As I’ve mentioned numerous times before on this blog, Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero back in the 1970s. (Just for the record, he still is.) That didn’t mean that Thor was my favorite Marvel superhero comic book for most of that decade, however — at least, not so far as the new issues coming out then were concerned. The reason for that disparity stems from the fact that, while my enthusiasm for the Son of Odin might have originally been inspired by a general affinity for myth and legend (and for modern heroic fantasy fiction derived from them), it was based at least as much on my admiration for the work that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done on the feature in the mid-to-late 1960s. Thor/Journey into Mystery was the one major Marvel title I endeavored to acquire a complete run of back in my collecting heyday (I eventually made it back as far as JiM #96, if you’re curious). So I had those Lee-Kirby classics — which I was picking up sporadically, just a few at a time — to compare the current issues to. And despite regularly featuring a high quality of artwork (usually by John Buscema, working with a variety of mostly sympathetic inkers), the new stories (which for most of the first half of the 1970s were written by Gerry Conway) just didn’t measure up in my eyes… neither to those great old Thor/JiM comics, nor to the best of what Marvel was offering elsewhere in the superhero genre in those days.
All that didn’t mean that Thor was consistently a slog to get through, however — or that there weren’t times when I was actually kind of excited about the series, for however fleeting a moment. One such time came in the summer of ’75, as Gerry Conway finally gave up the scripter’s typewriter, thereby clearing the way for the arrival of a more mythologically-minded author, Roy Thomas — who, as things were destined to turn out, would only keep the gig long enough (this time around, anyway) to spearhead a three-part storyline ultimately finished off by newbie writer Bill Mantlo. Even so, that short stint lasted a sufficient amount of time for Thomas and company to import a whole new body of mythological lore into the Thor series (not to mention into the Marvel Universe as a whole), as well as to bring back a trio of supporting characters whose extended period of absence had been keenly felt (by my younger self, if no one else). All of the above would ultimately motivate me to do something I’ve rarely ever done throughout my whole near-sixty-year career of reading comics — write a letter to the editor. A letter that, believe it or not, was actually printed several months later, in Thor #244. Imagine that!
I’ll be sharing that fifty-year-old piece of deathless prose before the end of this post, never fear. But before we get to it, we’ll be looking at the whole trilogy of issues of which the one my letter (and, at least nominally, this post) is about forms the middle chapter, so that you’ll have the full context for my comments. But, even before we do that, we’ll need to back up a bit into the final months of Gerry Conway’s Thor run, as a couple of subplots he introduced in his last year on the book run right into the “A”-plot of the Thomas-Mantlo storyline which will be our main focus. All things considered, you might want to take a moment to grab a beverage and settle yourself in comfortably, as this looks likely to be one of our longer ones. Consider yourself forewarned, in any case.
Art by Ron Wilson and Mike Esposito.
Art by Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott.
Our extended narrative actually begins almost a full year prior to the publication of Thor #240, with a two-part story presented by Conway and Rich Buckler in issues #229 and #230. In those issues, Thor and his Olympian buddy, Hercules (whom regular readers may recall from last July’s Thor #228 post had been hanging out with the God of Thunder since around #221 or so) went up against a mysterious shadow-demon that infected the minds of ordinary New Yorkers, causing them to believe that he would provide them with eternal life if they killed themselves. The two divine heroes were eventually able to drive “He Who Dwells Below” back into whatever netherworld it had crawled out of, ending the rash of suicides — attempted, as well as successful — that had temporarily plagued the city.
There was one very important loose end left hanging at the conclusion of this adventure, however, though neither Thor nor Hercules became aware of it until the following issue, #231, which found them wrapping things up with their NYPD contact, Det. Sgt. Ralph Blumkenn (art by John Buscema and Dick Giordano):
Wait, what?
My very first issue of Thor had been #158, published almost two years after the departure of Jane Foster as a regular member of the series’ supporting cast back in #136. Even so, between reprints and my growing collection of back issues, I knew that there’d been no “spell of forgetfulness” cast over Thor at that time… over Jane, maybe, but not Thor. What was more, any wiggle room that might have been left by Stan Lee’s script for “To Become an Immortal!” had been rendered moot by means of a couple of later stories by Lee and Jack Kirby.
Panel from Thor #146 (Nov., 1967). Text by Stan Lee; art by Jack Kirby and Vince Colletta.
Panel from Thor #172 (Jan., 1970). Text by Stan Lee; art by Jack Kirby and Bill Everett.
In the first of these, which came out in Thor #146 (just ten issues after Jane’s exit), Thor saw Jane and her new boyfriend in the crowd while he was working in the Ringmaster’s Circus of Crime (long story) and was grateful that the woman “whom I did once love” had found someone else to care forr. In the second, published a couple of years later in issue #172, Thor was called to come to Jane’s rescue when she was kidnapped by the evil Kronin Krask. Jane got a lot more on-panel time in this one, but it was just as clear as in the earlier story (perhaps even more so) that though the characters still held each other in high regard, their romantic relationship was a thing of the past.
So, as far as my continuity-minded self was concerned, Gerry Conway had committed a clear foul with this new plot development. Perhaps if I’d become a Thor reader early enough to have gotten invested in the Thor-Jane romance when it was actually happening, I’d have felt differently, but as it was, I was simply irked by Jane Foster’s unexpected reappearance. Besides which, I preferred Sif.
And speaking of the Thunder God’s most recent lady-love — Sif accepted Jane’s return with remarkable equanimity, as shown in the following scene (which a caption informed us transpired some 48 hours after Thor had first arrived at Jane Foster’s bedside):
What ailment, exactly, was Jane Foster suffering from? We were told that she’d attempted suicide, but not how, and Conway’s scripts never got much more specific than suggesting her mind and soul were still somehow in thrall to He Who Dwells Below. Regardless of the illness’ nature, however, the lady Sif didn’t intend to let it have its way with the beloved of her beloved. Using her power to circumvent the laws of time and space, the goddess didst hie herself to Asgard, in search of aid from Thor’s dad, Odin — only to learn from her fellow warrior-woman, Hildegarde, what the latter worthy had herself learned just one issue previously — the All-Father had gone AWOL from his realm.
This subplot continued into Thor #232 (art still by Buscema and Giordano)…
Returning to Midgard, Sif enlisted the help of Thor’s pal Hercules — and with another magical flourish or two of her sword, the quest was on.
Meanwhile, the series’ current “A”-plot, involving Loki (now fully recovered from having his mind fried at the end of 1973’s “Avengers/Defenders War” crossover event) kicked into high gear as Thor’s wicked stepbrother moved to take advantage of Odin’s absence by 1) seizing control over Asgard (again) and 2) leading the armed forces of the Golden Realm in an invasion of Earth, with the first point of attack being Washington, D.C..
Attempting to respond, most of Earth’s superheroes found themselves trapped behind magical force-fields created by Loki; Thor, however, was able to make his way to the front lines before the battle commenced. Near the end of issue #233, he was joined by Odin’s chief advisor, the Grand Vizier. Hoping to hear that his father would soon be coming to their aid, the Son of Odin was instead the recipient of some very bad news (art by Buscema and Chic Stone):
As the U.S. Army somberly faced the assembled might of Asgard across the Potomac River, the scene cut away from America’s East Coast to its West for this issue’s final-page plot twist:
So that’s where the old man got off to. Too bad he didn’t leave behind any way to locate him in an emergency; but then, you could hardly say that such a self-involved, overconfident lack of foresight was off-brand for Odin — excuse me, “Orrin”.
