Journey into Mystery in the 1990s
Journey into Mystery’s revival in the 1990s was a strange set of circumstances that was unprecedented at the time. As you may recall, the book started off in the early 1950s as one of Atlas Comics many anthology titles that were popular at the time. While most other books focused on science fiction, Journey was primarily supernatural and horror tales throughout its run, although by the 1960s it pivoted into science fiction to capitalize on the giant monster crazy of the era. When the company changed over to Marvel Comics in the early 60s superheroes were returning to popularity. From Journey into Mystery #83 onwards, Thor would become the a regular feature on the title. He started off sharing the book with stand-alone sci-fi stories until issue #104 when the book was entirely taken over by Thor. When Marvel managed to get out of a restrictive printing deal and were able to expand their range of monthly books, many of the anthology books were canceled in favor of solo titles featuring the superheroes that were featured in them. The final issue of Journey into Mystery was issue #126. The following month, the title was rebranded as Thor, but would keep Journey’s numbering scheme.
There was a second volume that was started up in the 1970s, taking the title back to its anthology roots, but it only lasted until 19 issues.
This is the way it would go until the 1990s when the comic book bubble was bursting and the industry was in a bad place. Marvel was hit especially hard trying to ride the speculator market and a number of their titles were suffering big time. Particularly their non-X-Men, non-Spider-Man books. After over 500 issues, Thor was one of the books that was on its last legs.
Marvel then began their Heroes Reborn initiative, an attempt to revitalize some of their poorly performing titles by farming them out to other studios with Fantastic Four and Iron Man being relaunched by Jim Lee’s Wildstorm Entertainment and Avengers and Captain America being done by Rob Liefeld’s Awesome Comics.
The only title not given a relaunch was Thor which was canceled outright. This was unfortunate because this was in the middle of an attempt to revamp the book and take the title into a new direction. On going writer William Mesner-Loebs only had eight issues to work with before the title was canceled. This was in the middle of a storyline that saw the Asgardians exiled from their home dimension and were lost somewhere on Earth in mortal guises.
While Thor would go on to be part of the Heroes Reborn initiative, these dangling plot threats would not be following him.
Regardless with how poorly Thor was doing, Marvel had decided to rebrand the book back to Journey into Mystery and continue with the same numbering. Its first 12 issues would feature stories about the Lost Gods and try its best to tie up the loose ends left in Thor. For whatever reason, William Mesner-Loebs was not invited back to do this story. While then-Thor artist Mike Deodato, Jr. and his studio would continue producing art for be book, at least in the beginning. Taking over as writer was Tom DeFalco, who had a love-it-or-hate-it run on Thor which ran from issue #383 to 459.
Trying to find information online about the genesis of this book and the decisions made are next to impossible to find. Having read the William Mesner-Loebs Thor stories, I found that they weren’t actually that bad, only suffering from apparent editorial mandates and sudden cancelation, so it leaves me wondering why they chose to change the writers.
Anyway, DeFalco wrote the tale about Red Norvell looking for the lost gods of Asgard and helping them remember who they are. This was the fallout following Warren Ellis’ brief 4 issue WorldEngine story that saw a mad scientist create a machine that would trick the World Ash tree Yggdrasil into thinking Ragnarok had passed. He then left the book and left the rest of the story to be told by Mesner-Loebs and, later Tom DeFalco.
DeFalco’s treatment of this development was…. not that great. When Ellis wrote his story, the mastermind behind the WorldEngine was just mortal named Price. He didn’t have any super powers, he was just a madman who wanted to see what would happen after Ragnarok. When DeFalco picked up the plot thread he decided to make Price a minion of Seth, the Egyptian death god, who DeFlaco used frequently as an antagonist during his previous runs on both Thor and Thunderstrike. It was a needless addition to the plot. I would have rather learned more about Price and his mad scene then having an already overused villain tacked on.
The other element to this story was that the Asgards had been cast from their home and hidden in mortal forms with no memories of their past. The story follows Red Norvell as he tries to find and re-activate the Lost Gods (as they come to be called). This is an interesting concept however its execution here is not very good. A similar idea would be done much more convincingly when Neil Gaiman did the same thing in the 3rd volume of Eternals and J. Michael Straczynski pulled the same stunt in the third volume of Thor. I suppose the differences are that they didn’t belabor the situation. DeFalco’s plot stretches incredibly long and thin with the main characters locked in their mortal forms pretty much the entire run.
Compounding this was also a sub-plot involving the Lost Gods obtaining enchanted weapons and equipment that would give them unique powers. I don’t know what the fuck they were thinking with this. It was like they were trying to reinvent the gods of Asgard into a team book akin to the X-Men, except without any interesting powers, strong characters, or costumes. They were just people in street clothes who had crappy powers and a huge arsenal of guns for some reason.
What didn’t help was that Mike Deodato and his studio were going full on Image Comics with their artwork and there is some really cringe worthy 90s style on display here. Particularly when it comes to bringing back the character Lorelei who might as well have been parading around naked for what little costume she was actually wearing. On top of this cringe, there were just a lot of inconsistencies from panel to panel. Not quite Liefeldian level inconsistencies, but enough to be noticeable. On top of that, the art style from issue to issue would change adding to the overall lack of consistency.
By the final few issues the art duties were taken over by Sal Buscema with inks by Al Milgrom. This would give the book some much needed uniformity. However, as much of an icon Sal is, it makes the last few issues feel dated by comparison to the rest of the series.
Once the Lost Gods storyline was wrapped up, Journey into Mystery kept going doing shorter story arcs featuring other characters. Issues #514-516 was a Shang-Chi story by Ben Raab and Brian Hagen, issues #517-519 was a Black Widow tale by Scott Lobdell and Randy Green. The final two issues was a Hannibal King vampire story by Marv Wolfman and Karl Kerschl.
These stories were short and sweet and, again, I can’t really find anything much to say about them except for the Black Widow tale. In that story, the Widow uncovers a terrorist plot by an ultra-patriotic accelerationist group calling themselves FreedomsLight. They are a bunch of angry men on the internet that are banded together by a literal Nazi who promises they will overthrow the government. In reality, she is just trying to line her pockets while others risk their lives. I don’t know what Scott Lobdell was tapping when he wrote that story, but god damn is it still depressingly relevant today.
What it looks like is that these stories were just holdover to keep the title going while Heroes Reborn wrapped itself up. By that time, Marvel had brought back Avengers and Fantastic Four to the main Marvel Universe with a series of new relaunches. A few months later, Marvel would cancel Journey into Mystery in favor of a second volume of Thor, taking the book back to a centrally focused title character.
Thor would never really be fully popular with readers in the years that followed. It’s second volume would be canceled again in the early 2000s. Thor wouldn’t be brought back to life (and his own title) until Marvel Studios began developing the first Thor film. The thunder god would be brought back for the hype-train leading up to the film’s release and the character would enjoy some consistent popularity from then on. In 2011 Marvel (after a series of relaunch titles) would switch Thor back to its legacy numbering until the title was split into two distinct books. Mighty Thor which focused on Thor in particular with unique numbering, and a relaunch of Journey into Mystery once again using the legacy numbering until issue #655 in 2013 when Journey ended its run yet again.
Marvel’s regular attention to legacy numbering and playing off nostalgia, I doubt this will be the last time we see a Journey into Mystery book even though its been a decade (time of this writing) since we last saw one.
