Featuring: Tales of Asgard
Release: March 4, 1965
Cover: May 1965
12 cents
Story: Stan Lee
Pencilling: Jack Kirby
Inking: Vince Colletta
Lettering: Artie Simek
5 pages
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|---|---|---|
| Journey Into Mystery #116 | Reading order | Journey Into Mystery #117 |
| Journey Into Mystery #116 | Journey Into Mystery | Journey Into Mystery #117 |
Another early scheme of Loki. While Thor flirts with Princess Rinda, Loki schemes with King Hymir. Hymir issues two challenges Thor is honor-bound to accept. Those who fail Hymir’s challenges become his slaves.
The first is to catch a fish; the second is to break a goblet.
Both tasks are harder than they appear, but neither so hard that they can’t be wrapped up in 5 pages between them.
While Kirby is a great storyteller, at some point he just doesn’t have enough panels to work with. A shot of Thor throwing his hammer is hardly a satisfying ending to Thor’s 2-panel long battle with a sea monster.
This is the last Loki-focused story, and the last of the “biographies” series. Next issue, the backups themselves will get in on the “saga” concept, as the 11-part Odinsword Saga begins. Quite the escalation. For 20 issues, these Tales of Asgard stories have all been 5 pages long. Now they need 55 pages to tell the next one, and they still won’t even really be finished.
Rating: ★★★☆☆, 53/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor vol. 3. It is also available on Kindle.
Characters:
- Loki
- King Hymir
- Princess Rinda
- Thor
Story notes
- Thor and Loki on diplomatic mission to Hymir.
- First challenge: bring back fish from Sea of Eternal Darkness.
- Second challenge: break a drinking goblet in 2 minutes.
- Goblet breaks against Hymir’s crown; Thor had attempted to kill Hymir.
| Previous | #341 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Journey Into Mystery #116 | Reading order | Journey Into Mystery #117 |
| Journey Into Mystery #116 | Journey Into Mystery | Journey Into Mystery #117 |
This story shows the Marvel Method at work in its own absurd way. It’s clear what Kirby is ACTUALLY doing is illustrating Hymiskvida, one of THE most famous myths centered around Thor, but Stan doesn’t recognize it as an existing tale and instead ends up using Kirby’s panels to tell his own very different story.
It’s a weird end product, but it does showcase how much plotting Stan actually had to regularly do to make sense of the art he got, since it clearly didn’t come with all THAT many notes explaining the context of the various panels.