Thor #234 devoted most of its pages to wrapping up the Loki storyline, as Thor ultimately overcame his villainous brother with help from Galactus’ former herald, Firelord. Meanwhile, on the subplot front, we were introduced to Orrin’s best friend in his new environment — a young migrant woman named Judith — and witnessed Sif and Hercules’ arrival on the seemingly deserted planet where dwelt the mysterious Kamo Tharnn. The following issue, #235, saw Thor return to his vigil at the bedside of the still desperately ill Jane Foster, while the quest for Kamo Tharnn’s Runestaff took center stage (art by Buscema and Joe Sinnott):
On their way to Tharnn’s palace, the immortal duo were attacked by some furry demons, whom they quickly defeated; moments later, they found themselves teleported directly to the royal throne room to be confronted by Tharnn himself:
While Gerry Conway never provided any more background for Kamo Tharnn than is included in the page above, Marvel readers who hung around long enough (and read widely enough) would eventually learn that he was one of the Elders of the Universe — the class of ancient cosmic heavyweights that also included the Collector and the Grandmaster, among others. (As such, he’d eventually get a second, more descriptive name: the Possessor.) In 1975, however, my younger self was probably more intrigued by Tharnn’s weapon than by the guy himself, as I assumed that Conway had “borrowed” the Runestaff from the Dorian Hawkmoon stories of one of my favorite fantasy writers, Michael Moorcock. (That said, to the best of my knowledge, Moorcock’s Runestaff doesn’t have a lion’s head set on one end… on the other hand, it does have actual, y’know runes carved on its surface, which is more than can be said for Marvel’s version, at least as drawn here by John Buscema. Just thought I’d point that out.)
Without much hope, Sif proceeded to make her case to her and Herc’s less-than-friendly host…
Unsurprisingly, the conversation quickly devolved into a battle, with Kamo Tharnn hurling bolts of magical force at our heroes. Hercules took the brunt of these blasts, moving ever closer to his foe until he was able to slug him into unconsciousness. Quickly, he picked up what they’d come for…
Sif’s ominous parting words would prove prophetic — though not for another year or two, and not in the pages of Thor; rather, when a legitimately aggrieved Kamo Tharnn came to Earth looking for his stolen property, the tale would be told in the pages of a Marvel comic that, at the time Thor #235 came out, didn’t exist yet: Champions, where our friend Hercules would soon be hanging his headpiece (though not quite yet, obviously).
Arriving back in Midgard at just where they needed to be — the hospital where Jane Foster lay dying — Sif and Hercules were surprised to find that the place had taken significant damage, and that Thor was absent. As they quickly learned, the Thunder God had been given little choice in the matter, as he’d been attacked in Jane’s room by his old enemy Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man (now fully recovered from having been liquefied back in Thor #207). The two were now battling it out in the streets, but though Hercules was poised to go to his comrade’s aid, Sif bade him stay, as time was of the essence, and they needed to conduct the “Spell of Revival” right away if Jane Foster was to be saved. “Though the cost will be great,” the goddess intoned portentously, “I cannot falter.”
Thor #236 brought the continuation of the Thor-Absorbing Man slugfest, as well as Sif’s chanting of the Spell of Renewal, which was attended by the Vizier as well as Hercules (art once again by Buscema and Sinnott)…
On the street outside the hospital, the battle raged on until Thor finally bested the Absorbing Man by tricking him into absorbing the power of a toy replica of the God of Thunder’s hammer, which reduced the villain’s strength and resilience to that of cardboard. Once Creel was (literally) boxed up by the authorities, Thor immediately flew back to rejoin Jane, his alarm freshly roused by the sight of a weird green glow from her window…
Months later, an editorial note on the letters page of Thor #239 (the first post-Gerry Conway issue) revealed that the idea of Sif sacrificing her own life-force to save Jane Foster didn’t come from Conway himself, but rather from Roy Thomas “as one of his eleventh-hour decisions as editor-in-chief” — which is interesting, given that Thomas last issue as Thor‘s editor was #232, published a whole four months earlier. Still, it suggests that Conway had decided to make the big move of bringing Jane Foster back in #231 without any real idea what he’d ultimately do with her… which was just the sort of seat-of-the-pants long-term plotting the writer had indulged in ever since coming to Marvel, despite the relatively early accumulation of evidence (cough, “Mister Kline”, cough) that he maybe wasn’t all that great at it.
But, let’s move on. In Thor #237, Thor and Jane Foster — and Thor’s human alter ego, Dr. Donald Blake, for whom Jane had of course previously worked as a romantically-smitten nurse — attempted to pick up the threads of their once-entwined lives. The story also checked back in with “Orrin”, who had been seen displaying a seemingly superhuman level of strength and durability on two separate occasions — the first in issue #234, when the old man casually swatted an out-of-control car out of the way before it could strike him and his young friend Judith; and the second in #236, when he easily subdued a group of men who were harassing him and Judith outside a grocery store. Though Judith and the other members of her community respected Orrin’s privacy, this development was something that they didn’t feel they could ignore (art yet again by Buscema and Sinnott)…
Meanwhile, back in New York, Thor and Jane tried to enjoy a quiet evening at home, only to have it spoiled by the intrusion of yet another of the Odinson’s old-time foes, Ulik, who shows up with a band of trolls to take Jane hostage as a means of coercing Thor to join Ulik’s struggle against his enemy, the Troll King Geirrodur, and the latter’s massive, ultra-powerful henchman, Zotarr. Naturally,Thor had little choice but to agree to Ulik’s terms, and so grimly accompanied the trolls as they re-entered the tunnel they’d burrowed into the midst of Manhattan to make their way to Geirrodur’s subterranean realm.
Thor’s journey into the depths continued into issue #238, which also saw Orrin decide to get involved when hired thugs attempted to break up a long-running strike by grape-pickers that seems very likely to have been primarily inspired by the real-world Delano Grape Strike of 1965-70 (art still by Buscema and Sinnott, who else?):
Orrin’s actions were sufficient to drive away the strike-breakers, although their leader swore things would go differently the next time. Meanwhile, in the troll-realm, Thor proved as good as his word, handily defeating Geirrodur’s champion on Ulik’s behalf… although, as it turned out, that particular deed wasn’t even needed to secure Jane Foster’s rescue, after all…
And with that final page of issue #238, Gerry Conway’s four-year stint as the writer of Thor — a run certainly notable for its length, if nothing else — came to an end. It seems to have been an abrupt departure — perhaps because Conway’s concurrent departure from Marvel Comics overall was less than fully amicable — with no mention of it being made on the book’s letters pages, and with a “Next Issue” blurb for Thor #239 that doesn’t match up very well with what we readers actually got in that issue, suggesting (to me, at least) that Conway himself probably put it together. Who was this “forgotten foe” whose return therein was promised supposed to be? And what was “Odinsong!” supposed to mean? Did Conway intend to have Orrin inspire the picketing farm workers with his vocal renditions of half-remembered Asgardian battle-lays? Alas, we’ll likely never know the answers to those questions.
We now come (at last!) to the main focus of our post — the three-issue “Gods of Egypt” trilogy that kicked off in June, 1975 with Thor #239. This beginning chapter’s cover illustration by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins would prove to be one of my favorite Thor covers of this era, as evidenced by the fact that, not too long after this book first came out, I paid a local silkscreen artist to “adapt” the central figure of the God of Thunder to produce a one-of-a-kind T-shirt that I wore for the next several years. (Hey, it’s not like there was any licensed Marvel apparel available for purchase in 1975, alright? And I’m sure that the statue of limitations has run out on that particular act of IP rights infringement by now. Hasn’t it?)
The only major creative contributor to Thor #238 who returned for “Time-Quake!” (a considerably less poetic title than “Odinsong!”, but whatta ya gonna do) was inker Joe Sinnott; taking over pencils for this issue and next was John Buscema’s younger brother Sal, whose style, though perhaps more static than his sibling’s, still bore enough similarity to it that the transition from one penciller wasn’t all that jarring. (Sinnott’s inks also helped provide continuity here, obviously.)
As for the writer — as we’ve already noted, this was the scripting debut on Thor of Roy Thomas (also credited as editor for this issue, per the special deal he had negotiated with Marvel upon resigning as editor-in-chief). Per information shared in this issue’s letters column, issue #239 was supposed to be the start of a substantial run on the series by Thomas, whom we were told had “been waiting years for a crack at writing it”, but who’d regretfully decided that he wouldn’t have time to take it on after all because of his commitment to other projects, including (for the record) “the swiftly upcoming Treasury Edition adaptation of MGM’s classic movie ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (and some sequels to boot), a few more issues of THE SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN per year, [and] some new and time-consuming plans for our $1 UNKNOWN WORLDS OF SCIENCE FICTION mag”. So Thomas would only be around long enough to plot a couple of issues “which make use of his longtime interest in Egyptology”, after which he’d be turning the assignment over to Len Wein.
