Featuring: Thor
Release: March 5, 1963
Cover: May 1963
12 cents
Plot: Stan Lee
Script: R. Berns
Art: Joe Sinnott
13 pages
I read this story in Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor vol. 1.
The somewhat awkward title of this story underscores they haven’t yet decided that Thor’s magic hammer should have a name.
Now, the title also sounds pretty ominous. For we know that if Loki were to steal Thor’s magic hammer, the thunder god would be helpless within 60 seconds. Indeed, that is what happened in both of Thor’s previous encounters with Loki, both of which involved Loki stealing his magic hammer.
As before, stealing the hammer really should lead to an easy victory for Loki. Now, had Loki just gone to earth a minute or more later, he would have found Thor helpless and easy to defeat. Summoning Thor to Asgard led to Loki’s defeat. Now, there is a sensible reason to lure Thor to Asgard– that Loki can’t escape Asgard with Heimdall watching, as the opening scene demonstrated. However, that logic is not what Loki’s thoughts show. For not the first time, the story suggested by the art makes more sense than the script. Thor is a crippled mortal without his hammer; why summon him closer to it?
“When Odin appears on earth, time stands still.” Well, that’s a very convenient thing to learn. “Once in Asgard, I can remain Thor indefinitely.” Even more convenient. It sounds like, the next time you lose your hammer, summoning Odin for transport to Asgard is the thing to do.
Now, the first panel of this comic suggests Asgard can only be reached by the Bifrost. But that does not seem to be how Odin transports him. Perhaps it indirectly is.
The basic idea of the issue is that Thor constructs himself a series of makeshift hammers to overcome what Loki throws at him.
More importantly, we learn Thor is helping to make movies now for some reason.
Also of note, we learn Fricka is Queen of Asgard; this presumably makes her the wife of Odin and perhaps then the mother to Thor. We kind of get a glimpse of her from the back.
We get a 3-page diversion of Thor battling gangsters. It begins with a wounded gangster and Dr. Blake being held hostage to help heal his wounds. This is exactly how Thor’s last fight with gangsters started. Not sure why they felt they needed the diversion.
As with the Iron Man story we just read, it takes until the story is almost over for it to really begin. One of the great strengths of the Spider-Man stories is their ability to integrate the superhero battle with the other subplots very smoothly. Here, this issue seems all over the place. Thor spends a few pages battling gangsters, then a few pages making a movie, then finally the main story begins. There’s just no flow to it.
Rating: ★★½, 45/100
Characters:
- Dr. Don Blake/Thor
- Loki
- Heimdall
- Neri
- Jane Foster (Nelson)
- Odin
- Fricka
Minor characters:
- B.J. (film director)
Story notes:
- “Beyond our segment of time and space, there exists Asgard, home of the Norse Gods, which can only be reached from earth by the rainbow bridge called Bifrost!”
- Fricka is Queen of Asgard
- Heimdall recalls when Loki transformed into a snake to sneak past him
- Loki is fastened to a rock with 10 chains, where he must remain until the end of time
- Thor is Odin’s favorite son, according to Heimdall
- Loki is god of evil
- Not the first time gangsters have taken Dr. Blake hostage to mend a boss’s wounds
- Thor helping film a movie at a Norwegian sea port
- Movie involves Loki conjuring a sea serpent to threaten a good tribe of vikings
- Loki’s chains made of uru, same metal as Thor’s hammer
- Loki plants an idea in Thor’s mind to travel to Asgard
- “When Odin appears on earth, time stands still.”
- Supreme Council of the Gods gathers to address problem of Thor’s lost hammer
- In Loki’s forest, trees obey him
#67 story in reading order
Next: Sgt. Fury #1
Previous: Tales of Suspense #41
That’s the one thing I don’t get about the 60’s Marvel comics… the villains are always making things needlessly inconvenient for themselves to help the heroes. Is there a particular reason characters were written this way? Or did the bullpen writers just not care to have the plots follow very sound logic and just wanted them to be as “epic and sensational” as possible?
This was one of Joe Sinnott’s rare jobs doing full artwork in the 1960s. He had done quite a lot of penciling & inking in the 1950s, in the pre-superhero days of Atlas Comics. However, beginning in the early 1960s his work for Marvel was almost exclusively inking / finishing. So it’s interesting to see how Sinnott approaches penciling the superhero genre here. Okay, so he’s not Kirby… but who is? In a few interviews years later Sinnott states he had some pretty tight deadlines on the early Thor stories he drew, and that he wishes he could have taken more time, especially since the character became so popular. I’m sure way back in the day it seemed to him it was just another assignment.