Journey Into Mystery #117

Into the Blaze of Battle!

Featuring: Thor
Release: April Fools Day, 1965
Cover: June 1965
12 cents
Regally written by: Stan Lee
Dazzlingly drawn by: Jack Kirby
Invincibly inked by: Vince Colletta
Lonesomely lettered by: Artie Simek
16 pages

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Journey Into Mystery #116, Story BReading orderJourney Into Mystery #117, Story B
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We’re still spinning out of the events of issue 114, when Loki kidnapped Jane. This led directly to last issue’s Trial of the Gods, a challenge which Loki won by cheating, right as last issue closed.

We pick up precisely where we left off. For continuity’s sake, Thor is still without his cape. He’ll get another one when they get home.

This issue, Thor finds himself entangled in the Vietnam war. Marvel heroes have been fighting Communists for as long as we’ve been reading, often in Vietnam. The nature of US involvement in Vietnam was changing drastically, as this comic was published just 7 months after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Here, we see the civil war that ravages South Vietnam, as South Vietnamese farmers face the terror of the Viet Cong, guerilla forces supported by the North Vietnamese.

Before we get to Viet Nam, we have unresolved plot points from last issue. Who won the Trial of the Gods? Will Jane be rescued from Enchantress and Executioner?

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