Thor by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Collected in and reviewed from Essential Thor Volumes 1-4

RE: Journey Into Mystery 83-125 & Thor 126-179, (Cover dates Aug ’62-Aug ’70.) Plus annuals from this period.

It’s taken a fair old time, but I’ve just finished the Kirby & Lee run on Thor, starting in Journey Into Mystery 83 and culminating in Thor 179, with the odd issue in this run by other creators.

Left: Colletta inks from Thor 133 - Right: Everett inks from Thor 171

As enjoyable as it was (and I do find pretty much all of the Silver Age Marvel to be worth a read) it takes a while for the strip to really find it’s feet. Thor has always been a difficult character to integrate wholly into the Marvel Universe. In general terms, although there are exceptions, the Marvel Universe is centred on science and technology, trying to include characters that are magic based has never been smooth sailing, Dr. Strange springs to mind, but at least with Thor, his is an overt physical prowess, which perhaps helped the character span the gulf from fantasy to super-heroics in a way that wasn’t available to Dr. Strange. And, as I said earlier, it takes a while to really find it’s niche, which I’ll get to later.

Like all of Kirby’s early Marvel work, it takes several issues for his style to evolve into his more mature renderings. His early Silver-Age work is fabulous, but as his workload increased, so did his level of detail decrease. This isn’t a bad thing in my opinion, for what was lost in refined pencil work was made up for with the patented Kirby Dynamism. Characters took on a heavier build, with blunter edges, design took the place of detail and so was born the much imitated Kirby idiosyncrasy that we all know and many love. In terms of design, he really gets to go to town on the wild Asgardian costumes, of particular note is Odin’s massive headgear, I’m sure ‘twould snap the neck of any mortal, should they think themselves befitted to don the OdinHat.



The Odin Hat



But then, I think Kirby had a bit of a hat fetish. (See Galactus)



Again 'tis a differing Odin Hat


OK, back to the serious stuff. For several issues it feels like nobody really knows where to take Thor, he takes on some pretty low level super-villains, that frankly, feel beneath his awesome powers. I can imagine Stan & Jack discussing this, so they must have said:

Stan: You think this isn’t as epic as it should be?

Jack: Damn right, whatcha gonna do about it?

Stan: Well, how about having Goldilocks fight Gangsters.

Jack: WHAAAAAT!!!

I’m pretty sure that that’s exactly what happened. But seriously, Thor versus Gangsters. So they tried that and, thankfully, decided that it wasn’t working either.

Don’t worry though. It didn’t take long to get Thor back on track. He’s soon battling Frost Giants and Trolls back in Asgard. But the best was yet to come.

When you have a character with the power of a God, there’s only so long you can confine him to Earth, particularly when he exists in a universe where the infinite space is so densely populated. So, at last, Thor goes Cosmic. Which is, ironically, exactly where he started when he battled the Stone Men of Saturn way back in Journey Into Mystery 83.

For my money, this is what Thor should be doing. Transported to deep space to battle the Colonizers, facing off against a Living Planet and standing against Galactus in the dark Bioverse. By this point in the strip everything has reached perfection.



Colleta inks for Thor 149 cover



At this point, it’s probably worth mentioning Vince Colletta. For those of you who don’t know the name, Colletta is not a particularly favoured inker, especially when it comes to his inking of Jack Kirby. No more of that here though. Should you wish to read more, a quick search of Google should have you well informed. When Colletta first starts to ink Kirby’s Thor he uses a very light touch, it lacks detail and fails to capture the immediacy which Kirby can create in every panel. But, for all the negative comments that Colletta generates, when his style matures and evolves along with Kirby’s the results are fantastic. Heavier inks, with bolder, bigger black areas used to make the figures and set pieces stand out. This technique is ideally suited to Kirby. As ever though, as great as his inking is for Thor, you can’t help but wonder how much of Kirby’s background was left uninked and therefore never seen by the likes of you and I.

However, as much as I enjoyed Colletta’s inking, the real standout issues for me were 170-175, inked incredibly well by Bill Everett. I don’t recall seeing Everett inking Kirby before and the results are amazing. Since reading those issues Everett is up there with Joe Sinnott and Mike Royer as one of the few, perfect inkers for Kirby’s pencils.



Thor 174, Bill Everett inks



Reading these comics as a single run reminded me just how many mainstay Marvel villains were created in the pages of Thor. If you can measure a man by his enemies Thor must be second only to the Fantastic Four. Radioactive Man, Mr. Hyde, Crusher Creel, Ego the Living Planet and High Evolutionary are a few that come to mind (ignoring the aforementioned Gangsters that is).

So when push comes to shove, there are several reasons that Thor didn’t make it to the all time top spot as my favourite Silver Age Marvel comic, but wild horses couldn’t stop me recommending it as a must read for anyone interested in either the creators, era or genre.

Mad Thinker Reads………………

Norse Gods Smashing Living Planets in the Face with a Hammer that has a Name.