Thor: Love and Thunder! With added Lou Ferrigno!

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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By Heimdall's bushy beard! It's come to my attention that Marvel Entertainment's just released the trailer for its latest masterpiece Thor: Love and Thunder!

Can it live up to the standards of previous Norse adventures?

Who knows? I thought the first Thor movie was OK, I can remember nothing of the second - other than that Christopher Eccleston was in it - and I've still not got round to seeing the third one.

Admittedly, when I say, "just released," it seems the trailer actually came out a full month ago and the film's knocking 'em dead in cinemas, even as I type. But what's this? It seems it's not going down too well with audiences or critics?

Looking at the trailer, it does feel like it's gone a bit overboard on humour, and those fonts do look a bit He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. But who can judge a film by its trailer?

Regardless of any of that, we have solace because, even if the critics prove to be right, we have our memories of a real Thor movie. The one that co-starred the Hulk.

After all, who can forget the first time those two titans met on screen - way back in 1988 - when films were so awesome they didn't need the magic of competent special effects to entrance the public?

Screen Junkies hasn't forgotten it. In fact, right below, is where the channel reminds us how that masterpiece went.

Strangely, in retrospect, the feel of that movie doesn't seem that different from the direction modern Marvel movies are going in. Clearly, it was a work that was ahead of its time.

 

Flo Steinberg RIP, plus the SDCC Thor, JLA and Inhumans trailers (Potential Spoilers)

Fabulous Flo Steinberg by Lopaka42
[CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

It's a strange thing how you can find yourself feeling attached to someone you know almost nothing about but, thanks to that mysterious phenomenon, it was oddly saddening to learn, a couple of days ago, of the death of Fabulous Flo Steinberg, Marvel Comics' legendary Corresponding Secretary of the 1960s.

It was Flo who answered fan mail, dealt with enthusiasts who visited the office in the hopes of seeing where the magic was created and acted as intermediary between Stan Lee and the company's various freelancers.

Not only that but, in 1975, she became a key figure in the rise of indie comics when she published the infamously ribald mag Big Apple Comix, using the services of such industry titans as Neal Adams, Al Williamson and Wally Wood.

For  a woman so closely associated with the heyday of Marvel, she was there for a surprisingly short amount of time, from 1963 to 1968 but she clearly made her mark, becoming a household name for all readers of that company's output.

In the 1990s, she returned to Marvel, as a proofreader and continued to do such work up until her death.

It probably says it all that her demise made The Daily Express, The Mail and The Daily Mirror, and it's hard to think of any other comics company secretary who could manage such a feat.

Her other great claim to fame was, of course, acting as link woman on the Voices of Marvel Comics record from the 1960s and if you've never heard it or her magnificently Bostonian tones, you can find that very recording by clicking on this very link here.

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In lighter news, a few days ago, it was the San Diego Comics Convention, an event that, if it works hard at it, looks fair set to rival the Sheffield Comics Convention one day.

And that can mean only one thing.

That a whole bunch of trailers were released for display at that very get-together.

Obviously, all sane people only care that a trailer for the Doctor Who Christmas special was unleashed. However, even I've grasped that, this being a comics blog, I should probably concentrate instead on the Marvel and DC trailers that were debuted.

The big ones were the latest trailers for Thor: Ragnarok and Justice League.

Of the two, you can't get round it, Thor:Ragnarok looks like a way better movie. In fact, the trailer contains just about everything you could ever want from a Thor movie - including a total lack of Odin - and the closing moment has to be surely the awesomest shot ever included in a super-hero flick.

Not only that but it turns out that Hela's antlers move.

This is the second Thor trailer now where my main concern has been with Hela's antlers. I can only conclude that I should only ever watch films about reindeers.

I must also confess that, every time we see Hela spin round, I start wanting her to start singing the old Wonder Woman TV theme tune. I'm the sort of man who knows how to wreck any film.

Regardless of all that, my incredible magic powers tell me this film will probably be a walloping great big hit.

In contrast, I have to say the Justice League film looks about as much fun as filling in your tax return but I am intrigued to find out why it seems to feature a member of the Borg in it.

Granted, I do suspect he's not really a member of the Borg and that the film doesn't involve a crossover with the new Star Trek show that's on its way. I also suspect that if I were any kind of comics blogger, I'd know full well who he is, but I don't. The truth is I am a kind of comics blogger. A useless kind.

We've also had the release of a new Inhumans trailer and I have to say I'm still not feeling it. In this one, we get to see Medusa's hair moving, which is an improvement on the previous trailer but, otherwise, the project's still leaving me cold. I also feel that putting Rag 'n' Bone Man on the soundtrack is such an obvious (and an already clichéd) thing to do that it merely has the effect of exacerbating the gnawing sense of a lack of inspiration about the project.

But those are just my opinions and may well be wrong. The trailers are below and you can share your thoughts on them if you so wish, or not share them if you do so not wish. As always, there is no pressure upon you to do either.

Thor: Ragnarok, New Teaser Trailer (SPOILERS!).

By Niffleheim's nifty nipples, it's time for me to stumble into a Nordic cave, bash a gnarled stick against a wall and unleash my mystical blogging powers - because Marvel Entertainment have unleashed the teaser trailer for their upcoming epic, Thor Ragnarok.

I must confess I have mixed feelings about the Thor films we've been given so far. I greatly enjoyed the first one, which I found to be far lighter on its feet than I'd expected but the second one mostly left me confused and bored. I still don't have a clue who the bad guys were, where they came from, what their plan was or how they got to wherever it was that they'd got to. For that matter, I didn't even know where they were.

Still, I enjoyed Iron Man 3 more than Iron Man 2, so perhaps the same pattern will occur with the thunder god's movie career?