Intriguingly enough, given the short amount of time Thomas had given himself to scratch his Egyptological itch, his script for #239 takes some time to get around to introducing that plot element. Rather, he takes a full nine pages to completely resolve the conflict with the trolls — which strikes your humble blogger as being about seven pages more than necessary to get that particular job done, but who knows? Maybe Thomas wanted to write about Ulik and Geirrodur almost as much as he wanted to write about Egypt. In any event, it’s not until page 9 that Thor and Jane emerge from the giant hole Ulik and company left in a busy Manhattan street, at the edge of which they find Hercules (who was visiting Coney Island with the Vizier when Ulik first attacked) and a newly-promoted Lt. Blumkenn waiting for them. It takes the better part of another page for Thor and Herc to repair the street, after which they’re both approached by a bespectacled stranger. After identifying himself as a representative of the University of California at Los Angeles, the man invites Hercules to UCLA “to lecture at our College of Ancient Studies — on the truth behind the old Greek myths!” And Herc is game: “In sooth, ‘twould be an honor, mortal…”
I’ve never been quite certain whether or not Roy Thomas was actually annoyed by the liberties Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had taken with the traditional versions of the Norse myths most of us are familiar with — but he was certainly interested in them. For, while the writer may have merely played the discrepancies for mild laughs in the sequence above, upon his return to Thor a few years hence he’d begin crafting a whole multi-issue storyline around such bits as Marvel’s Thor being blond instead of red-headed, Odin having two eyes rather than one, and so on.
Cover to Chanpions #1 (Oct., 1975). Art by Gil Kane and Dan Adkins.
As for Hercules’ decision to relocate to California — you might expect that Thomas is setting things up for Herc to run into the amnesiac All-Father, but you’d be wrong. Rather, what we have here is the Prince of Power’s formal removal from this title’s supporting cast, so that he can hit the West Coast just in time to help found a brand-new super-team — the Champions — whose series will make its debut the following month. (Just FYI, we won’t be covering that first issue on this blog; but, as a sop to any Champs fans out there, you can at least check out the book’s cover at right).
Speaking of the All-Father, our story now shifts scenes to “a rundown neighborhood on the outskirts of San Diego, California“, where we find Orrin and Judith attending a workers’ meeting presided over by Tomas Chamaro, the leader of the officially-unrecognized grape-pickers’ union. Unsurprisingly, the meeting is crashed by an armed band of strike-busters, whose leader, Connors, orders the attendees to immediately disperse…
I’m not sure just where Gerry Conway had been planning to take the grape-pickers strike subplot, but something tells me that Orrin’s declaration to the effect of “I’ve taught them how to fight for themselves, so my work here is done!” wasn’t quite the resolution he’d had in mind; after all, it’s not like the strikers hadn’t already been shown fighting back against the strike-busters during their previous confrontation, last issue. But Roy Thomas is evidently done with all that, as we’re clearly moving on now to something very different…
Meanwhile, back in New York, Jane Foster convinces a mopey Don Blake that he won’t be able to rest easy until he finds out what’s happened to Big Daddy Odin, so he should just change back into Thor and get on with it, already. Don agrees, and does his cane-stamping thing… and in the next moment, Thor is telling Jane, “Fare thee well till I do return…”
And with that final page, we have the last words penned by Roy Thomas that’ll appear in these pages until Thor #272 (Jun., 1978) — though, as already noted, he’d still be providing the plot for the next chapter in the present storyline.
Thor #240 would arrive on stands in July, 1975 bearing a cover by Gil Kane and Klaus Janson (with probable touch-ups by John Romita); Janson would also be responsible for inking Sal Buscema’s pencils, as we’d all learn when we turned to the opening splash page:
As much as I always appreciated Joe Sinnott’s consistently fine work, I was nevertheless happy to see Janson’s finishes on this issue, as I felt his detailed textures and deep shadows added something extra to Sal Buscema’s pencils that few other inkers — even really good ones, like Sinnott — usually managed to pull off quite as well. Meanwhile, my younger self had no real opinion at all regarding this issue’s scripter, Bill Mantlo, simply because I’d read little to nothing by him at this point; having landed his first professional gig at Marvel as a colorist in mid-1974, most of the writing the then 24-year-old Mantlo had done to date had been for the “Sons of the Tiger” feature in Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, a black-and-white magazine I didn’t read.
Before moving on from this splash, we should also take note of its unusual credit of having three editors — the so-called “triumvirate of tamperers” comprised of Roy Thomas, Marv Wolfman, and Len Wein. One may assume that Thomas’ involvement was a continuation of his writer-editor role from issue #239; meanwhile Wolfman was in the process of taking over from Wein as the overall editor of Marvel’s color comics line at this time.
One thing that really stands out to me upon re-reading this story today is just how wordy Mantlo’s script is — even by the standards of the Marvel comics of this era, which frequently tended to err on the side of excessive verbosity. I don’t recall much of Mantlo’s later output being quite this overwritten, so I’m inclined to believe he allowed himself to get a little carried away when given this assignment, the highest-profile showcase he’d yet had to show his writing chops.
Moving on into the city itself, Thor finds its streets silent and largely empty. Soon enough, however, he spies someone he knows — or at least thinks he does: “Hold! Can yon drawn and listless figure be Tyr — he whom my father did name God of War?”
Cover to Thor #312 (Oct., 1981). Art by Keith Pollard and Terry Austin.
Tyr, the Norse God of War, is, of course, a character drawn directly from mythology; while he’d appeared in a few very early “Thor” and “Tales of Asgard” stories in Journey into Mystery, this cameo was the first time he’d shown up since 1964. Though he would never become a “A”-lister in the Marvel version of Asgard, he would at least eventually be given more than a walk-on role by later storytellers such as writer Doug Moench, who’d cast him as an antagonist for Thor (probably taking a cue from how Tyr’s Grecian counterpart, Ares, has traditionally been portrayed as a foe of Hercules in the Marvel Universe); he’d also get a re-design that made him a brunette, rather than a red-head.
For the record, back in 1975, my younger self was pleased to see Tyr show up, however briefly, as I was always happy whenever Marvel found a way to work elements from the traditional myths into Thor — which isn’t to say that the discrepancies between Marvel’s lore and that which one might find in the Old Norse Eddas ever caused me any distress, because they didn’t.
That actually provides a nice segue into the next scene, which features my single favorite plot development of this issue (and the one which had more to do than any other with my decision to write a letter of comment about it) — a scene that gave us the return of three Asgardian characters whom I, just like that dude from UCLA in #239, knew very well had no analogues whatsoever in “authentic” Norse mythology…
Fandral the Dashing, Hogun the Grim, and Volstagg the Voluminous — the Warriors Three — had been my favorite members of the Thunder God’s supporting cast since the moment I’d first laid eyes on them (which, somewhat ironically, hadn’t been in an issue of Thor at all, but rather in Silver Surfer #4 [Feb., 1969]). Though he’d made regular use of them through the first couple of years of his run, Gerry Conway appears to have tired of these guys sometime in mid-1973, and their last on-panel appearance had been in issue #218. They hadn’t been written out, exactly; rather, Thor had left them behind when he left Asgard for an adventure in outer space, and when he came back home, they simply didn’t seem to be around. (Neither was Thor’s other pal, Balder the Brave, but Balder always struck me as kind of dull, so I never cared about him as much as I did the W.T..)
In an attempt to rouse his comrades from their torpor, Thor takes the drastic action of smashing a bust of Odin with his hammer; however, this only serves to make them suspect that he’s an impostor. But, since he’s able to wield Mjolnir, they realize that can’t be the answer…
Thor’s answer to Fandral’s question regarding Sif is awfully vague — “Nay, Fandral! Milady Sif hath not returned! She hath chosen — another path!” But it serves for the nonce, allowing our hero to redirect the conversation back to the current crisis. After some group fretting about whether Ragnarok might be in the offing, the Vizier — who’s known about Odin’s absence since at least issue #230, incidentally — decides it’s time at last for a Hail Mary — i.e., they should try to see if they can get some information from “the far-seeing Head of Mimir!”
