Thor in the 1970s
If I were to sum up the entire run of Thor in the 1970s to a few words it would be: Repetitive, Redundant, and Rudderless. It is easily the hardest to read decade of any long-running character in Marvel’s stable. But I’m getting ahead of myself, buckle up because even though I really dislike this era of Thor, I’ve got plenty to say about it, so let’s start from the beginning…..
Issues #172-179, with the exception of issue #178, were the final work that Jack Kirby would do on the title. As iconic as Kirby’s work is, these final issues were really getting phoned in as they used a lot of redundant plot threads that were common when it comes to the works of Jack Kirby. They were also a series of one-off stories until the very end. Issue #172 introduced a villain named Kronin Krask and was yet another belabored plot about a guy trying to steal immortality from a god using science. Speaking of tired plots, issue #174 was a nonsense story about the Ringmaster of the Circus of Crime hypnotizing Ulik to life something really heavy they stole. Nearly the exact same plot as the last time the Circus of Crime appeared in the pages of Thor. Issue #174 had Thor face the Crypto-Man, yet another robot character that was given the power to rival Thor when a scientist steals part of his strength. It ends with the creator realizing the errors of his ways and sacrificing his life to stop his creation and then Thor/Don Blake giving the same tired speech where he lets someone know the tragic news about their loved one, but saying they died like a man.
Issues #175-177 featured yet another story where Loki takes over Asgard while Odin is in the Odinsleep. For some reason, apropos to nothing, Odin suddenly has a ring that makes him the ruler of Asgard and when Loki steals it nobody can stand up against him unless the plot calls for it because characters who were once forced to bow before him suddenly fight against him in later issues of this arc. Also, Odin’s body is placed in a location of instant death and Surtur is unleashed and threatens to destroy the universe. However, all these high stakes are quickly resolved the moment Odin is freed from his prison. This would have later repercussions, but it would take Jack Kirby’s departure from the book before that happened to force Stan Lee to stop phoning in his part of the job and actually do something of consequence.
That’s the thing about these early 70s Thor stories, I think Stan Lee was so used to letting Jack Kirby do his own thing that the stories really started to suffer. As I’ve said countless times before, while Jack is an iconic artist, his storytelling abilities were awful.
Issue #178 is the first story not drawn by Jack Kirby since he took over penciling duties back in the Journey into Mystery days. It’s also a half-assed story about the Abomination — then a prisoner of the Stranger — trying to use Thor to stage a jailbreak. It has a lazy ending where Thor uses time travel to undo the events of the story. With such power like this, it makes you wonder why Thor doesn’t use it all the time. Thankfully, later writers would refrain from using this power and would later remove it from Thor’s abilities all together, but I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Thor #179-181 was another weak story where Thor and Loki swap bodies. Issue #179 was the last issue drawn by Jack Kirby, who had quit Marvel because of the lack of proper recognition. He went on to work for DC Comics for the better part of the decade before returning. Issue #180 was drawn by Neal Adams during his brief tenure at Marvel in the 60s. If you wanted a commentary on the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee split, Neal Adams unceremoniously depicts a Loki — disguised as Thor — throwing Mjolnir through the trailer of a moving truck called “Kirby-Lee Movers” the hammer splitting the trailer between the two names. A pretty childish take. The story wraps up with Thor — trapped in Loki’s body — is banished to Mephisto’s realm for some reason and is rescued by his friends.
From issue #181 onward the artistic duties were taken over by Sal Buschema, who — as I said in my 70’s Avengers primer — was quickly taking over Jack Kirby’s spot as Marvel’s go-to artist. Issue #182-183 was a story about Thor going to Latveria to rescue a scientist from Doctor Doom. It ends with the typical “he died a man” ending where Thor lies to a surviving relative about how their family member sacrificed their lives when, in reality, they were just a big piece of shit.
Issue #184-188 has to be one of Stan Lee’s most ambitious stories in the pages of Thor. It was a massive epic where the universe is threatened by an unknown enemy known as Infinity. It turns out that this was part of Odin’s soul turned evil by Hela. It’s an epic tale that is marred by the fact that once Infinity is defeated Odin literally waves a magic wand to make all the destruction across Earth and the universe go away. The trend of Odin stepping in and doing damage control becomes a recurring plot point.