As for the trailer itself, I'm not overly excited about his clash with the Hulk. We've already had that in The Avengers and I was kind of taking it for granted we'd see another punch-up from them at some point.

Call me a grizzled old fashionista but I must confess that what really excites me about the trailer is that Hela gets to wear her big fancy hat.

I know that finding such a detail the most thrilling thing in a trailer that's packed with incident and Led Zeppelin makes me the saddest man alive but, I mean, come on, as fancy hats go, that's the fanciest - and it'd make a great place to hang your washing from when you need to get it dry in a hurry. If I were a death deity - which I still hold out high hopes of one day becoming - I would definitely wear a hat like that.

Is it my imagination or is Chris Hemsworth sounding more Australian with each film he does? At this rate, by the next Avengers movie, he'll be talking like Steve Irwin and riding into battle on the back of a kangaroo.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter. If you have opinions on the whole thing, you are, of course, free to share them in the comments box below.

If you don't have opinions on the whole thing, you're free to share that too. That's the kind of blog this is. One that stirs up apathy at every opportunity.

Random comics I have owned. Part Three.

Suffering shads! It's the return of the feature that's left the internet in tatters, as I once more drone on randomly about comics I've owned.

Just what'll be turned up by this veritable Pick and Mix?

Only a rifle through Steve's Lucky Bag of Confusion can tell us...

Superman's definitely in need of a good slap on this cover.

Inside, Hawkman quits the Justice League, and Eclipso might be involved.

Other than that I can recall little of the contents.

It's always nice to see a Nick Cardy cover though.

It's one of the few Original X-Men stories I ever liked, as the merry Marvel mutants find themselves on trial in the court of Factor 3.

I seem to remember that Ross Andru drew this issue, which could explain why it appealed to me more than their tales usually did.

Some bloke builds a big gun to commit crimes with and Thor has to stop him, in a tale of squabbling siblings.

The issue that introduced me to DC's man of mystery.

From what I can recall of this tale, the Phantom Stranger's called in to try and help establish whether a defendant's plea of insanity is genuine or not. Needless to say, there's a twist at the end.

It's the story we all wanted to see, as Conan takes on Kull.

Red Sonja and Belit, meanwhile, continue their bickering.

It's one of my fave Marvel monster tales, as Grogg causes no end of bother.

Sadly, we still get no answer to the enduring mystery of where Marvel's giant monsters buy those underpants from.

It's the only issue of Swamp-Thing I ever owned. It's from after Bernie Wrightson left the strip but that doesn't mean it lets us down on the pictorial front, thanks to some lovely interior work by Nestor Redondo.

It had stylish artwork by Howard Chaykin but I always remember this as being one of the few American comics I had as a child that I could never get on with.

Thor# 209. The Demon Druid.

Well, what an exciting week it's been. Not only did the temperature actually manage to rise above zero for the first time in what seems like years but we've seen not one but two big occasions - both on the same day.

It's been St George's Day and the latest Thor trailer's been unveiled.

I should explain to our overseas readers that St George's Day is the most important day of the year in England. It's a time when we celebrate our national identity by dancing round the Maypole, bursting into tears of pride as we run the flag up the pole we've erected in our garden, and we give three cheers for such epoch-making titans as Shakespeare, Isaac Newton and One Direction.

Granted, none of what I've just said may be true but I've always felt that the fact that most people totally ignore our national day should be a greater source of pride than the fact that we have a national day in the first place. In my book, apathy and cynicism are supremely underrated qualities.

"But, Steve," I hear you ask, "Thor? St George's Day? What possible link can there be between the two?"

None whatsoever but it does give me an excuse to look back on one of my bitterest childhood memories - Thor's visit to England.

I must warn you that I hated this story when I first read it in the pages of Marvel UK's weekly  Spider-Man comic. Its depiction of England was so far wide of the mark that I wanted to personally punch writer Gerry Conway in the mouth every time any of the characters in the tale opened their mouths. Will a second reading, as an adult, prove to be more agreeable? Or will it just stir up personal demons I thought long-since buried?

Sulking over Odin acting like a complete tool again, and the disappearance of Sif, Thor lands in a London backstreet. We can tell at once that it's London because all the streets are cobbled, there's a fog in the air and the city seems to be lit by the hi-tech wonder they know as gas.

Unfortunately, the power of Thor's transformation back to Don Blake awakens a long-buried giant called the Demon Druid who proceeds to stomp all over the English countryside in between bouts of repeatedly knocking Thor unconscious.

Fortunately, there are brighter people than Thor around, and a local police inspector ultimately tells him to butt-out so the Demon Druid can use Stonehenge as a launchpad to return to the alien planet from whence he originally came.

So, did I enjoy the tale more on second reading?

Not really. The portrayal of England seems even more bizarre than it did when I was a kid, with people talking in a manner that suggests they learned to speak English by watching Crocodile Dundee. But the truth is that, nowadays, such inaccuracy amuses rather than annoys me and I suppose it's better than the horror that German readers had to put up with, with all members of their nation routinely depicted by old-style Marvel as obsessive wearers of lederhosen.

I suppose that, on reflection, the main problem with the story isn't cultural inaccuracy. It's that, while perfectly competent, it all feels a bit pointless. Basically, it's just a spiritually empty fight between two god-type beings, with nothing noticeably at stake. By this stage in the strip's history, we'd got used to the grand cosmic soap opera of Asgard and its neighbours and, with its total lack of relevance to the bigger picture, this tale feels somewhat throwaway in comparison to such grand intrigue.

Stranger in a Stranger's land. The Mighty Thor #178.

As I've mentioned before; for some strange reason, some time in 1975, Spider-Man Comics Weekly disappeared without trace from my local newsagents.

When it finally re-appeared, several months later, it'd changed shape and title.

