After Stan Lee created the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk with Jack Kirby and the Amazing Spider-Man with Steve Ditko, he and Kirby came up with the Might Thor. Lee kept trying to come up with somebody bigger, better and stronger than the Thing and the Hulk and was struck with the silly notion of Super-God. But Lee had been hawking Marvel's comics as providing a 20th-century mythology and it suddenly occurred to him that maybe he could do a series feature a god as a comic book superhero. Turning to the Norse mythology of the Vikings, with their tales of Valhalla, Ragnarok, the Aesir, and eternal Asgard, Lee came up with Thor the Thunder God.
This first volume of the Marvel Masterworks series devoted to Thor collects "Journey Into Mystery" issues #83-100. Most of the early stories are plotted by Lee, but scripted by Larry Leiber (his brother as it turns out to be) and drawn by Kirby (with Joe Sinnott and Dick Ayers providing the inks). What is interesting here is to reconsider the problematic element of Thor's origin in "Journey Into Mystery" #83. Lee thought it would be difficult for the average comic book reader to identify with a Norse Thunder God (especially one with long blonde hair, blue tights, and a winged helmet). So he created a secret identity with the old cliché of the frail and feeble Dr. Donald Blake, who is limping around Norway one day on a walking tour when he sees alien invaders from Saturn made of stone. Trapped in a cave he finds a secret chamber and a gnarled wooden stick. When Blake strikes the stick against a boulder it changes into a hammer and Blake becomes Thor. Fortunately the hammer offers an explanation: "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of...THOR" (yes, it has the dot-dot-dot).
By issue #85 when Loki shows up, Lee starts availing himself of the rich aspects of Norse mythology, which makes the whole bit of the lame doctor turning into Thor a bit much. Eventually it would be revealed that Odin had turned Thor into a handicapped mortal to teach his son a lesson in humility, but that necessary revision was a long time in coming. Instead we have the standard superhero love triangle where Blake likes his nurse, Jane Foster, but she likes Thor. Meanwhile, beyond Loki, Thor's great arch nemesis, the villains are all have the same problem: they are going up against a god. The Human Cobra (#98) and Mr. Hyde (#99) e above average villains, but do they really have a chance against the god of thunder? Radio-Active Man (#93) and Lava-Man (#97) have shots, but they are rather boring. Then there is the Carbon Copy Man from Outer Space (#90), who is the bottom of the barrel, and mixing and matching mythology with Merlin (#96).
Clearly when Thor is dealing with Loki and other Asgardians the stories are much, much better. The gulf between the stories grounded in Norse mythology and those without is magnified in "Journey Into Mystery" #97 when Lee and Kirby started doing the "Tales of Asgard" shorts. Many times during this period the main Thor story did not match the five-page "Tales of Asgard" story at the end. This was also where Kirby's artwork reached a new level: compare "Journey Into Mystery" #83 with the "Surture the Fire Demon" short from #99 (i.e., the first and last examples of Kirby's art in this volume), and you will see what I mean. But until the Lady Sif shows up, these Thor comic books are just treading water. Note: Later issues in this reprinted color collection are scripted by Robert Bernstein and drawn by Joe Sinnott and Don Heck.
