Journey into Mystery #95

 "Great Scott! I'm seeing things!"

Another fairly throwaway Thor story here, courtesy of the pen of Robert Bernstein; this is a title that badly needs to be lifted out of its early rut. Nice start, though, with Odin summoning Thor to use his power over thunderstorms to deal with a drought in Asgard, something that would have been useful here in the English Midlands in recent weeks.

Sadly, we then proceed to move on to a rather generic little romp with our mad scientist du jour, one Professor Zaxton, a one off villain. Indeed, we know from the moment he sees Don Blake turn into Thor that he won't survive this issue. And so we get a simple little tale of a duplicating ray that creates doubles which, for some reason, have the opposite personality of the original. Neatly, though, Thor is able to defeat his evil duplicate, with its two hammers, because the duplicate is not worthy, which is a clever resolution.

Still... Don Blake is a physician. Could he really invent a super intelligent and invincible robot thingy? And there's a lot of exposition by thought bubble here. Still, I've read worse. 

Journey into Mystery #94

 "Out of my way, you flunky!"

Oh dear. This may well be the most terrible issue I've read in the Order so far. It's clear that Robert Bernstein isn't working out as the writer, and the title needs a major revamp at this point. It's a promising concept but has consistently failed to catch fire.

I mean, we begin with NASA firing a rocket into space which is powered by... a nuke. Yep, that would be the sort of rocket which tends to blow up on launch from time to time. Then again... Project Orion was actively being considered at around this time, so let's not blame the script for this, at least.

But the whole scene of the rocket losing control is just another excuse for Loki (still trapped on Asgard by the gods) to concoct an absurd escape plan which consists of having Thor get a bang on the head, giving him a contrived personality change which turns out to make him vehemently pro-Loki for no clear reason. Then again, of course it's absolutely possible to control how someone's personality changes by varying where and how you hit them on the head, right?

So Thor frees Loki, and rebels against a thankfully rather forgiving Odin, and it's fascinating just how undefined the All-Father's powers are at this early stage. We then move to an orgy of destruction, with several famous world landmarks being destroyed. But then the United Nations requests that Odin accede to Loki's inevitable blackmail... and it seems the delegates all accept the gods as being literally, well, gods, which... well!

And then we have a literal deus ex machina, we press a big red reset button, and that's it. The whole thing might as well have not happened. And, throughout the whole story, we only got a few panels with Thor as Thor.

Utterly, utterly awful. 

Journey into Mystery #92

 "Dr. Blake is very experienced in using a mallet!"

Another uneven Thor story here. The cover, for one thing, is misleading- the main threat is on Asgard where the sixty second rule apparently doesn't apply. We're told that Loki wants to force Thor to fight on Asgard, his territory, rather than Earth, which is more known to Thor- but surely it makes sense to exploit the sixty second rule?

We're introduced to two new Asgardian characters. One is Thor's mother, "Fricka" (er, interesting way of spelling "Frigga" there...) and Neri, her handmaiden. But then it's back to Earth for a recent plot point to be reused- yet again, a criminal forces Don Blake to operate and save his life. The crooks want to off him, but Blake effectively says "oh look, a squirrel" then becomes Thor and overpowers them. He then proceeds to tie them all to the operating table, which he literally throws to the police station....

This is probably not great post-op procedure, to put it mildly. And neither this sort of thing, nor the silliness with Thor helping with special effects for a B movie, are right for this title. Thor's world is too big for this sort of thing, which takes up far too much of the story.

Then Loki seems to rather easily summon Thor's hammer to smash his bonds, something he could have done at any time. We then rush to a rather perfunctory battle between them, livened only by the rather arresting sight of a giant Odin picking Thor up. There's no sixty second rule... but for some reason Thor still wants to make new hammers out of wood, rock and the like, which makes sense because, er...

This story is uneven in pace, concept, everything. Thor has a lot of promise, but we urgently need a change of direction and an injection of seriousness. 

Journey into Mystery #91

 "That brainless mortal!"

And so, alas, we come to another early Journey into Mystery from the pen of Larry "nepotism" Lieber. This is a fairly ho-hum example, but at least the plot is passable. Thor, up to this point, is hardly one of the stars in Marvel's firmament however.