Now it was in The Titans' landscape format and called Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes. Possibly there was a little too much use of the word "Super" in there.

But the return of Spider-Man also meant the return of its back-up strip Thor. And the first Thor story I read upon that return was our hero's first encounter with the Abomination.

But something had changed in that absence - because Jack Kirby was gone, replaced by John Buscema.

One thing that hadn't changed was that Vince Colletta was still on inking duty. While his soft scratchy lines suited Kirby's somewhat rigid pencils on the strip, they were less suited to Buscema's smoother, slicker style.

But there are strange things afoot in this tale.

For a start it begins with everyone stood around hailing Odin as the best thing since sliced bread even though by now you'd have thought everyone must've realised what a complete and total idiot he was.

It's not long before Thor has better things to worry about, as the Abomination accidentally teleports him to the Stranger's home world, where the rascally reptilian tricks him into releasing the various criminal aliens the Stranger's acquired over the years.

Needless to say the Stranger's not overly happy with this development and is out to get Thor.

Certain things leap out at you in this yarn. The main one being Thor's stupidity. In order to avoid detection by the Stranger - so he can explore the Stranger's world for no good reason - he turns back into Don Blake who then wilfully blunders into the midst of the Abomination and his criminal coterie, meaning he then has to be rescued by Sif who appears from thin air to help him. He really does come across as a useless and incompetent berk during this section.

But the real shocker is how Thor sees off the Stranger.

The moment the mountainous menace appears, Thor simply spins his hammer round and turns back time to before the encounter began.

Strangely enough, I don't recall him ever using this power again. No doubt for the obvious reason that nothing's going to kill dramatic tension more than the hero turning back time every time things get a bit sticky for him.

With its disconnect from the rest of the world of Thor, its cop-out use of Thor's temporal powers and its lack of consequences, it's pretty obvious reading it now that the tale was knocked out as some sort of filler between Jack Kirby's last two issues.

It also suffers from the fact we never really get to see Thor fighting either the Abomination or the Stranger, meaning the pulse poundingness that it promises never fully materialises.

Still, for all that, the fact that it was the first Thor story I got to read after that long absence means I'll always have a fondness for it, and at least Sif looked nice in her spray-on armour. You have to hand it to Buscema, he knew how to do spray-on armour.

Thor's all-time greatest enemy - Poll Results!

By the malleting majesty of Mjolnir, the results are in from our poll to find Thor's greatest ever foe!

And what results they are. Why, they threaten to shake the foundations of fair Asgard itself.

In joint fourth, with one vote each, are the Destroyer, Mangog, the Enchantress and Zarrko the Tomorrow Man.

In joint second, with three votes each, are Hela and the Absorbing Man.

But the runaway winner - appropriately, given that he's no stranger to running away -  is none other than Thor's half-brother Loki, with a mighty fifteen votes.

Verily, the people of the Internet hath spoken.

Sadly, Larry the Lava Man got no votes at all. Oh the cruel injustice.

But, regardless of such unfairnesses to the sneaky subterranean, thanks to all who voted - and commiserations to those plucky villains who didn't quite make the grade.

The Norse Poll. Who is Thor's all-time greatest enemy?

With his flowing blond locks, fluttering cape and wingy helmet, who doesn't love Thor: God of Thunder?

Well, plenty of people it'd seem as, over the years, he's managed to acquire more foes than you can shake a hammer at. But just who is the thunder god's greatest ever enemy?

There's plenty of contenders. There's Loki, Mangog, the Absorbing Man, the Wrecker, Ulik the Unstoppable, the Stone Men from Saturn and, of course, Odin.

I'll always have a soft spot for Hela thanks to the fact she's managed to kill him on more than one occasion.

But who can forget such foes as Mr Hyde, the Cobra, and that lava man bloke? I can't remember what his name was; so, given Stan Lee's love of alliteration, I'll assume it was Larry the Lava Man.

Regardless of such well-informed musings, put forward your favourites and, in a couple of days from now, I'll put the poll up.

And at last the world can decide just who is Thor's greatest ever enemy.

Essential Thor Volume 4.

As I mentioned the other day, I've recently bought a pile of Marvel Essentials and, being the Thor fan that I am, I was never in any doubt which was going to be the first one I read.

Like a good football match, The Essential Thor Volume 4's a game of two halves. The first dominated by the latter days of Jack Kirby, the second by John Buscema, with a well-known guest artist to keep us entertained at half-time.

It all kicks off with Thor sent on a quest to discover the origin of Galactus. Whilst it's good to see Galactus again, his origin turns out to be something of a let down, as we discover he's just some bloke who got exposed to radiation, grew big and started eating everything. By this point we'd seen so many Marvel characters who'd got their start by being exposed to radiation that it all feels way too humdrum an explanation for Marvel's biggest of Big Bads.

Once this tale's done, the remainder of Jack Kirby era spends most its time reworking older stories as we get a rematch with the Wrecker, the Circus of Crime and Ulik. Even the new villain Crypto-Man features in a story that's a fairly blatant rehash of the Replicus tale from issue #141. While these tales are all fun, it's hard to avoid the feeling that, as with The Fantastic Four, by the time he'd left, Kirby's best work on the strip was already waving to him in the rear-view mirror.

As though to prove it, the major storyline of this late Kirby period's a straight reworking of the first Mangog outing when, thanks to getting his hands on the Odin-Ring as Odin sleeps, Loki seizes the throne of Asgard - only for Surtur to inconveniently appear and attack the kingdom. As in the Mangog tale, all seems lost until Odin awakes from his slumbers to dispatch the threat with no noticeable difficulty.

After this is we get an odd little tale - presumably a last minute fill-in - in which John Buscema takes over for an issue to give us Thor versus the Abomination. It's a tale that reveals that Thor can turn back time, which he's never done before and which you would've thought makes him effectively unbeatable.