Mimir — another authentic figure of Norse mythology, but one who, unlike Tyr, is making his Marvel Universe debut with this issue — shows Thor and company several scenes concerning Odin’s adventures in California, ending with the All-Father’s silent passage into the pyramid. But who are the three mysterious figures who appear to have somehow entranced Odin? Thor requests that Mimir tell them more…
I didn’t know a whole lot about Egyptian mythology in 1975 (and to be honest, I don’t know as much in 2025 as I feel I ought to), so I by and large accepted the version of events offered here as (to borrow a phrase from Roy Thomas) “according to Hoyle”. And, in fact, this account does seem to follow the basic outline of the Osiris myth, at least up to the point where Seth triumphs over Horus and, as a result, Roman forces defeat those of Egypt in the Battle of Actium in 31 BCE. (I’m pretty sure that Thomas and/or Bill Mantlo made that last bit up.)
Of course, one might point out that the “serpent” motif both Mantlo’s script and Sal Buscema’s character design assign to Seth (aka Set) is somewhat misleading, given that Seth’s primary animal representation in ancient art was the, er, Set Animal, which wasn’t very reptilian-looking at all. Or that Seth wasn’t actually a god of death (that was more in Osiris’ wheelhouse, actually). Or that in most tellings, Seth was the brother of Osiris, rather than his son. But, on the other hand, mythology ain’t history, so it’s really hard to say when someone’s got it “wrong”.
Leaving the Warriors Three in charge of protecting Asgard, Thor hies himself to Midgard — more specifically, to the outskirts of San Diego, where Jane Foster has herself just arrived after catching the first plane out of New York…
Thor declares his intention to immediately take matters into his own godly hands, regardless of U.S. military protocol. As the Son of Odin sees things, his omnipotent pops is clearly entranced, and thus unable to effect his own rescue; and so…
Wow. Again, my knowledge of Egyptian mythology was even more limited in 1975 than it is today, so much so that, unlike with Osiris, Isis, and the boys, I may well not have even heard of Atum–Re. Even so, the meaning of this closing scene seemed very clear — in addition to being the All-Father of Asgard, Odin had somehow also fathered the Egyptian pantheon in “a previous incarnation“. If that were true, it would have enormous implications for our understanding of the cosmology of the Marvel Universe, so, like I said… wow.
And that’s all there was for Thor #240, the issue that got my eighteen-year-old self off his duff long enough to pen an LOC. But it’s not all there was for this storyline, obviously — so I hope no one will mind if we forge on ahead to cover the third and last chapter, which arrived in August of ’75 in the form of Thor #241.
That issue came bearing a very pleasant surprise — the first new Thor cover pencilled by Jack Kirby since issue #177, back in 1970. I would have already been aware of Kirby’s return to Marvel from rival DC Comics by this time — and I probably knew that the only one of his old Marvel titles he’d be drawing (and writing) stories for (at least for now) was Captain America — so I don’t believe I had any expectations of seeing his art anywhere inside this issue. Still, it was great to have him back illustrating the character he’d done so much to make my favorite Marvel superhero, even in a limited capacity. (For the record, the cover was inked by Frank Giacoia.)
The credits on the story’s splash page gave evidence of further changes on the creative end since the last issue, as Bill Mantlo scored a sole writing credit for this one (though it’s hard to imagine that Roy Thomas, who’d launched this storyline in the first place, had no input whatsoever into its resolution). In addition, both Sal Buscema and Klaus Janson had departed, their replacements being the same team that had been handling things in the last few Gerry Conway-written issues — John Buscema and Joe Sinnott. And as much as I’d always enjoyed the work of the J. Buscema-Sinnott team on Thor, Fantastic Four, or anything else they did, I know that I was at least a little disappointed by the departure of the S. Buscema-Janson combo, who if nothing else had brought a fresh look to Thor.
Still, it was only a mild disappointment, and one I was able to quickly put beside me as the narrative got underway…
Thor continues his pleading, which is presently joined by Jane; but the effects wrought by the Heliopolitans’ “ceremony of rebirth” remain in force…
But Thor continues to persist in his efforts to reach his father, even when “Atum-Re”, at the urging of Horus, easily blasts him off his feet with a bolt of power from the axe he now holds. As a staggered Thor grimly prepares to try yet once more, Jane begs for an end to the seemingly pointless violence; and in that moment, Osiris conceives of a possible solution:
Thor and Jane follow the others inside the stone pyramid — which turns out to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside (among other things)…
With the “Atum-force” apparently a bust, at least for the moment, Thor leaps forward to engage the enemy — as does Horus. As the two gods fight together side by side, the Egyptian deity wonders aloud at the Thunder God’s ferocity, given the latter’s earlier reluctance to join this venture…
For a fleeting moment, it seems that the combined might of the Heliopolitans and Thor might have turned the tide…
Horus begs his brother to take him instead of their parents, but Seth says he’d rather watch Horus crawl for a while. Thor then flies to Seth’s ship, to challenge him one on one, god to god…
Required to keep an eye on Seth’s death-dealing left hand as well as on his sword, Thor is slowly forced back against the ship’s prow…
As Seth falls to his apparent doom (don’t worry, Bill Mantlo will bring him back in a year’s time to fight Thor — and the Thing — in Marvel Two-in-One #22-23), Osiris and Isis are restored to their youthful-looking selves. It looks like it should be time for smiles all around, right? OK, maybe not…
While my younger self enjoyed Thor #241 overall, I was still a little disappointed in how the whole “Odin is Atum-Re” business was ultimately resolved. On the last page of the previous issue, and even on the opening pages of this one, it seemed clear that the Heliopolitans had somehow roused a previous, Egyptian incarnation of the All-Father from deep within the psyche of the god we know as Odin. But by the time we get to the actual fight against Seth and his skeleton-men, that no longer seems to be the case. Rather, Odin has simply been entranced by the Egyptian gods into believing that he’s Atum-Re, so that he can wield the Atum-force on their behalf. Which, to this reader, was (and is) a much less interesting idea than the original proposition. Had Roy Thomas in fact intended to fully commit to the reincarnation concept in all its ramifications, but then, somehow, replacement scripter Bill Mantlo quite literally lost the plot? We’ll probably never know. Back in August, 1975, eighteen-year-old me just had to shrug off the feeling of being mildly let down, focus on the storyline’s positives, and anticipate the advent of Thor‘s new writer, Len Wein.
Wein’s run on the title would eventually span 30 issues — not quite as long a stint as Gerry Conway’s, but still fairly impressive — and he arrived on the scene prepared to hit the ground running with his own new storylines. Still, like Roy Thomas before him, he had a few loose ends to tie up before moving forward, beginning with the fact that, after Thor, Jane, and Odin emerge from the pyramid into the Southern California sunshine, said pyramid is still sitting there on the ground. So, Thor obliges the perturbed military commander (not to mention the local residents) by using Mjolnir to whip up a vortex that not only whisks the ginormous stone structure away, but even restores what its original eruption from the ground had displaced (art by the returning John Buscema and Joe Sinnott)…
‘Twould appear that Len Wein was no more interested in writing about an amnesiac All-Father than Roy Thomas had been in chronicling the adventures of Orrin the farm worker, would it not?
Oh, no. This again? Shouldn’t Odin have learned at least a little humility from his recent experiences? I guess not.
Hmm. Odin sure seems to think he’s learned something from his recent experiences. I guess time will tell — although, given that it’ll be another (checks notes) twenty issues before the one, true, accept-no-Mangogs-in-disguise-as-substitutes All-Father of Asgard makes a non-flashback on-panel appearance in this title. By which time most of us readers (and maybe even Len Wein) will likely have forgotten all about Old Man Orrin.
But, never mind all that for now. Let’s return to Thor and Jane Foster, who’ve taken the non-stop Air Mjolnir direct flight from SoCal to NYC — and, more specifically, to the exterior window-ledge of Jane’s apartment — only for Thor to be alarmed by the sounds of unknown voices coming from behind the glass…
Cover to Thor #144 (Feb., 1976). Art by Rich Buckler, Joe Sinnott, and John Romita.