Stan Lee still couldn’t stop his repetitive streak either. Issues #189-190 has Hela going after Thor again. It is a lot of the same old as it repeats the plot beats of Thor #150. The only thing that’s really added is there is a brief moment when Odin kills Hela and thus making everything immortal. It briefly explores the idea of how much a nightmare Earth would be if nothing died, but it’s quickly undone in a few panels. Hela is then defeated by the power of Sif’s love for Thor.
Speaking of repetitive, issues #191-194 saw Loki taking over Asgard (again) by stealing the Odin-Ring (again), forcing Odin to go into the Odinsleep (again) and has Thor fight a seemingly unstoppable foe (again) only to save the day (again). This story arc came just as Stan Lee was stepping back from writing duties, with Gerry Conway taking over as head writer with issue #193. However, that change in writer didn’t stop the book from doing the same things over and over again.
Issue #193 saw Sal and his younger brother John working together with Sal penciling and John inking until John took over penciling duties from his brother beginning in issue #195. John Buscema would become an artist in his own right, but this was not his best work, at least to start. I don’t know what it was, but John’s work here appears sloppier than his earlier work in titles like Silver Surfer and the Avengers. Frankly, the stories that Gerry Conway that were being pumped out during this period weren’t exactly stellar either, so maybe it was that these stories gave off a bad vibe.
Issue #195-198 saw the return of Mangog, the ugly late-career Jack Kirby monster that was seemingly destroyed in Thor #157. Somehow, the creature endured even though the alien race he was comprised of was freed. There is a weak explanation that he endured because their hate endured or some nonsense. the entire story is basically a fetch quest, with Thor and his allies being sent to various places to get the McGuffin that will get them out of this current potential Ragnarok. Worse, this story arc is interrupted by a deadline crunch with issue #200 featuring a fill-in issue which was basically a rehashing of an older Lee/Kirby story but with art by Sal Buscema. The Mangog plot tries to startle readers by having Odin “die” at the end, but some bullshittery about Asgard being unmoored from time and space prevented Odin to really die. Adding to this nonsense in issue #199 and 201 has Pluto — the Olympian God of death — trying to claim Odin’s soul for —- reasons? There is not much sense in this plot but in the end Odin is brought back to life and all is well.
In the middle of all of this, Sif and Hildegarde were sent to a planet called Blackworld, a planet that was rapidly evolving. Issues #202-203 tries to wrap this all up. There is a new-ish foe called Ego-Prime responsible and it was brought to life by Tana Nile. Along the way they befriend Silas Grant a steamboat captain from Blackworld. In the end, Ego-Prime is brought to Earth where his energies could be used to transform three humans into a new race of Gods. This last point is rammed in at the very end. This whole Blackworld plot is a fucking mess and I don’t think Gerry Conway had a very clear idea of where he was going with it. Certainly a lot of the concepts he tossed into this arc almost seem like afterthoughts. Particularly the addition of Silas Grant to the cast of regulars in future issues of Thor. Grant is just around filling panel space in battles and never really contributing much of anything to these stories until his deparutre in issue #221. He’s never seen again and frankly, it’s just as well because the character wasn’t particularly that interesting.
The other pointless addition were creation of the Young Gods. Although they only number three at the end of this story and disappear for some time afterwards. Their purpose is not really explained until Thor #300 nearly 10 years later. They were created to show the Celestials that humans are good or something? The characters themselves have always been flimsy and nobody has ever really given them much to do. Even as so-called Young Gods, these characters weren’t any special than your average superhero. It says a lot about how little writers cared for the Young Gods when they have made less than 20 appearances in the nearly 50 years since their creation. It was just a shit idea.