Jack Kirby returns for just one issue before departing for good, followed by Neal Adams' debut on the strip as Thor and Loki swap bodies in a tale involving Mephisto. I'm not convinced it's a happy debut. It all looks as slick as you'd expect but Joe Sinnott's inks are so distinctive that, however polished it is, it looks more like Rich Buckler's Neal Adams impersonation than it does the real thing. For me it also lacks the dynamism of both Kirby and his long-term successor.

That successor is John Buscema who returns with a Dr Doom scrap before it's back into epic territory with the tale of Infinity, a star-devouring hand that turns out to be Odin's dodgy side unleashed by Hela.

Happily Infinity's seen off.

Not so happily, Hela's in a bad mood about the foiling of her plans, and kills Thor, only for wimpy old Sif to touch the Death Goddess with her tears, causing Hela to bring him back.

Unfortunately when they all return to Asgard, Loki's got his hands on the Odin-Ring (again) and has seized the throne (again). Instead of giving Loki a good smacking like he should, Odin stays as annoying as ever and goes off to have a kip, leaving Loki to do whatever he wants.

What he wants is to get his leg-over with Sif and create a creature called Durok the Demolisher who spends a fair amount of time knocking Thor around before knocking the Silver Surfer around. Highlight of all this has to be Durok smashing the Surfer's board to pieces. I always liked to see the Surfer suffer.

But there's still no rest for the dunderheaded because, having finally woken up, Odin banishes Loki to the place where Mangog's buried. Needless to say it's not long before the block headed villain releases the monster, and Odin has to thus send our cast off on yet more quests. At this point we meet the Asgardian warrior woman Hildegarde. Hildegarde as a character's great but has one obvious flaw which is that, with her rugged fighting ways, she really does rub-in what a complete and total wet dish-cloth Sif is in comparison.

You can't get away from it that there's an awful lot of repetition going on in these tales, with two reruns of the original Mangog tale and two epics involving Loki taking over Asgard by getting his hands on the Odin-Ring. Just how stupid is Odin that he learns nothing from the earlier problems and still leaves the Odin-Ring lying around for Loki to find? It's also annoying that Odin keeps going into the Odin-Sleep every time he's needed. You really do wonder why the people of Asgard revere the useless old berk.

But there're new ideas too - the main ones being to do with the characters. Freed from the constraints of working with the more concept-oriented Kirby, Stan Lee clearly starts to remodel the strip the way he wants it to be, as grandiose soap opera. This is no bad thing. As the strip goes along it's obvious it's becoming more and more an ensemble piece and less and less a solo strip, as Balder, Volstagg, Fandral and Hogun get more and more page time.

They're not the only ones. Once Gerry Conway takes over the writing chores, there's also the introduction of the strapping Hildegarde, brought in to accompany the increasingly useless Sif on a mission, while, before Lee goes, Hela, rarely seen in the strip before this era, gets noticeably more involvement.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about these tales involves Karnilla the Norn Queen, as we see her gradually evolving from out-and-out villain to a more ambiguous figure, purely through her love for Balder. Balder meanwhile finds himself torn from emotional pillar to post as he tries to balance his love for Karnilla with his sense of duty to Thor, Odin and Asgard. To a large degree, although the comic's called Thor, these are really the adventures of Balder and Karnilla, and the strip's all the better for it.

All the latest movie news from Planet Comic (Potential Spoilers).

Being a fan of comics, I do of course take an interest in all the latest super-hero related movie news that washes up on my front beach of belligerence. The world is still trembling from my recent coverage of the latest images from the new Spider-Man flick. Sadly, more often than not, I find myself failing to be impressed by super-hero movies. However, every so often one comes along that actually gets it right. So, will the next crop of super-hero flicks be hit or... ...erm, something that rhymes with "hit" but isn't quite the same word?

It seems Anne Hathaway's been cast as Catwoman in the new Batman film The Dark Knight Rises. On the one hand, speaking as someone who only knows Anne Hathaway from her time as William Shakespeare's wife and from certain "interesting" photos of her on the Internet, this intrigues me. On the other, the fact that we're getting Catwoman and Bane in this film fails to light my candle. Will I never get to see Killer Croc on screen?

Meanwhile, More photos of Captain America in Captain America: The First Avenger have come to light. There've been some complaints about his costume but I like it. It has the look of the 1940s to it and my disappointment that - like Thor - Cap's to lose the wings from his head has been largely assuaged by the fact that he will at least have them painted on his helmet.

Meanwhile there's always the Thor trailer that's up on Youtube. Admittedly It's been up for months but no one ever accused me of rushing these things. I won't bother getting into the, "Oh My God! Heimdall's black!" arguments, as everyone with any sense knows the Norse Gods aren't even human, let alone Scandinavian, so they can be any colour anyone wants them to be. I do worry it might all turn out to be a bit dry and humourless and therefore ultimately uninvolving but it does mean we get to see the Destroyer smashing things up.

Elsewhere, there're pictures of January Jones as Emma Frost, on the set of X-Men: First Class. Well, I suppose it's better than some of the outfits Emma's been lumbered with in the comics over the years but my fashion senses tell me it's a look that'll never catch on. Being the red-hot Hollywood-watcher I am, I don't have a clue who January Jones is but it probably doesn't hurt that her real name makes her sound like a comic book character from the get-go. Apparently it's a prequel, so it probably won't be any good.

Super Spider-Man #171. The Death of Gwen Stacy & the Green Goblin.