And that’s where we’ll leave Thor and company for now… with a scene that confirmed for me, back in September, 1975, that my faves, the Warriors Three, weren’t going to be immediately consigned back to limbo by the title’s latest writer. That reassuring fact alone was enough for me to get on board with whatever else Len Wein had in mind, at least for the nonce. And I’m sure that those good vibes were still in effect a couple of months later, when I picked up Thor #244, and… perhaps before reading “This Is the Way the World Ends!”, perhaps after (or, perhaps, even while still in the middle of the story) I turned to the issue’s installment of “The Hammer Strikes!” letters page, and mine eyes didst fall upon the following missive — which, wouldja believe, actually led off the column [!]:
Alright, so, I’m not going to lie to you; re-reading that closing line today makes me cringe some. Besides the fact that it makes me sound a good bit younger than I was at the time, I was clearly trying way too hard to charm whichever “Asgardian Chroniclers” might see my missive and pass judgement on it. But, having said that, I think that the body of the letter is… mostly OK? A little hyperbolic here and there, sure, but, overall, it reads to me as a set of reasonable opinions, reasonably well expressed. If nothing else, you can certainly tell what it was I was looking for in a Thor comic book in 1975.
Of course, I’m not so vain as to think it was purely the quality of my prose that resulted in my letter getting published. I’m sure it also helped — probably a lot — that, along with the two letters that immediately followed it on the page, it gave Marvel a perfect opportunity to plug an upcoming project. But, hey, read on for yourself, and you’ll see what I mean…
Cover to Marvel Spotlight #30 (Oct., 1976). Art by John Buscema (or maybe Rich Buckler) and Joe Sinnott.
Anyone wanna bet that your humble blogger wasn’t there when, in July, 1976 — one full year following the triumphant return of the Warriors Three in Thor #240, as it happened — the issue of Marvel Spotlight starring my boys (which ended up being #30, rather than the promised #28) finally arrived in spinner racks? No? How about a wager on whether I limited myself to buying a single copy? Ah, you all know me too well by now, I guess. But, hey — even if you don’t want any of that action, I hope you’ll check back here in a year’s time just to see whether or not my nineteen-year-old self ultimately considered the 60 cents he dropped on two issues of Marvel Spotlight #30 to have been money well spent.
Good morning, Alan! Enjoyed this latest annotated perusal through comics of yore. Thor was also one of my favorites too, although at this point I’d only read a small portion of Kirby’s run on the mag, but what I had seen had made a very good impression. Most of what I’d read of Conway’s run was entertaining enough to my pre-teen self, although by now having read far more of the Lee-Kirby era, the Conway era comes off as a pale shadow in comparison, even if looking fairly awesome due to the artwork of John Buscema. I’d also become a mythology buff at age 9, although mostly into the Greco/Norse material covered by Bullfinch and Hamilton, among others and only a touch of Egyptian. I did get to visit the pyramids back in 1996, and even went into an underground tomb filled with exquisite Egyptian art from about 3,000 years ago. Set’s animal, best as I can recall, was actually a jackal, which ancient Egyptians apparently deemed a more worthy creature than the cretinous professor depicted by Conway in what would be his last issue of Amazing Spider-Man also from 50 years ago this month. Admittedly, the depicted symbol of Set strikes me as resembling a cross between a jackal and an aardvark, albeit with a much more pointed snout. The Egyptian affair did pique my interest as a 13 year old, although it didn’t exactly rise up to the level of excitement Kirby brought to the mag when he had Thor get thoroughly mixed up dealing with the Greek pantheon (and had been recently reprinted, at least in part, in the 3rd Marvel Treasury Edition).
Anyhow, this wasn’t the first and certainly not the last time Roy Thomas would take over a series sounding all gung-ho doing so, only to hang on for only a few issues before departing due to too many other commitments. At least the Warriors Three made their comeback and would again become regulars on the mag for some time to come. When used well, they made Thor more fun to read, IMO. I didn’t particularly care for the swapping out of Sif for Jane and it’d be at least another 20 years before I read enough back issues of Thor to witness Jane’s epic failure at becoming a goddess and the introduction of Sif as a regular supporting character. Conway & John B.’s version of Jane hardly seemed the same as the Lee-Kirby version, certainly more bold and spunky, although if I recall correctly that was partly due to the spirit of Sif residing within her (I haven’t read the more recent comics wherein Jane was transformed into a female version of Thor — I’d seen it and was intrigued but not enough to resume collecting again).
I know I read that letter of yours all those years — decades! – ago, but fun to see your early writing style in true Marvelite mode, and even a response from one of the trained armadillos, possibly Len Wein himself.
In fairness, “jackal” as a cowardly, sneaky scavengers has been the image they’ve had for most of my life. Inaccurate but it’s not like it’s Conway who got the animal wrong.
It’s struck me just now that prior to Captain Marvels etc , that though he had many earthbound adventures , Thor was probably the main original character who could effortlessly operate on a cosmic inter planetary/galaxy scale.
I must remember next time I am offered a cup of tea, to say “Thou has leave to approach the Presence!”
All thanks to Kirby. Under Kirby, the FF had a few inter-planetary adventures even within their first couple of years. But with the Rigellians/Ego storyline, Kirby made Thor the first truly cosmic hero, spending several issues at a time in space, well before the Silver Surfer got his own series and Marvel’s Captain Marvel was introduced. There were several single-issue stories wherein the FF went to the moon or to another planet, or to the Microverse, but to my recall the storyline in which Ben Grimm was kidnapped and forced to become a gladiator for the amusement of the Skrulls was the first extended story where one of them spent several issues on another planet — which just so happened to look a lot like Chicago in the 1920s & ’30s, but also with a mix of early Roman Empire gladiatorial style battles to the death.
Yeah was thinking of the Rigellians etc and unlike the FF who had to usually commission some kind of transport , aside from dipping into the Negative Zone, Thor could whiz practically anywhere.
I know Alan has written on the FF gangster planet storyline and I read that Kirby knowing he was moving on, held back any major new characters for the latter part of his run so that would have served to fill a few issues but I have to say that by that point Kirby and Lee were like the late Beatles – the end was near- relationships were frayed, content was no longer ground breaking, but , taken for what they were to a young kid back then, what an incredible well oiled storytelling machine they still were in those final issues together.
In fact, to push my Lennon/McCartney analogy further, the Beatles (though formed earlier) first appeared at the Cavern club in Nov 1961 (cover month of FF 1) and Kirby’s last issue was 1970, the year the Beatles also broke up, (though not actually legally dissolved til 1974)
Yes, yes, and also yes! I was thinking that – though the FF encountered Galactus and the Avengers would sometimes encounter various Kree or Skrulls – THOR was the most “cosmic” title, what with Ego the Living Planet, the encounter with Him, and even the stories set in Asgard. But as you say, it would take the arrival of Jim Starlin to show how trippy comics could be.
My favorite Thor runs were those by Lee and Kirby, followed by Walt Simonson’s work of the early ’80s (though I disliked the print quality of Marvel and DC at that time).
I also own two late ’60s issues pencilled by Neal Adams and inked by Joe Sinnott. The John Buscema-Sinnott issues are solid, classic Marvel, but this Sal Buscema-Klaus Janson issues is a revelation.
Sal was usually a very bland penciller, in my estimation, but Janson really invigorated his work, as I suspect Tom Palmer or Dick Giordano would have as well. KJ’s inks really notch up the visual quality in an unexpected way.
Janson also did a great job of enhancing Sal’s pencils on the Defenders during Gerber’s run.
Janson’s a great inker, to be sure; especially the work he did on Miller’s Daredevil, but there’s a glossy quality to his work here (glossy may not be the best word, but it was the first word that came to mind) that I didn’t much care for. Plus Janson is another one of those inkers who has a way of burying the pencils under his own style, which I don’t care for.
The one panel where Adams shows Thor (technically Loki in Thor’s body) lifting a steam shovel to throw at Thor-in-Loki’s-Body is amazing. Even after years of seeing Thor lift the impossible, it still looks astonishing.