Following the Ego-Prime saga, issues #204 saw Odin exile Thor and his friends on Earth after Thor chewed his dad out for risking all life on Earth just to create new gods. This exile mostly saw Thor, the Warriors Three, Balder, Sif, and Hildegard slumming around Avengers Mansion being depressed until one threat or the other showed their face. A lot of these stories shows Thor getting his ass beat by the villain until someone else intervenes and helps him save the day. Issues #204 and 205 saw the return of Mephisto. 206 and 207 saw Loki and the Absorbing Man return. Issue #207 is the most interesting of the bunch, but that is saying a lot because in and of itself, it is not a very good story.
This was one of the many comic books of the era that promoted the Halloween parade that was held every year in Rutland, Vermont that was hosted by Tom Fagan until his death in 2008. Fagan’s parade was focused on superheros and both Marvel and DC ate that shit up and featured the parade in various stories. Issue #207 is meta in that it also features Marvel creators appearing in story in the form of Gerry Conway, Len Wein, his then wife Glynnis, and Steve Englehart. The story actually focuses on them quite a bit which makes no sense unless you read Amazing Adventures (vol. 2) #16 which features them traveling up to Vermont. This story is also the first unofficial Marvel and DC crossover, as the creators involved in the story were working for both Marvel and DC at the time. The antics of Conway and co are tracked between this issue of Thor and Justice League of America #103, which featured the JLA in Rutland fighting Felix Faust.
Outside of that, this story has Sif agree to help Karnilla find Balder the Brave. Which sets in motion a kind of pointless plotline of Thor searching for the two women. Particularly since Balder is with Thor and his crew before conveniently wandering off. The search for Sif doesn’t really accomplish much as Thor keeps on getting distracted by other threats, such as the Fourth-Dimensional Man who doesn’t have any 4-D powers but controls extreme temeratures in issue #208, the Demon Druid in issue #209 when Thor goes looking for Sif in London aprapos to nothing, and then issue #210-211 which saw Thor fighting Ulik and the Rock Trolls again. This later tale has some of the sloppiest story telling of this arc, what with Conway’s implying that the Rock Trolls live under New York City when they were previously established as living on Earth. Even more egregious, at the end of the story suddenly Fandral and Hogun remember that Balder showed back up at Avengers Mansion and is quite insane. Issues #212-213 finds Thor discovering everyone on Asgard was kidnapped by alien slave traders and they have to free them. This leads to a battle with the forgettable villain named Sssthgar, basically a lizard man in fancy armor who — again apropos of nothing — drops that he knew where Sif and Karnilla were this whole time, even though Sssthgar wasn’t involved in the whole search for Sif.
This leads to Thor’s conflict with Xorr the God-Jewel from Thor #214-216. Xorr is allegedly a the merging of an entire alien race that is claimed to have created the Kree, Skrulls, and humanity. As it turns out, Sif and Karnilla are trapped in Xorr. It’s only here that it is explained that the pair followed Balder to Asgard and were captured along with the rest of the Asgardians but they were sold off to the miners looking for Xorr. There is a lot of heavy lifting being done to explain the man plot holes that are growing deeper the longer this story carries on. It ends in the usual cop-out manner, with Thor not doing much of anything until Odin comes up with a scheme to save the day. What’s even more jarring, issue #217 has Thor and co return to Asgard to find impostors have taken their place. This your typical “artificial constructs created by the bad guy”. This time, the mastermind of this scene is Igron who had been missing since Loki banished him to the land of the Rock Trolls back in issue #179. Conway does some decent continuity work to explain Igron’s return, but what makes it so jarring is the sudden disappearance of Karnilla. In the previous issue she was aboard the vessel of Asgardians returning home and suddenly she’s not there. Which is kind of odd since she made such a big deal about finding Balder. In fact, she’s not seen again until Thor #249.
It’s almost like Conway was setting up ideas and getting bored of them halfway and just coming up with nonsensical resolutions that seem like he was rushing to finish plotlines before he could even begin to do anything interesting with them.