Something very strange happened in the Autumn of 1975. A number of the comics I'd been getting week-in and week-out for several years disappeared without trace from my local newsagents. The Mighty World of Marvel, The Avengers and Spider-Man Comics Weekly all vanished at around the same time. If not for Planet of the Apes, what would I have had to keep me going? Fortunately, within a few months they were all back. But when Spider-Man Comics Weekly returned, it was in a whole new form.

It had been Titanised.

Like that other Marvel UK comic, Spider-Man's weekly mag was now printed sideways. This was good. Thanks to it allowing them to print two pages of artwork side-by side on every physical page, this meant you got twice as many pages for your money.

So what did you get?

You got trauma.

No sooner had the comic reappeared than this happened; Gwen Stacy died.

Now, I managed to miss the issue where she went but I sure as shooting heck had the next one, in which I discovered that in my absence Gwen had bought it. This was terrible. Gwen was blonde. She wore nice boots. She wore an Alice band. How could they kill such a creature? On top of that, by the end of this issue, the Green Goblin was gone too.

To say this was powerful stuff for a twelve year old would be no matter of hyperbole. Seeing Spider-Man clutching the corpse of his long-time girlfriend was quite the most moving thing I'd ever read in my life. This story and the ones that followed, as Peter Parker tried - and sometimes failed - to come to terms with the death of Gwen Stacy had a potency I'd never seen before in a comic and left an impression on me that remains to this day. I still regard the events of the next couple of years on that strip as the greatest era Spider-Man ever had. One that only dissipated when Ross Andru left the mag and Peter Parker graduated.

Two into one will go. The landscape format that showed us a whole new way of looking at comics.

Fortunately there was more. After that Spider-Man classic, the issue gave us a Gene Colan Dr Strange story. I don't remember if I could make sense of the tale at the time but, looking at it now, I don't have a clue what's going on. Dr Strange and Clea are in Dormammu's Dread Dimension but Strange has lost his powers and is having to rely on Clea to do "pagan" magic to achieve something or other. It's a bit of a surprise to discover Dr Strange's normal magic wasn't pagan. Now I'm left not at all sure what kind of magic it was. There's some sort of junkie in it, a man who seems to be Clea's father, Dormammu, Umar and various others and, frankly, I'm left bewildered by it all. It does though end with a giant Dormammu climbing up out of a huge crack in the Earth, ready to perform some evil deeds or other. So, if it leaves you bamboozled, at least it makes you want to read the following issue.

Next we get a centre-spread poster featuring Luke Cage and Mace. Like virtually all artwork produced specially for Marvel's UK comics, it has to be said it's not great.

Nor is the specially produced splash page for the George Tuska Iron Man tale that follows it. Shell-Head's up against The Controller who I think turned up in the pages of Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel. The presence of this tale baffles me. Up until now I was under the impression Marvel UK's Iron Man reprints ended when the comic switched to landscape format. Now I've discovered they didn't. This means I must've read years of Iron Man stories from that point on, with no recall of them at all. Essential Iron Man Vol 3 clearly beckons, as I try to find out what happened in all those tales I've forgotten.

Next it's a Thor adventure as he sets out to tackle Dr Doom after rescuing a protesting girl from a mini-riot. He soon finds out Doom's kidnapped her father in order to get him to build him some missile silos. In the flashback, the girl's clearly aged at least ten years since he was abducted, which implies he's taking an awful long time to build those silos and that Doom blatantly kidnapped the wrong silo scientist. In order to lure Doom out into the open, Don Blake plants a story in the papers that he's developed a cosmetic surgery technique that can cure any disfigurement. This seems rather thoughtless of him, as the hopes of disfigured people the world over will be built up and then cruelly dashed for no good reason. Aww but who cares? It's drawn by John Buscema, so every panel's a thing of simple beauty.

We finish off with a Thing/Black Widow team-up that I assume comes from the pages of Marvel Two-In-One. Much as I love the Thing - and the Black Widow - I'm not convinced Two-In-One was always the greatest comic Marvel produced, and this tale does little to change that. The story's pretty silly, with the Widow at one point whipping off her top to reveal she has the parts for a disruptor cannon attached to her back, hidden in a strip of fake skin. Let's own up, we've all done it. Meanwhile, the Thing spends half the story hauling in a three mile long stretch of cable to stop a bomb going off. As well as the somewhat lame story, the art looks terrible. Either Klaus Janson's inking doesn't suit Bob Brown's pencils or Janson's habitually lavish use of ink suffers unduly from being shrunk to half normal size.

So, was the landscape format a good thing?

Of course it was.

As said before, the great thing about it was you got twice as much story for your money. Where else would you get an entire 20 page Spider-Man story, plus seven to nine pages each of Dr Strange, Iron Man, Thor and the Thing, and a double-page pin-up, all for 9 pence? The downside isn't really the small size of the artwork. Apart from the Thing story, it really doesn't suffer. The main downside is the small size of the letters page which only has room for two letters. As it's clear from one of those letters that the comic's only recently switched to the new format, it would've been nice to see more room for fan reaction to the switch.

Thor: Agog at Mangog.

As our Thor Week concludes after, erm, four days, the most important question of them all has yet to be answered. Just what is my favourite Thor story of the era I'm covering?

It's not a simple choice. The Silver and Bronze Ages gave us a whole slew of classics. I love the first High Evolutionary story and the first Destroyer outing, not to mention the Wrecker's debut. There was Thor's first clash with Galactus and the first appearance of Ulik. Who could forget Ego, the living planet, or Hercules' descent into the Underworld?

From the John Buscema era there was the tale where Odin turned evil and thus became a slightly greater threat to the whole of existence than he normally was, and I do have a soft spot for the story where the Silver Surfer gets his board smashed by the Demolisher. Granted, that could owe more to my not being a fan of the Surfer rather than anything else.

