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 BJourney Into MysteryJourney Into Mystery #117, Story B

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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Tales of Suspense #61, Story B

The Strength of the Sumo!

Featuring: Captain America
Release: October 8, 1964
Cover: January 1965
12 cents
Stan Lee writer par excellence!
Jack Kirby illustrator without peer!
Chic Stone delineator extaordinaire!
Artie Simek letterer– what else?
10 pages

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Tales of Suspense #61Tales of SuspenseTales of Suspense #62

Captain America goes to Vietnam and fights a sumo wrestler. I usually associate sumo wrestling with Japan, and suspect that Stan and Jack just haven’t thought too hard about the differences between Vietnam and Japan. However, culture does spread in our modern world, and I can’t confirm Vietnam didn’t have any sumo wrestlers in the 1960s, so I’m going to give them a pass.

Captain America is fighting the Commies. This brings to mind his very brief 1954 return as “Captain America… Commie Smasher!” Of course, those stories are hard to reconcile with the modern Marvel Age continuity in which Captain America was frozen in ice from 1945 to 1963. How could he then have been fighting Commies in 1954?

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