Confession: While I admire his storytelling and the qualities that started Marvel on the best path to success, I’ve never actually liked Kirby’s art. For all that he and Ditko are as responsible as Stan Lee for Marvel still existing to this day I just can’t get into their work. Ditko’s social beliefs and Kirby being so bad at dialog and naming characters doesn’t help.
And I got into Norse mythology before comics so while I enjoyed Thor mostly, Sif drove me nuts and I cheered when she was written out.
Having read little Marvel during the Silver Age, most of the Kirby I knew in the Bronze Age was post-New Gods Kirby. For the life of me I couldn’t see why everyone gushed about his genius.
Now that I’ve read more of his earlier work, I like him a lot better.
Long entry! Glad I brewed my Saturday morning coffee and had it at hand while I perused Alan’s reminiscences of mid-1970s Thor.
Seth was a major foe of the Tom DeFalco & Ron Frenz run on Thor in the late 1980s, followed by DeFalco & Frenz’s work in the early 1990s on the Thunderstrike spin-off, and then later on again in Spider-Girl. I never knew how exactly he’d been first introduced into the Marvel universe, so I appreciated Alan’s in-depth recap & commentary on these issues.
Alan, I was a fairly prolific letterhack in my high school & college days… and looking back on a lot of those letters nowadays, I often cringe!
Regarding the original Jack Kirby run of Thor, yeah, I really need to read those stories. It’s on my looooong list of stuff to get to. I recently picked up the Tales of Asgard trade paperback that came out several years ago for a mere five bucks, reprinting vintage mythological Kirby, but the modern recoloring of the stories is really a turn-off. Over on Facebook, colorist supreme José Villarrubia often comments on the harshness & lack of faithfulness on modern recoloring of Golden, Silver & Bronze Age reprints, and the Tales of Asgard book is exactly the sort of thing he’s always talking about.
I find the peak Lee/Kirby years on Thor very reminiscent of Claremont’s work a decade later — constant interweaving of plots and arcs so by the time one problem goes down, two more are rising. And yet (again like Claremont/Cockrum and Claremont/Byrne) individual issues always satisfy.
That is standard “soap opera” fare, having multiple subplots that carry the story forward even after the main arc has concluded—with the hope of keeping (and building) the viewing audience.
Thanks Alan. There is actually quite a bit to unpack here.
I had no idea at the time why Gerry Conway left Thor so abruptly but it was apparently a big deal. Conway had been writing Thor for nearly 4 years, it was his longest running assignment and while he had left other books to take on series like Spider-Man and FF he had stuck with Thor. It is interesting to note that while Conway had a long run on Thor, he later admitted in interviews that he made various changes to make things more interesting as he was starting to get bored. One of those changes was bringing in Hercules as the main additional supporting character and dropping nearly all of the other supporting Asgardian characters (except of course for Sif). The other big change was bringing back Jane Foster. The problem was, while it is clear that Conway had read past issues of Thor (since he brought up a lot of old villains and plot ideas in new forms), it is not clear how carefully he had read Thor 136. It is very clear that Odin had cast a spell of forgetfulness on Jane but not clear what happened to Thor. I remember that fans were kind of upset that Thor got over Jane very quickly and was now suddenly with Sif (at the end of the very same issue!). Perhaps Gerry (or Roy) thought stating that Odin had cast a spell on Thor would finally explain this. What I know is, I first started reading this series with Thor 145, so I was only familiar with Thor and Sif (in real time together about 9 years). I only knew about Jane from seeing old reprints of earlier stories and didn’t think much about her as a romantic interest for Thor. The problem, I believe for Gerry, and other Thor writers as well, is that nobody really seemed to know what to do with Thor and Sif as a couple. Nobody wanted to marry them off (including Lee and Kirby), so they were just there. I can understand that Gerry probably wanted to create a conflict and cause some Marvel like problems. But looking back on these issues (231-236), Thor’s behavior is terrible..he sulks and yells at people and the treatment of Sif is also awful. We see Sif being brave and self-sacrificing in ways we’ve never seen before and Thor doesn’t seem to care. I remember letter writers at the time were horrified at the way Sif was treated. To make matters worse, Conway’s writing was getting very sloppy. He never revealed what the mysterious menace was that Thor was facing in Thor 229-230; Roger Stern would address this in Doctor Strange’s series some 5 years later. And there was a note on the cover of Thor 230 about the surprise return of an unexpected character and inside..nothing. I suspect that was supposed to be Jane Foster, who actually returned in Thor 231. This indicates to me that Roy Thomas who trusted Conway a great deal, was not doing much in the way of editing the book at this time.
Then of course there is the story of Gerry’s departure from Marvel. I’m guessing you’ll discuss it eventually but in August 1975 it was announced that Marv Wolfman was the new editor-in-chief at Marvel and Len Wein had stepped down. It is a little confusing as to when that really happened since several comics that came out in July had Marv’s name as editor (including the previously discussed Dr. Strange 10). It appears that Gerry thought he would be the next in line to be EIC (though why he would want the job of managing nearly 50 books, a nearly impossible task, who knows). He was so upset when Marv got the job that allegedly he left to go to DC. He did finish his Jackal storyline in Spider-Man so his last issue there was S-M 149, but I guess he decided to quit Thor without leaving a plot for Thor 239. Conway seemed to like using Ulik as a villain for Thor, so he probably planned for a full issue of Ulik in 239, but it is clear Roy had his own ideas and wanted to get rid of Ulik in the first half of the issue. I remember being very pleased when Roy showed up to write Thor 239 and then disappointed to learn he couldn’t stay. I also liked the combination of Sal and Klaus in Thor 240 and was pleased to see the return of many old favorite Asgardian characters. But you pointed out something interesting, Alan, that I did not notice before…namely there were too many word balloons and they are actually blocking out some of the art! I was not familiar with Bill Mantlo’s name at this time but he did a competent job on 240-241.
I’m not sure if you noticed, but at the end of the story in 241 (by Mantlo), Thor states that he accepts Odin’s decree that Thor and Jane cannot be together. It appears Len completely ignores this in the beginning of Thor 342 that you showed, when Thor just tells a no longer amnesiac Odin that Thor and Jane are together again, and Odin behaves exactly as he did in all those old Journey into Mystery and Thor stories from 1963-1966 (Groan!).
I don’t know exactly when it happened but as we moved into 1976 and I was in college, I began quitting a lot of comics and Thor would be one of them. When I missed Spider-Man 150, I decided to drop Spider-Man so missed Len’s whole run. I missed most of Len’s run on Thor, but did eventually return to Thor during Roy’s actual run on Thor.
I did learn that Len brought back Sif (in 248 or 249..not sure which); it’s not clear what happened there. Perhaps Len did not want to write Jane Foster. And nobody seemed to want to do much with Don Blake. It’s interesting that ever since Thor 159 when it was revealed that Don Blake was just a construct of Odin, nobody, including Stan Lee, knew what to do with him and Blake would pop up sometimes..but not much.
So..the return of Jane Foster only lasted about a year. And although the Egyptian Gods were kind of interesting they did not appear that much but would appear once in a while. And if Odin was supposed to learn humility he didn’t learn much. And as I later learned, it would take nearly a year to find out the reason for what was wrong with the Asgardians in Thor 240 (spoiler: it was Mangog!).
Thanks for the memories Alan.
I think the problem with Donald Blake is that even when he appeared regularly throughout the Journey into Mystery era, he was a high contender for blandest alter ego of any Marvel hero He mostly appeared to moon over his nurse in a sort of half-hearted homage to the Clark/Lois/Superman triad, “oh, she adores my oh so muscular godly alter ego but won’t look twice at me because I have bum leg and am weak and skinny ….” Once Kirby really got going with more epic storylines, including the “Trial of the Gods”, the first Destroyer melee and then Hercules/Pluto saga, and after Jane Foster found out for certain, no bluffing, that Dr. Blake was in fact the mortal guise of Thor, Blake’s appearances became ever more rare, several issues at a time. He simply wasn’t as integral to the series as Peter Parker was to Spider-Man, Matt Murdock to Daredevil or even Tony Stark was to Iron Man in their own series. There was a sort of similar problem in Captain America, as Steve Rogers didn’t even have an actual career and precious little life shown outside of being Captain America throughout his Tales of Suspense years and up through at least issue 120 of his own title (my collection has a gap between that issue and 153, which I don’t feel any great inclination to fill in). I don’t think most readers missed Donald Blake that much because there wasn’t much about him to miss. Thor himself was more entertaining, particularly when he was hanging out or on adventure with his Asgardian pals.