But, no matter how hard I think about it, I can't get past one story and that's the four-part epic that is Mangog's first appearance. Mangog, a being of pure evil, made from the souls of a billion billion beings, a single-minded menace that didn't know how to take no for an answer.

The appeal of Mangog was obvious. Nothing could stop him. It was impossible to not be thrilled by the sight of him flinging storm giants around, smashing Asgardian legions and shrugging off Thor's mightiest blows like they were feathers.

If there are failings with the tale, for me, they're twofold. One is that, while Odin's in his Odin Sleep and Thor's busy trying to stop the monster, Loki finally gets his chance to claim the throne of Asgard but, having got it, shows no great interest in protecting it from the rampaging behemoth. I know Loki's supposed to be the God of Evil and therefore untrustworthy but it would've been nice if, once in power, like Dr Doom, he felt some urge to fight to preserve his kingdom.

The more damaging flaw was the resolution. In it, just as Mangog's about to draw the Odin Sword and destroy the universe, Odin finally condescends to wake from his Odin Sleep and deal with the menace. He does it with a ridiculous ease, simply willing Mangog out of existence with a casual wave of his sceptre. After all that battle, after all that strife, all that melodrama, it does feel like a total cheat for it to conclude so tamely and it brings home the problem of having a seemingly all-powerful character in the strip, a problem that meant contrivances like the Odin Sleep had to be invented to keep him away from the action.

Was Mangog based on Forbidden Planet's Monster from the Id? That too was an unstoppable beast crafted from the machinations of a dead race and, in that final shot of the creature fading as Odin exposits, the last glimpse we see of it's noticeably reminiscent of that monster.

Complaints about the resolution aside, the tale works because it's simply the ideal playpen for Jack Kirby to unleash his all-action style. Thor's battle with Mangog in issue #156 is simply awesome, as the thunder god throws everything he has at it and has any artist ever got more dynamism into his work than Kirby does for the following issue's assault on Asgard? Given such pictures, how could Stan Lee refuse to give us his finest hyperbole?

So there you have it. Action and hyperbole. In the end, what more could you want of a Thor story?

Hela. Drop dead gorgeous?

There comes a time in the life of even a god when he must lay down his sword and turn his thoughts to the gentler things in life; puppies, kittens, and fluffy romance. As we're still in the middle of my Thor Week, that raises the question of who was my favourite female character in the strip.

It's a dread reality that, during the time when I was reading Thor, there wasn't an awful lot to choose from. Basically, we had Sif, Jane Foster, Karnilla and Hela. There was someone else, I seem to recall, a seven foot tall warrior woman type, during John Buscema's reign. Being a Viking, she was probably called Hildegaard, or Brunhilde or something but the fact I can't remember her name suggests she can't have made that great an impact on me.

Well, as we saw when she got her chance at godhood, Jane Foster was a total wimp and, after a good start, the lovely Karnilla spent more time pining after boring old Balder than she did weaving mischief.

All of which left Sif and Hela. Well, I had a certain soft spot for Sif. Leaving aside the fact she seemed to buy her spray-on armour at the same place that Wilma Deering bought her spray-on spacesuits; after years of Jane Foster, anything was going to seem good, and at least Sif could handle a sword.

But still, when it came to it, Sif was another Stan Lee heroine, which meant that, in times of crisis, she was still there to be rescued at every opportunity by Thor.

But Hela....?

Hela. Saying in four panels what it once took Neil
Gaiman's Death an entire issue to say.

Now Hela was the real deal. Long before Neil Gaiman gave us death in female form, Marvel gave it to us. And could they have done it with more style? She was eight foot tall. She was the living incarnation of death. She wore a silly head-dress, hung around in a land of mists and could flatten Thor if she really wanted to. What was there not to like?

I was so much on her side that every time she turned up, I wanted her to win. I actually wanted her to kill Thor and bring the strip to an end - not because I had anything against Thor but just because, sometimes, some villains you want to win. Thus was I terribly aggrieved when, in Thor #190, Odin killed her. The idea that Odin - or anyone else - could kill Hela was, to my eyes, a disgrace. She was death! How could Odin  kill death? Even Odin should be powerless against her. My god, even Galactus should be powerless against her.

Happily, despite the Odin aberration, she "lived" to kill again and all was right once more in my world but still it was a shameful episode in the history of the human race. The last I saw of Hela was in the pages of an X-Men comic where Storm had become the new Goddess of Thunder and, not happy about it, the X-Men took on Asgard. I seem to recall Hela tried to claim Wolverine at the tale's climax. As always, she lost - but she retained her sense of menace, so I was happy.

So, there it is. When it comes to goddesses, my ideal woman's eight foot tall, wears a silly head-dress and is death. I'm not sure what it says about me but I like to feel it says all you need to know about her.

Odin: the Norse Numbskull.

Ah yes. Odin... the living incompetence.

Having recently ploughed through those first few Thor Essentials, I've come to the conclusion that I'm on Loki's side. Granted he might have been evil and stupid and could've taken someone's eye out with those horns but there's one good thing you can say about him.

He wanted to get rid of Odin.

Has there ever been a stupider and more annoying comic book character than Odin? Granted there've been other annoying comic book characters - Mantis and Moondragon spring instantly to mind; not to mention Mr Myxomatosis or whatever he was called. And as for Superman...

But then again, Mantis, Moondragon and Mr Myxtlpltoijoindfonjrognjeoerhptl (?) were at least meant to be annoying and, however irritating Superman may have been, he did at least make up for it by repeatedly saving the world.

Odin, however, was a threat to all who lived. Despite his constant declarations of being all-wise and all-knowing, he messed up every single thing he ever did. He created an indestructible suit of armour that became a rampaging engine of destruction if anyone got close enough for it to absorb their life force. He created a sword that'd destroy the universe if it were unsheathed. He decided to amalgamate a billion billion evil beings into one unstoppable evil being and then left it in a cave where any old troll could find and release it. And let's not forget that incident where he transferred his power to his evil adviser Siedring the Schemer who - being a schemer - used it to take over Asgard. Which bit of the word, "Schemer," did the all-knowing not get?

