!” But she didn’t say she loves you, Thor. She said she loves Dr. Don Blake. Dr. Don Blake is a man who found a cane in a cave that turned him into Thor. At first it only seemed to give him Thor’s body; he still talked like Don Blake and knew nothing about the life of Thor except what he had read in books. Within 2 issues, he seemed to know things that Blake couldn’t know, and pretty soon it was clear that Blake was Thor. They don’t talk about themselves as two different people, and Thor actually seems to be the primary form. Just what is going on has not yet been explained. But it is now clear they have one mind in two bodies, and that mind seems to be both Thor and Blake simultaneously.

When we first meet Grey Gargoyle, he seems to be a well-dressed gentleman who has turned the entire manifest of a plane to stone. That’s cool. We learn his origin. A strange chemical spilled on his hand which turned it to stone. When he touched his other hand with the stone hand, that hand turned to stone. He then touched his face. That does not seem like a good idea to me, and I like to think that’s not what I would have done. But, as the pandemic has taught us, a person touches their face on average once every few minutes, usually with little conscious thought; it’s just hard to not do.

So anyways, his face turned to stone. Living stone he calls it, because he can still move around. His stone victims are not capable of movement. The comic is inconsistent on how long his victims stay trapped in stone. It says the stone spell lasts an hour frequently, but Thor seems to think it lasts 24 hours, and Dr. Blake had given it some study. However, this has been changed in some reprints. The digital version below alters the dialogue to have Dr. Blake claim it lasts one hour.

Grey Gargoyle’s goal is immortality. He wants the secret of Thor’s immortality. His plan is to cause mayhem in New York, knowing Thor will respond. Since New York is now home to 20+ superheroes, it’s not clear how villains always seem to know which superhero will respond to their random mayhem.

At one point, Thor takes advantage of the Avengers’ “top federal priority” to tell the police what to do with a stone victim. Have the Avengers earned this top federal priority 6 issues in? Their battles with the Hulk are really their own fault. They did save New York from the Masters of Evil, but they also inspired the Masters of Evil to form; the team’s goal was only to attack the Avengers. The one threat they weren’t responsible for was the Lava Men, which they did save the world from. Maybe that’s enough of a feather in their cap.

Grey Gargoyle wears a glove with an exposed palm. This is well-thought out. With the gloved part, he can handle things normally as long as he is careful. With his palm, he can turn things to stone.

Grey Gargoyle finds himself unable to lift Thor’s hammer, because it’s heavy and he’s not as strong as Thor.

He does manage to turn Thor to stone. I can’t quite tell if the hammer gets turned to stone or not. The coloring is so inconsistent. It looks like it doesn’t. When Thor turns to stone, statue Thor falls to the ground, causing the hammer to hit, causing him to turn into not-statue Don Blake. But Blake fears that if he turns back into Thor, he will turn into statue Thor. So he decides to defeat Grey Gargoyle as Don Blake.

He does so. Jane now believes he did not betray Thor and that he might not be such a coward after all.

What else is happening in June 1964?

There’s a new Marvel title on the racks this month, Marvel Tales Annual 1. This issue reprints the first appearances of many heroes, including Spider-Man, Hulk, Ant-Man, Nick Fury, Iron Man, and Thor. It also includes the story where Ant-Man became Giant-Man and a segment of the story where Iron Man got his new “thinner” armor. My loose understanding is that in 1964 you couldn’t just find digital copies of issues you missed online, so this was the first opportunity for new readers to catch up on the origins of these characters, many of whom had been introduced 2 years earlier. It’s a pricey 25 cents, but you get 72 pages of story.

Marvel previously had a series by the name Marvel Tales, cancelled in 1957. The title dates back to 1939, having changed its name twice; it was originally called Marvel Comics.

The Distinguished Competition is doing something similar this month with 80-Page Giant #1, which features a collection of classic Superman “imaginary” stories. (Aren’t they all?) It’s a pricey 25 cents, but you get 80 pages of story for it– a strictly better deal than Marvel Tales! The format is based on what DC had been doing for their annuals the last few years. In fact, this new series seems to be just a rebranding of what would have been Superman Annual 9.

About a year earlier, DC had the famous “Crisis on Earth-2” story beginning in Justice League of America, where the Justice League of America teamed up with the Justice Society of America from Earth-2; Earth-2 being the world where the 1940s adventures of DC superheroes took place. Its existence explains why Batman doesn’t seem to have aged much in the last 25 years.

This month, we see that’s becoming an annual tradition and the heroes of two worlds again get together for “Crisis on Earth-3”. If Earth-1 is the setting of the 1960s stories and Earth-2 the setting of the 1940s stories, what is Earth-3?

Well, it’s the bad one. Instead of the Justice League or Society, we have the Crime Syndicate of America, featuring evil versions of our favorite heroes. Similar to the Star Trek concept of a Mirror Universe which would be introduced a few years later.

I’ve sometimes given Stan Lee flak for the credits, when he seems to be claiming too much credit or failing to give due credit. But at least he has credits and has for a few years now. The name of the writer or artists are nowhere to be found in this concurrent DC comic.

Rating: ★★★☆☆, 54/100
Significance: ★★★★☆

I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor vol. 2. It is also available in Thor Epic Collection vol. 1: God of Thunder. Or on Kindle.

Characters:

• Grey Gargoyle/Paul Duval
• Thor/Dr. Don Blake
• Jane Foster

Story notes:

• Thor often just appears in Jane’s office.
• Stone spell is claimed to last for an hour at times, 24 hours at other times. Digital reprints change all mentions to refer to a 1-hour duration.
• In flashback, Grey Gargoyle read about Cobra/Mr. Hyde battle in paper. So that flashback was probably the next day. Grey Gargoyle likely boarded a plane to New York very soon after reading the headline.
• Gargoyle’s right hand always stone; chemical fell on that hand.
• Taxi takes Grey Gargoyle to town center — 53rd and Madison.
• Grey Gargoyle scales walls.
• Police deduce fire can defeat Grey Gargoyle by turning stone to lava.
• Blake borrows Stark 3D projector.
• Blake lures Grey Gargoyle to the sea, where his weight makes him sink. Presumably, he will drown and die.
• Note at end refers to Thor’s upcoming adventure in Avengers #7 and next issue’s surprise guest star.

#221 story in reading order
Next: Journey Into Mystery #107, Story B
Previous: Tales of Suspense #56, Story B