Featuring: Thor Release: February 3, 1966 Cover: April 1966 12 cents Writer: Stan Lee Artist: Jack Kirby Delineator: Vince Colletta Letterer: Sam Rosen 16 pages
For one brief, fleeting instant of eternity, a god hath dared to love a mortal! Till the universe crumbles, my heart is ever thine! Let that be our epitaph… and our glory!
Now that’s a cover.
We discussed Pieta-inspired covers with Journey Into Mystery #110. This is a much better example of such a cover. I would call this awesome.
As with Avengers, I want to note where Thor is during an upcoming Fantastic Four story, published concurrently with the last few issues. What keeps him away from helping the FF? I don’t believe his short fight with the Demon nor his tiff with Hercules would do it.
Also, the last year of Thor stories still must have taken very little time, as there has been little room for pausing. So it’s likely these Thor stories take place before a lot of the other stories we’ve been reading, and the adventure that seemed more important than helping the FF is still ahead. We’ll be on the lookout for it!
In that sense of there being not a lot of time passing, this picks up precisely where last issue left off, with Jane trying to comfort a moping Thor, who has just lost his first fight, because his daddy halved his powers. Notably, Odin finally seems to support the relationship.
Of course, now there’s a new reason Thor and Jane can’t be together. It’s not about his bum leg or his daddy issues. How could she love a man who can’t even beat Hercules in a fight?