If that weren't enough, whenever he was needed to sort out any of the messes he'd created, he'd be in his Odin Sleep, with orders that none should wake him, no matter what was going on in the real world. In Thor #180, we were even treated to the sight of him sending Thor (in Loki's body) to Mephisto's hell and then, when Thor's friends tried to tell him the mistake he'd made, them being told it was his time of day for brooding, and therefore none may disturb him! Well, brooding, that's so much more important than any threats your loved ones might face.

But his biggest crimes against competence were his ridiculous hissy fits where, just when Thor most needed his godly powers, Odin'd strip him of them to teach him a lesson, usually leading to Thor's total humiliation and occasional death. If I were Thor, the only lesson I'd learn from this is that Odin's a complete imbecile.

Being evil, and a coward, and totally untrustworthy, Loki might not have been the ideal ruler but he was the only one in Asgard who seemed able to spot that Odin wasn't fit to run a whelk stall. Therefore I like to feel he should at least have been given a chance. I mean, he couldn't really do a worse job than the bloke who inflicted Mangog on the universe.

Could he?

Journey Into Mystery #83. Rocky times for the Stone Men from Saturn.

Hold onto your hammers because it seems it's gonna be Thor Week here on Steve Does Comics.

I could claim this is down to me being as topical and in touch as always and therefore foreshadowing the Thor movie that's due out come May.

It wouldn't be true.

It's because I've been reading two of the Essential Thor books in the last few days and, verily, I'm fully Thor'd up.

Admittedly, when I say, "week," I can't guarantee it won't be longer or shorter, or that every post'll be about Thor. Such is the ramshackle and uncoordinated nature of this blog. But, as with my schoolboy days as a wizard of the wing, I shall set the ball rolling and see where it takes me.

I can't deny Thor's origin's always been my favourite of all the main Marvel heroes. I suspect it's because it's a lot more concentrated than most. In Fantastic Four #1, we get two stories in one, the tale of how they became the Fantastic Four and then the tale of their first meeting with the Mole Man. In the Hulk's debut, we get the origin of the Hulk and then his encounter with the Gargoyle. In Amazing Fantasy #15, we get the story of how Peter Parker's a social outcast then how he gets spider powers then how he uses them to make money and then the twist that finally turns him into a super-hero.

There's none of that messing about with Thor. With Thor's debut, from the first page to the last, the whole thing's devoted to the Stone Men and their attempt to take over the world. Don Blake even gets his powers directly as a result of the Stone Men's invasion. The only other Marvel origin I can recall, off the top of my head, that's as concentrated in its story-telling is Iron Man's but, as Iron Man's just up against normal people, it doesn't have the sense of magic and fantasy that Thor's origin does.

The second reason it's always grabbed me's probably that it's the only major Marvel origin that, as a kid, I could see happening to me. Even at a very young age I knew the chances of me being fired into space, FF style, were a little slim, as was the chance of me being bitten by a radioactive spider. As for the likelihood of me getting caught in a Gamma bomb blast...

Still, finding a stick. I could do that. In fact, I used to find sticks all the time. Admittedly none ever gave me super-powers but, still, at least the opportunity was there.

But most of all, my love of Thor's origin has to come down to one thing.

Its bad guys.

I'm not going to hide it for one second. I love the Stone Men from Saturn. They were made of stone. They could uproot trees with their bare hands. They hung around in fields, talking to themselves. They had spaceships and a robot.

Spiritually, of course, they didn't come from Saturn. Spiritually they came from those old monster mags Stan Lee and Jack Kirby'd been churning out before Marvel'd turned its gaze back towards super-heroes. Still, that didn't mean I didn't love them.

Now, I'm not oblivious to the prospect that this might not be a universally held view. The fact they were neither seen nor heard from again until 1977 tells me all I need to know about their popularity at the time but I think of it this way; virtually all  Marvel's Silver-Age heroes encountered aliens very soon after they were created and, of that wave of would-be invaders, the Stone Men were easily the best.

Not for them the silly antics of the Skrulls, the Toad Men, the Tinkerer's little helpers or of whatever those aliens were supposed to be that set a robot Neanderthal on Iron Man. Oh, no, the Stone Men just turned up with their fleet and started invading.

And yes I know people'll be pointing out the obvious problem - that we know there are no Stone Men on Saturn.

Well, I don't know it. Until they land a man on Saturn and he's not greeted by rocky men and their Mechano-Monster, I'll refuse to know it.

But, beyond that; the last time I looked, there were no Norse gods on Earth, and that never put us off the mag, therefore why should the alleged absence of Stone Men on Saturn?

So, no matter, what anyone else says, I say hooray for the Stone Men from Saturn, and for the hours of fun I had behind settees, pretending to be Don Blake fleeing them when I was a child.

Fleeing.

If only I'd had a stick.

Steve Does Comics' 100th issue special

Hooray, Steve Does Comics celebrates its 100th postiversary.

That's right, despite often lengthy and unexplained absences, I've somehow managed to rack up 100 missives on this blog. And to celebrate - and avoid me having to do any proper writing - I thought I'd look at how some of my favourite heroes marked their 100th issues. I'm only including tales I've actually read, so I'm afraid the likes of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman don't make the list.

Daredevil marks his 100th appearance with a tale I have no memory of whatsoever, although I'm sure I must have read it in the pages of Mighty World of Marvel. Judging by the cover, it seems to follow the Marvel trend of having a load of old foes show up to mark the occasion. Unfortunately, it probably also highlights the fact that most of his foes were a bit on the so-so side.