The rest of Conway’s run was more of the same: Issues #218-220 had Thor and co save the Rigellians from the Black Stars, a world of giants that consumed everything in their path like a low-rent overly complicated Galactus. Issues #221-224 saw the return of Hercules to the title, teaming with Thor to save a goddess named Krista from Pluto. It looks like Conway was planning on working a romance between Hercules and Krista in later issues, but he later left the title and Krista was all but forgotten. Issue #225-228 featured Thor and Hercules teaming up with Galactus to fight Ego the Living Planet who had, by this time, gone insane. This story was notable for the introduction of Firelord, the latest in a long line of heralds of Galactus. It also delves into the origins of Ego, which are somewhat derivative of Galactus. Also, Jogn Buscema was briefly replaced by Rich Buckler from issues #227 through 230. Buckler’s art was aping the style of long departed Jack Kirby, possibly to try and recapture the visual style of the last time Galactus and Ego butted heads against Ego. The last two Buckler issues was an odd story about the Dweller-in-the-Depths convincing people to commit suicide.
This led to the return of Jane Foster and John Buscema as artist in issue #231. Foster is dying and Thor spends his time mourning her loss. This story doesn’t make any fucking sense in that Sif just takes Thor dumping her for the dying Jane Foster without the slightest protest and then goes off to recover the Runestaff of Kamo Tharnn and merge herself with Jane to save her life. This non-sensical tale marks the end of Gerry Conway’s run on Thor. Conway’s intentions were pretty clear: He was trying to create a Don Blake/Thor situation with Jane Foster and Sif, with the swapping places to help Thor in battle. Despite the sloppy execution, this actually would have been a good compliment to the whole Thor secret identity thing. But other writers kind of ignored this story-telling potential in favor of sticking with whichever character they preferred better, but more on that later.
Also near the end of the Conway run was this story arc where Odin goes walkabout as a mortal on Earth. You know there must have been some kind of snauf when the last part of an Ulik story had Roy Thomas take over as writer for Conway. Issues #240 and 241 were the product of many hands. With Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Bill Mantlo all taking parts wrapping up Conway’s incomplete plot thread. It shoe-horns the Egyptian gods for no real reason other than adding more pantheons into the Marvel mythology. Frankly, I’m not a fan of this as it becomes a crutch of Thor stories — particularly in the early 80s during the Eternals Saga — as writers scramble to fit every race of god from every religion into the Marvel Universe. I am of the opinion that adding characters and stories taken from myth, folklore, or the public domain and working it into fiction to be the product of lazy writers who can’t come up with anything original.
One positive thing I can say about these stories is that, at the very least, they don’t reduce Jane Foster to the shrieking violet/damsel in distress she was in the previous decade with her taking a more active role in Thor’s adventures and even participating in the battles.
Issue #242-245 see Len Wein take over as regular writer for the series. Wein’s has to be the best of the decade and a refreshing change of pace after the phone-it-in Stan Lee and sloppy Gerry Conway tales before it. This first story arc sets things off with a bang, having Thor and his pals help Zarrko the Tomorrow Man save timeline from the Time-Twisters. This story also introduces He Who Remains, an entity that exists at the end of time. These plot lines will have more importance in later stories that involve Immortus, particularly the events of Avengers Forever.
However, this is where things start getting redundant. Issues #248-250 reveals that the Odin that exiled Thor was actually Mangog in disguise. This story also sees Jane Foster swap places with Sif. Sif will remain in control of their shared existence for a long time, leaving the plot thread unresolved until 1983(!) This isn’t the fault of Len Wein, who left the book in issue #271 to go and work for DC Comics for a bit, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
It’s explained that Thor had been missing since issue #243, after he was found after being missing for some time… See how redundant this is getting? However, Len Wein’s “Where is Odin” story spans almost an entire year from issues #255 through 266 and ends with Loki taking over the throne (again) and stealing Odin’s body while he’s in the Odin-Sleep (again) and Thor battling the Destroyer (again) until Odin is freed (again) and restores everything to normal (again). The only remarkable thing to add here is that from issue #260 through 271 the art duties were given to Walt Simonson. Simonson, of course, is best known for his work as writer and artist on Thor in the 1980s. Here, though Simonson adheres to the Marvel style although there are some hints of a Neal Adam’s influence which I can’t tell is Simonson’s pencils or the ink work by Tony DeZuniga (I’m not that good at eye-balling art is what I’m saying) Len Wein’s final arc involves Thor returning to Earth and fighting the super-computer known as FAUST. It’s not the most deep Thor story and it’s a blatant excuse to cram as many guest stars into the story that had been absent from Thor for years, but other than that it’s nothing to write home about.