Donald Blake, M.D, was probably intended (in 1862, right after medical dramas busted out on TV in the Fall of 1961) as a version of James Kildare, M.D,
He is the same kind of well-dressed. vagally ethical, vaguely highly competent Doc that Jim Kildare is also shown as in the early seasons of Doctor Kildare.
It is also unclear whether Blake is a PCP or a Specialist, (like a sugreon0. In later episodes of Dr. Kildare, he is in an Internal Medicine Residency. Early on, both Dr. Kildare and Thor made what type of Medicine the protagonist is practicing a function of the story.
Dr, Strange is, in contrast,, an arrogant Neurosurgeon (like, Ben Case), but in private practice (until he injures his hands)
Since Steven Strange, MD is probably registered with the Office of Professional Medical Conduct as a retired Physician so medical issues rarely come up.
Strange acts as a consultant on a Neurosurgical case in GS Defender’s #4, I would assume he continues to maintain his License to perform Medical services on a pro bono basis, within the scope of his limitations to his dexterity. Strange would have to maintain some level of Malpractice insurance to do this
I have always thought it might be interesting to do a formal article in a Healthcare Management Professional Journal on changes to Medicine from the mid-1950s to now by looking at how Medicine has been portrayed in pop culture, say from Not as a Stranger and Medic to Scrubs,.
After about 1965, when Dr. Blake’s appearances in Thor became much rarer, in both Thor and the Avengers he’d still show up every so often over the next 20 or so years whenever some sort of medical emergency came up requiring his medical expertise and he tended to treated as an expert on all aspects of medical care and surgery, just as pretty much all scientists were made out to be experts on pretty much everything dealing with science and technology. In neither case quite exactly how things are in the real world. I recall that at some point in the late 1960s, Lee felt compelled to include a scene showing that Dr. Blake was no longer a regular practitioner, and someone else had taken over his old office. Once the long simmering subplot of Thor’s desire to renounce his godly identity to be able to pursue his romance with Jane was resolved and Jane written out as a regular supporting character, there wasn’t a great need to keep showing Thor changing into Donald Blake. aside from tending to an ailing Sif or being blackmailed to fix Victor Von Doom’s ravaged face and reacting in horror upon seeing Vic’s visage and proclaiming it was beyond the arts of plastic surgery to repair. Of course, that was in the John Buscema era as it doesn’t seem the sort of plot Kirby would’ve gone along with given the notion that in his mind the damage to Vic’s face was rather superficial but due to his massive vanity any imperfection to his image was too much for him to bear. Based on various other post Kirby plots involving Dr. Doom, I think it has to treated as a given that Vic’s face was horribly scarred, although whether from the explosion of his device in his dorm room or when he first put on his red-hot mask directly after it had been formed is left to our imagination, unless there’s some other retcon I’m not familiar with.
The Lee/Kirby story where Doom swaps minds with Reed shows him unmasking to the MU’s Lee and Kirby and they’re both horrified. So I’m inclined to think “I never thought he was scarred” is Kirby misremembering in some fashion.
from various stuff I’ve read about this era, several Marvel creators interpreted becoming EIC as “ah, now I can give myself the best comics to write!” Though with Conway working on Spidey and FF I can’t see that being an issue.
I wonder why Conway was so eager for the position. Did he really think he’d do that a great a job of it? I suppose if must have been an ego boost for him at a still fairly young age to have taken over Thor & Spider-Man directly from Stan the Man himself and then to get the FF gig not too long after Roy had taken that over from Lee. And on those runs, he’s most remembered for killing off Gwen (even if it wasn’t his original idea); having Reed & Sue nearly divorce (although, it was Lee himself who started amping up the tension between them during the latter part of his run, and then Roy separated them, and Gerry just took it to the next level, before stepping back and getting them back together shortly before he left); and over in Thor, maybe for swapping out Sif for Jane, although Len Wein eventually swapped them again!
IMO, from circa 1964 through 1968 or so, the FF, ASM & Thor were among the best mainstream superhero comics ever and even well into the 1970s, as a kid, I still enjoyed them. But decades later, on reflection, and having read most of the runs from the mid-60s, even before Lee himself quit writing them, during the 1970s, they were all pretty pale shadows of their former glories. A few highlights here and there, but nothing that really compares to the highlights of the ’60s. Thor didn’t really become exciting again until Simonson took over as writer & artist. And Byrne had some great moments in the FF and Stern on ASM.
I agree, mid-sixties those were astounding books. By 1970, Lee and Kirby had lost a lot of the magic; readable comics but no match for Peak Marvel.
It’s difficult to sustain that level of innovation. Lee and Kirby did well, but most feel that 1966 had the peak moments for Spidey & FF…and I’m inclined to agree.
Me too.
It is interesting that Kirby had a go at Thor not once, but twice at DC before going over to Marvel. Even Thor’s hammer mjolnir remained unchanged in the 1950s DC appearance:
https://comicsalliance.com/jack-kirbys-thor/
Wow, Alan, there’s a LOT to get through here. Unlike you, I was not a fan of Thor back in the day. The stories, despite the excellent Kirby artwork, just didn’t work for me, which was weird b/c normally I was all about the art. I didn’t really get excited about Thor until the Simonson run and we haven’t gotten that far yet.
As others have already stated, Dr. Don Blake, despite being one of the VERY FEW comics characters to share my first name, was an extremely weak secret identity. He did very little to push each story forward and the way he went on and on about his unworthiness of Jane’s love and yada-yada-whatever-whatever got old quick. Honestly, one of my favorite parts of the Simonson run was that Thor put aside the Don Blake ID and adopted another one. I can’t remember the name of that identity now, but it was better than the doc. It’s obvious that, to Stan, Blake was an all-purpose doctor who could do whatever the story required, from healing broken bones to saving Victor Von Doom’s face, but that’s not how medicine works and no one at Marvel ever cared enough to fix it.
Having already confessed to not being a Thor fan, I was also not a Gerry Conway fan. His stories were not consistent, bouncing back and forth from awesome to awful in the time it took for them to dribble from his pen. Roy taking over the series her is helpful, but I was only barely interested in the Norse pantheon, so I had no desire to read about the Egyptians, even though I knew a bit more about them from Hollywood. The Buscema brothers both did quality work here, but the inking was, as others have pointed out, all over the place. I made the point in response to one of Fred’s posts that Janson was an inker who work tended to over-power the pencils and that is very true. His work was very slick and polished, but often, if no one told you, it was very difficult to tell who did the pencils. His style really only ever really suited Miller, in my opinion, though his work here is certainly pretty.
Others here are much more on point about Thor and the various minutiae of his character and appearances, so I’ll leave that discussion to them. Thanks, Alan!
So this is Richard Fenster’s debut. I have been trying to place it since I read the Brazilian version of “Marvel Premiere #26”, well over forty years ago.
While it seems to have been published shortly after “Champions #1”, and despite its own captions telling us otherwise, that story (by Bill Mantlo, George Tuska and Vince Coletta) seems to have been meant to bridge Hercules from Thor #239 to Champions #1. In a nutshell, it is about Typhoon (a Titan of Greek Myth, and former foe of Hercules from Avengers #49-50) and his ally Cylla seeking revenge on Hercules and Fenster’s car becoming a bit of collateral damage.
1)Don Blake. As others have pointed out, the first few years of Thor were wildly inconsistent, portraying him as a brilliant surgeon but also a GP who takes walk-in patients and makes housecalls. Whatever the story needs. In fairness, nobody was reading this series for the medical realism (minor complaint: I’d think a surgeon would recognize Dr. Strange by name but when they meet, Don doesn’t)/
By the end of the decade, they’d settled on surgeon. Indeed GREAT surgeon in the “only Donald Blake could have saved that man’s life” way. One story makes the bonkers assertion he can perform astounding surgery because he knows the medical arts of Asgard. Right, because Thor’s battlefield surgical skills are legendary.
