Thor, the lamest in the Marvel Universe!?!

There's no question that Stan and Jack took quite a while to hit their stride with Thor. The first issue was particularly silly. Rock men from Saturn or wherever?

Even Thor fans don't recommend those JIM stories.

These stories actually sound quite fun. I love reading the really old books from waaay back cos they seem to naive and inncoent compared to some of todays books I read. just plain old good fashioned fun for 10-15 minutes (or while ure on the toilet)

You're right, but let's balance the record for the title as a whole.

These issues were from the early-to-mid 60's. You're quite right about the quality of the very early Thor stories, they are pretty silly. But the title picked up a lot a couple of years later. I've got some Marvel Spectacular reprints of #137-143 (1966 or 67) and the stories are a lot better. Certainly by 1972 (~#192+) when I started reading it as a kid, Thor was a pretty good read. John Buscema was drawing it and I think Roy Thomas was the writer. Thomas certainly did the old-fashioned dialogue better than Stan and the stories were more cosmic. Worth a read if you can find them. And of course the current issues of Thor have been pretty good for some years now, including the excellent 'Spiral' arc now appearing.

Thor has actually had as many entertaining runs as any of the other mainstay books.

As you suggest, Stan and Kirby do eventually get it together and turn out some really good stuff. Roy Thomas had a really good run also although some Thor fans dislike portions of it. Then there is the Walt Simonson stuff that many Thor fans think was the best Thor run of all. Most recently, after a number of hit or miss storylines, Jurgens seems to be turning out really good stories.

Actually, Thor has been the most consistently good Marvel comic of all. Of course the early issues were a bit silly, but everything from the sixties reads like that...

Sounds like a good reason to publish 'Essential Thor Vol. 2'

I haven't seen this advertised elsewhere, but it was given a pretty prominent plug in last month's Wizard ('Wizard Zero,' which was actually pretty good, with a Perez feature and a Neal Adams feature among other things). Seems to have come out of nowhere, but I'm glad to see it.

: I haven't seen this advertised elsewhere, but it was given a pretty : prominent plug in last month's Wizard ('Wizard Zero,' which was actually : pretty good, with a Perez feature and a Neal Adams feature among other : things). Seems to have come out of nowhere, but I'm glad to see it.

Came out of June's PREVIEWS, actually.

Ah, well, I don't read Previews, so I wouldn't have seen that. But my point was more along the lines that I didn't think that the first Simonson TPB sold all that well (I seem to recall much wailing and gnashing of teeth here, mostly regarding a couple of pages that were printed in the wrong order), so I was kind of surprised to see a second volume in the works.

It's also pretty hard to do worse than stone men from Saturn.

In those earliest appearances Thor seemed to be pretty much Don Blake with super powers. There were some changes in personality when Blake powered up, but those changes seemed to be mostly attributable to an increase in self confidence from having big muscles and an enchanted hammer. Even as Thor, he seemed to think of himself as Blake.

The problem with trying to sort all that out, is that Blake being a false persona is a retcon that simply doesn't match up perfectly with those early stories. The retcon works because Odin is so powerful that any inconsistency can be attributed to Odin having some unfathomable reason for allowing the it.

So what happened to the real Thor then? Blake has the powers of Thor, but what about the mythical guy?

Jurgens was just as bad with the Jake Olsen personality. The stupidity of that plotline made me drop the book, impersonating a dead guy is hardly heroic.