Wein went off to go and write Detective Comics for DC. Given the suddenness of the job offer, Wein understandably phoned in the last few issues he had to write. He realy should have ended with the Odin-Quest, but it is what it is.
Taking over from Len Wein was Roy Thomas who will continue write most Thor stories for the remainder of this decade and early into the next. Although Thomas had done some iconic work, most notably in the Avengers, his work on Thor is hit or miss. It still suffers from a lot of derivative story telling, a gross amount of shoe-horning, and over analyzing mythology.
With Roy Thomas as writer for the book, Thor kept on doing much of the same. Even though Len Wein was attempting to get Thor back on Earth to do more terrestrial stories with the Don Blake alter-ego, Thomas scraps that by having Thor immediately returning to Asgard for another epic. Thor #273-278, features a lot of returning themes that have already been done to death. Thor is back in Asgard, again. Loki comes back after just being exiled a few issues earlier. What’s Loki doing? Trying to trigger Ragnarok, again. The story also ends with Thor getting angry over Odin manipulating everyone, again as well as Thor being exiled to Earth, again. These are all things that had been done multiple times before in the same couple of years that by this time it’s getting redundant. The only returning motif that I welcome with this arc is the return of John Buscema as regular artist for the title.
This arc also lays the groundwork for what Roy Thomas had in store for the series moving foward, particularly exploring the differences between the Asgardians and Norse myth. Which in all honesty, I think Thomas got way to into trying to explain these differences — it’s a fucking comic book based on a mythology that has countless different versions of its core stories to begin with. I’ll get into how tiresome this gets when we tackle 80’s Thor comics. The other thing here is that he shoehorns the Eternals into the Marvel Universe. At the time, Eternals was cancelled after 14 issues because — let’s face it — it’s not Jack Kirby’s best work. Originally, Kirby did not want the Eternals to be part of the Marvel Universe. However, once the book was canceled, they moved to cram the characters into the Marvel Universe and resolve some of the outstanding plots that Kirby left untold (of which there are many). However, regardless of if this was a good or bad idea, the “Eternals Saga” as it is later came to be known got bogged down by Roy Thomas also trying to explain every fucking discrepancy between Norse myth and the Asgardians of the Marvel Universe, but again, that’s something we’ll cover later.
It’s also interesting to note that with the end of the Rangarok Saga, Thor wanted to urgently investigate the Celstials. However, in a strange twist, Roy Thomas’ continued saga was interrupted by four filler issues. Issue #279 by Don Glut and Alan Kupperberg was a flashback story where Thor saves Jane Foster from Pluto. This is followed by a story where Thor battles the two Hyperions from the Squadrons Sinister and Supreme by Roy Thomas and Wayne Boring. Boring was best known for his long running stint drawing Superman stories at DC Comics, which explains why he was used as artist in this story which plays more like the childish Justice League of America stories of the 1960s. It’s such a tonal shift from the current plotlines to the determent of Thor for having such a stupid story. Also as far as classic Superman artists go, Wayne Boring has to be my least favorite. (give me Curt Swan any day of the week)
The only diamonds in the rough of filler issues were issues #281-282 by Mark Gruenwald and Ralph Macchio and art by Keith Pollard. This story has the return of Immortus and goes a bit into explaining his connection to the Space Phantoms. The story also sought to take away one of Thor’s more absurd powers — the ability to travel through time — since it was so seldom used. This story would be part of a larger tapestry that is later explained in the Avengers Forever limited series many decades later, which reveals that Immortus had been manipulating the Avengers since shortly after their inception.
The rest of the decade saw Thor meeting, interacting, and fighting with members of the Eternals and their enemies the Deviants. This was all done to reintroduce these characters to readers who may or may not have read Jack Kirby’s Eternals.
And that friends, is how Thor finishes the 1970s. Thankfully, in the 1980s things get marginally better, at least for a little while but that’s a story for another time.