I said there was a trend with these things. Like Daredevil, Spider-Man fights a whole villains' gallery of his deadliest foes - this time in his dreams. It all climaxes with him getting a mystical message from the late Captain Stacy before waking to find he has six arms. Words can't describe how much I loved the six arms when I was eleven.

This is how to celebrate a 100th issue. Everyone who's ever been an Avenger up to that point - including the Swordsman - goes to war with Olympus. I read this in the pages of Marvel UK's Titans mag. Thanks to the ground-breaking landscape format, the art was shrunk to the size of a postage stamp but Barry Smith's art still shone through.

Just like Spider-Man and Daredevil, the Fantastic Four get to fight a whole bunch of their greatest foes. I think they were the first of Marvel's Silver Age heroes to make a hundred appearances, so they can at least claim to have been the ones who set the trend. Sadly, the foes in question are only robots, and the not-exactly-awesome villains behind it all are the Thinker and Puppet Master who manage to blow themselves up through their own incompetence.

Thor celebrates Journey Into Mystery's big ton by tackling Mr Hyde. Mr Hyde might not be one of Marvel's greatest - or best dressed - villains but, like the Gray Gargoyle and the Cobra, I've always had a soft spot for him. Love the smiley Thor pic in the top left corner box.

One of Marie Severin's best efforts sees the strongest man on land tackle the strongest man in water, as the Hulk and Sub-Mariner square up to each other. Again the Puppet Master's involved, this time looking like Donald Pleasance. I seem to recall the story's set in Miami, which, when I read this story, as a kid, impressed me greatly, even though I'd never heard of Miami.

The very new New X-Men grapple with the original X-Men. Again, it's only a bunch of robots they're up against but, happily, despite the appearance of a bald bloke on the cover, it's not the Puppet Master who's behind it. This was the first issue of the new X-Men I ever had and I didn't have a clue what was going on or who any of these people were. But I knew one thing. It grabbed me. The tale was a roller coaster ride of action, tension and human drama, starting with the scrap between new and old X-Men and ending with a battle to escape a solar flare, and the genesis of the whole Phoenix saga. Could they have crammed more into a comic if they'd tried? 

Of the above tales, I have to say the X-Men, Avengers and Hulk/Subby stories are the ones that stand out most in my memory and, like the visiting judge at a prize marrow contest, I think I have to give first prize to the X-Men which really was a classic in every way imaginable. 

The Mighty Thor #243. Jurassic larks.

The Mighty Thor #243. Cover by Gil Kane.

I have to admit to having a soft spot for Thor. As a kid, I used to stick a plastic arrow on the end of my wooden ruler, with plasticine, to make it look like a hammer, and then crawl around behind the settee, pretending to be him.

Why I thought Thor was in the habit of crawling around behind settees, I've no idea. But I always felt that should have been his origin. Fleeing from the Stone Men from Saturn, Don Blake hides behind the settee, where he finds a gnarled old walking stick that transforms him into Thor. In hot pursuit, the Stone men follow him, behind the settee, and Thor and the Stone Men from Saturn battle it out to decide the fate of the world; behind the settee.

I'm not a professional comic book writer.

I don't know why.

But this comic, the Mighty Thor #243, is one of those special issues because I got it on a Sunday and, as I've said before, any comic I got on a Sunday always felt more special than one bought on any other day of the week. I have no explanation for this phenomenon but, apart from an early issue of Captain Britain, (which featured Nick Fury, so I was never going to like it), I never met a comic that entered my life on a Sunday that I didn't love.

For those who don't know, what happens in Thor #243 is Kang the Conqueror appears in the present day, to enlist the aide of Thor, Jane Foster and the Warriors Three. He needs them to fight some bad aliens who're spiralling backwards through time and repeatedly destroying the Earth. Now those aliens have reached Kang's time and he needs Thor's help.

Zarrko the Tomorrow Man.
Not at all cut from the same
cloth as Kang.

In fact that's not what happens at all. It's not Kang. It's someone called Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man, a character I have no memory of but who, apparently, turned up in a very early Thor story many years earlier. But it shows how the human mind plays tricks on you that, over the passage of time, I'd come to think it was Kang, until getting my hands on a copy again, a couple of years ago, ended that notion.

Why it isn't Kang, I don't know, as there seems to be no great difference between the Tomorrow Man and the Conqueror except Kang was more memorable and therefore a more likely candidate for inclusion in this tale. In fact, it's a slightly odd outing for Thor as most of it's taken up with the heroes' short journey through the time stream, as they discuss the situation with Zarrko.

That's not to say nothing happens.

Whomm! Take that, lizard boy!

What happens is that, on the way, Thor gets to face off against a tyrannosaurus. Oddly, Thor doesn't recognise it as a tyrannosaurus, thinks it's a dragon and tries to have a conversation with it as he fights it.

That does raise a point I always wondered about as a kid, which is just how much of Don Blake's memory does Thor retain when he transforms? Whenever there was medical work needed doing, Thor would always change back to Blake to do it, implying he lost his medical knowledge when he changed. Oddly enough, he never lost knowledge of Jane Foster. Straight after transformation, he never found himself standing in Don Blake's surgery, saying to her, "Who are you and what am I doing here?" Maybe it would've been a better strip if he had and if, every time he transformed, he had to have the whole situation explained to him over again.

I'm not a professional comic book writer.

I don't know why.

But, here, Thor must've lost all knowledge of not only paleontology but also popular culture to not know what a dinosaur is or that they don't speak English.

It's all very unlikely but it's an appealing tale from one of my favourite Thor eras and it's drawn by John Buscema which means every panel, is perfect and a thing of beauty.

If only it had all been set behind a settee.