Featuring: Tales of Asgard
Release: April 1, 1965
Cover: June 1965
12 cents
By: Stan Lee + Jack Kirby
Inking: Vince Colletta
Lettering: Artie Simek
5 pages
| Previous | #343 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Journey Into Mystery #117 | Reading order | Journey Into Mystery #118 |
| Journey Into Mystery #117 | Journey Into Mystery | Journey Into Mystery #118 |
For 20 issues, these Tales of Asgard stories have been short stories that resolved in 5 pages. Now, a large saga begins. At least 11 parts, and even then it just rolls into the next saga.
For reading order, I like to keep story-arcs together. Based on that, I could read all 11 parts at once. This is what the CMRO recommends. It actually recommends reading the next 17 back up stories together.
But I also like to keep issues together. It seems weird to get out a comic, read half of it, put it away, then get it out again later to read the other half. Though we have done that sometimes in the name of keeping arcs together. For example, we read the last 5 Human Torch stories from Strange Tales without reading the corresponding Dr. Strange stories. We’ll have to get the comics back out of the box.
How to balance these two goals (keep a story together vice keep a physical comic together) is subjective, and I’m making a subjective call here: reading these Tales of Asgard stories together doesn’t improve the story in any way. I think they read best as they were published, as episodes in the back of the main Thor comic, to be read after that month’s Thor story. And that’s how we’ll read them. We’ll keep Thor story arcs together as best we can and let the main stories set the reading rhythm. That means it may take us a while to finish the Odinsword Saga. I think that will be okay.
Continue reading “Journey Into Mystery #117, Story B”