Loki's back for a third time. Odin too, still not quite appearing in the form that will become familiar, either facially or in the fact that he's sporting- yes indeed- a horned helmet. And there are some nice emerging bits of lore- we have valkyries, Odin's personal magic item delivery service, although at this stage they look nothing like what they will eventually become. And, of course, from the pages of the Eddas, we have Thor's belt of strength.

And, yeah... the first couple of panels amused me, using said belt of strength as the most blatant example of the Chekhov's Gun trope in comic book history. Thor needing the macguffin to get out of a tight spot was bound to happen. As for the story overall, it's silly but fun. I liked how Loki's proxy carnival show villain was defeated because he mentally "short circuited" after fruitless attempts to magically wield Thor's Uru hammer. 

By the standards of Thor, this is one of the good ones. But we're still so very, very early.

Journey into Mystery #83

 "Well, it's a cinch that skinny gent isn't Earth's secret weapon!"

At first, it seemed this issue (or, rather, short 13 page story) was going to be very silly indeed. I mean, the Stone Men from Saturn? Evoking the Toad Men from Incredible Hulk #2, with their "atomic" force fields and Easter Island faces?

And yet... with allowances made for the fact that this is fairly early in the Silver Age, I find this to be a rather good comic. Yes, it's annoying that Donald Blake is described as being on vacation in "Europe", as though our diverse continent were an undifferentiated mass, and it's very silly Blake should fail to see the alien ship just behind him. Beyond that, though, this is all good stuff. The costume design and initial splash page are particularly good.

Fascinating, after finding the cane, which becomes the hammer (unnamed at this point, at least in the comic), Blake still remains himself as he explores and discovers the powers he's been given by the hammer. There's no indication that he's literally the Norse god in question, simply a worthy man who's discovered an artifact giving him the powers of Thor, whom we would naturally infer at this point was a figure from the deep past. Indeed, as he turns back into Blake after spending sixty seconds not touching the hammer, there's more than a whiff here of Bruce Banner and the Hulk.

But this is all good fun, with the exposition around Thor's powers and the way he defeats the, er, Stone Men from Saturn. A solid start.

Fantastic Four #5

 "Fool! You think you can defeat Doctor Doom so easily?"

It has to be said that the design of Doctor Doom's costume is really, really great... and the design for Darth Vader's costume also owes a great deal to it! That aside, though... this is just bonkers. Fun, but bonkers.

We begin at the FF's headquarters, on the top floor of a skyscraper in what is now explicitly New York, and... the Human Torch is reading The Incredible Hulk in a subtle plug! There's still been no hint as yet of a shared universe- is this inclusion of the comic a suggestion that perhaps that wasn't yet envisaged at this point?

But soon, Doom attacks the FF and Reed gives us the potted origin story of this master of both magic and science, hungry for knowledge and power. And, yeah... he's expelled from uni while literally in a hospital bed, his now-disfigured face bandaged. Bit harsh?

Doom takes them all to a castle in an undisclosed location which is "minutes" from New York, albeit in a super-fast helicopter thingy. Is this within the United States? At no point in this issue is there any mention of Latveria. Is Doom not yet its ruler? Of course, at this point I assume it had not yet been dreamt of.

We then come to the main plot. What does Doom want? Well, to use his Time Platform (a first appearance!) to travel back in time and steal Blackbeard's treasure, which contains items made by Merlin (who thus existed in the Marvel Universe) which Doom can use to rule the world. Ummm...

Oh, and the Thing IS Blackbeard and, if not for circumstances, would have happily stayed in a world where he was somebody, even if it meant doing without twentieth century comforts, medicine etc. And, if all that wasn't enough bonkersness, there's more- the Torch gives his flame "the intensity of atomic heat", which somehow turns some of the water in the crocodile infested (because of course it is, although no visible laser beams are strapped to their reptilian heads) moat.

Bonkers. Utter bonkers. I love it. Oh, and Doom escapes, just as Namor did last issue. And Torch juuuust so happens to hope aloud that said Atlantean never finds Merlin's jewellery. Mmm hmm...