One really freaky thing is that even after the reveal Don is nothing but an artificial construct of Odin’s magic, neither he nor Thor ever thinks about it. It would have given him more personality to deal with that, but I can’t remember anyone in the Bronze Age ever doing so.
2)As I blogged about at Atomic Junk shop a couple of years back (https://atomicjunkshop.com/asgardian-love-exciting-and-new/) the changeover from Jane to Sif is infuriating. We’re meant to believe Odin gave Jane a shot at godhood, she failed, he gave her the nice farewell present of a new life and a new love. What it feels like reading as an adult is that he rigged the game so she’d fail, then mindwiped her and made her fall in love. Creepy (I do love the scene during her time as Thor where she slaps both Odin and Loki around over the way they used to treat her).
And what did we get in her place? Rather than treat Sif as a full Asgardian warrior she spends half her time either as hostage or standing and watching as The Man does the fighting. What was the point? I can see why Gerry Conway didn’t feel she brought much to the table — though sacrificing herself to save Thor’s Lost Love makes the heroines of Victorian melodrama look quite selfish.
And yes, fudging the details of the breakup is annoying.
3)I remember reading this arc on the stands, probably because adding Egyptian gods made it stand out. I like it though yes, making Odin truly a reincarnation of Atum would be more interesting (I suppose the enchantment could simply be making Odin aware of his past self). Of course later Roy would establish “our” Odin was a reincarnation of classic mythological Odin in that interminable Celestials arc.
4)Thanks for another exhaustive, interesting review.
As to Item “2,” given that Jane Foster was a competent RN,, if Odin were playing it fair he would have made her the female Norse Asclepius.
If not ” battlefield surgical skill” she would at least understand Infection Control. (Also, she could have gotten the billing caught up;, kept the docs on schedule and the patients on time; and ensured that all the docs MedMal premiums were timely paid; that requests for privileges were followed up on; and that all docs were credentialed with the important carriers.
Then she could have unionized the Valkyries and come up with a “combat lifesavers Course” for the Warriors Three. (In short, Odin really skewed that up)._
Great concept. Not one that would occur to Stan and Jack, who wrote her (IMHO) as the pop-culture version of a nurse: a pretty girl who applies bandages, takes temperatures and falls in love a lot.
I was pleasantly surprised reading Marvel’s Night Nurse Bronze Age book on the app to see it treats nursing as a serious, skilled profession (that it was written by a woman probably helped).
I loved Stan and Jack, but I think it’s safe to say that having Jane Foster be a doctor instead of a nurse might not have occurred to them at all.
No, it wouldn’t.
DC did a lot better than Marvel in women’s roles in the Silver Age — not stellar, but a lot better. A friend of mine has mentioned how she became a Legion of Superheroes fan because Saturn Girl contriving to sacrifice herself to stop Zoryan the Conqueror in Adventure 304 was so much cooler than the other girl characters she’d seen.
. . . or even an Advanced Practice Nurse, like a Nurse -Practitioner: (“NP” Nurse-Anesthetist; or Nurse-Midwife.
Although, the role of physician-extenders has advanced in the last 60 years even as the role of women in healthcare has expanded.
Now. in he last appearance was Jane Foster an MD (or DO) or an NP? (I had the same question about the “Night Nurse” character in the Dr. Strange Miniseries, The Oath.
Yes, I remember her quipping that she’s an MD but “night general practitioner” doesn’t roll off the tongue.
Even an RN or LPN has more competency and skill than Jane showed back in the day.
Yeah, I remember that !
The author must be British, since the US term is PCP (“Primary Care Physician”)—Internal Medicine or Family Practice or Emergency Medicine—more of an emphasize on “diagnosis” rather than “intervention.”
They are classically the “Gate keepers” in Managed Care.
No, I’ve seen Americans refer to themselves as GPs too.
Interesting letter that you wrote there! It’s would ranked there with the “Fake Minster” letter from Doctor Strange #3 as the Best Letter of the 1970’s!
And, speaking of Doctor Strange #3, it’s also the issue that Cat Yronwode described in Miracleman #8, when she described the reason she is reprinting the Miller Marvelman stories in that issue, since there was a flood there, delaying the Miracleman Birth issue!
I forgot to close it with this: For Asgard! For Odin! For Cat Yronwode!!!
Hi, Alan,
Yes, this was a long post, but I really enjoyed reading it – more than I enjoyed reading the actual issues!
OK, that’s mean. But I have to say that THOR was a book that I mainly bought out of force of habit. (You could do that in the days when books only cost a quarter.) I had enjoyed Conway’s writing up to that point; he was consistent with characterization, and his plotting was fine. As you know, most of my Marvel energies were focused on Englehart, Gerber, McGregor, and TOMB OF DRACULA, but Conway was doing a decent enough job to keep me going. Plus, you had Big John Buscema on art, so it had that going for it.
Say – does anyone remember a mention in a THOR letter column about “an epic coming”? This was while Conway was still writing it – maybe around the first appearances of Firelord? I assume Conway took all those plans with him, but I was always curious about that.
Anway, it’s a measure of how little attention I was paying to THOR at the time – and how little it stuck with me – that I had COMPLETELY forgotten that Roy Thomas had written an issue around this time, though I vaguely recalled the use of Egyptian gods.
I knew that at some point we’d be talking about Bill Mantlo, but I’ll save my thoughts for another time.
Wasn’t it around this time in 1975 that the THOR ANNUAL written by Englehart was released? I DO hope you’ll be writing about that one.
I would end up sticking with THOR for a while. Walter Simonson’s first stretch as artist had me initially excited, though the finished product was a little less than I had hoped, mainly because of Tony DeZuniga’s inking, which I otherwise enjoyed. I was used to Simonson inking himself, so this was a letdown.
I’m sure that you’ll be writing about Roy’s return as THOR scripter when the time rolls around.
Cheers!
Thor Annual 5 was released in 1976. That was the summer Marvel put the annuals back on the schedule for the first time in a few years.
Thanks, Chris!
So it is good-bye to merry Gerry and hello to….Roy and Bill, then Len. Gerry’s run was uneven ( as already mentioned) but amazingly those Issues I did find and pick up were good. It was only later when as a collector I went to pick up other issues of the run that I found myself dissatisfied. The Ulik issues here are just about OK, and the transfer over from Gerry to Roy very smooth; the two were/ are(?) close and Gerry may have passed on part of the plot to Roy. Otherwise I found Bill’s dialogue and narrative strong on his issue, meeting all the general requirements then for a Marvel writer (ie Stan Lee style dialogue). Indeed of the issues featured here, #241 is my favourite, with its strong Kirby-Giacoia cover, and Big John and Joltin’ Joe interiors.
Character wise at the time I was happy to see the return of Jane Foster, being brought up on the marvels of Lee-Kirby-Ditko. But it was really only a bit of nostalgia. The storyline of Sif’s transferring her life essence was a highlight of Sif’s love and fortitude; her best moment in comics?
Thor #241: “… the torment I have inflicted upon their MARRAIGE!”, “your life will remain yours… the TALKING of it would only sour my own existence!” Maybe there were three editors who had a hand in this somewhere along the line, but a proof-reader or sub-editor would have been nice too.
I was (and am) a big-time fan of the KIRBY/Lee Thor run, and all of the issues covered here feel a bit too much like warmed-up leftovers or re-treads to me. Egyptian instead of Greek Gods, Odin mostly omnipotent in absentia, and some fairly trite character development for Odin, Jane, Sif et al (none of which seems to have stuck, certainly where Odin was concerned). I was buying Thor at this time more from habit than any real enjoyment.
It feels like someone thought it was a good idea to address Thor’s first love, and her relatively abrupt (and contrived) departure from the series, but without really thinking through where they were going with this plot. The rapid circulation of writers didn’t help either. Maybe if we knew what Jack Kirby had originally intended, more than what Stan Lee dialogued, Jane’s exit would have read better and spared us this.
Aside to Alan: I would put money on the cover to Marvel Spotlight #30 being Buckler not Buscema. The poor figure proportions and the little three guys being struck on the back in ‘cinematic’ style all seem very Buckler to me.