Essential Thor volume 3

Essential Thor volume 3 reprints issues #137-166, bar an Inhumans back-up strip that ran in issue #146 to #152. Everything is by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The stability is further enhanced by all but one issue being inked by Vince Colletta.

It's the format of the series which demonstrates the most variation. There's a final epic "Tales of Asgard" back-up feature which gives way to an Inhumans back-up strip then the second half of the volume sees issue length stories set in the present day. This is a series that has found a firm purpose as a mixture of Norse mythology and cosmic space adventure, with most time on Earth mainly serving as interludes between the big events. Thor is almost completely bereft of a human supporting cast with Jane Foster only making a single cameo to show she is getting on with her life and now has total amnesia of Thor. The other outstanding human element is also dealt with in a respectful way that confirms what the series has evolved into.

Throughout the volume Thor retains his identity of Donald Blake and his medical practice, although it's increasingly a sideshow. The two identities are by now clearly established as the same being but curiously when he's in the form of Thor he seems to lack Blake's medical knowledge. It's understandable that Thor's large hands and huge strength would not be suitable for delicate surgery, but less so that he would not know as much. And we finally get a resolution to the longest running uncertainty in the series so far. Issues #158 & #159 finally address the confusion about the main character - how can he be both the original Norse God of thunder with a life stretching back over many centuries and yet also a mortal man who discovered the hammer and gained the body and power of Thor? As he says, "If I am truly Thor... then who is the real Donald Blake? And if I am Don Blake... Where was Thor before I took his identity??" The first issue incorporates a reprint of Journey into Mystery #83, exposing the contradiction starkly as Donald Blake ponders the matter himself. (It also neglects to reproduce the original credits, a failing the Essential's contents page repeats) Then in issue #159 we get "The Answer at Last!" (the story's title) and learn how Donald Blake has been Thor all along. In order to teach his son humility, Odin had forcibly changed him into mortal form and given him both amnesia and a physical disability so that he would know weakness and learn "that any handicap can be endured... and overcome!" and sent him to Earth where he arrived in mortal & lame form on the first day of medical school with artificial memories. The hammer was disguised as a stick in a cave to await being found once humility had been learned.

This is one of the first overt retcons in Marvel history, with the original state of affairs addressed head on and explained away, rather than being simply ignored or flashbacks altering the original events. It may well have been driven by incessant questions on the letterspage and/or by the first generation of fans now working for Marvel, but in general it represents an elegant attempt to reconcile the original idea of a man acquiring the power of a being from mythology with the subsequent shift to depicting the adventures of the actual being. No retcon is ever perfect and this one doesn't explain how Blake could suddenly appear in adulthood with no recorded past, or why, if Thor is deemed to have learnt his lesson by now, he still has the Blake alter ego. But the biggest omission is any explanation as to why it took time for Thor's original personality and memory to come to the fore. Nevertheless the retcon has stuck to the point that any latter day readers are surprised to discover Thor and Blake were ever depicted any differently. I am aware of only one attempt to retcon this again, from the mid 1990s, and that was so convoluted and ultimately inconsequential that, as far as I am aware, it has been generally ignored and forgotten about every since the writer in question left the series. (If you don't know the details it's probably best to keep it that way.) But here we get Lee and Kirby putting almost a finishing touch on the character's background, overcoming the confusion from the earliest days of the series when they weren't in full control of it.

Thor's identity may have been cleared up but he retains his medical practice and loyalty to Earth, going so far as to defy an order from Odin to return to Asgard. At this stage Odin is acting somewhat out of character, being more power obsessed and angry than normal, and he opts to punish Thor once more by stripping him of all power bar his strength. The same subsequently happens to Loki, Sif and Balder. The power is eventually restored but in the meantime we see Thor trying to survive on his wits, unable to even revert to the form of Blake, and eventually taking a job with the Circus of Crime as a strongman who pretends to be none other than Thor himself. This leads to his being hypnotised into taking part in a robbery. This, even more than his Blake form, truly humbles Thor but also shows there is more to him than his powers though he does eventually regain them.

The series continues to thrust forwards with a good mix of existing and new elements. The early issues contain the final (for now) "Tales of Asgard" feature focusing on Hogun of the Warriors Three as his village is attacked by the sorcerer Mogul of the Mystic Mountain, leading to an epic journey as Hogun seeks vengeance. Successive issues show the group battling their way through a variety of monsters as they search for Mogul, with Volstagg's laziness and cowardice often on display along with excuses for it. However he also demonstrates his skills when he secures the Rod of Wondrous Wizard Power and uses it to deal with both beasts and Mogul's army. There is debate between Hogun and the others over how much help he should accept from them in his own duty to his people but ultimately the four journey together. This story is generally okay in collected form but five pages a month for nine months must have been tedious for contemporary readers and it's easy to understand why the feature is dropped for the time being.

The main strip doesn't hold back on character creation with this run including the first appearances of various trolls, of whom Ulik is the most notable. Others seen from the Troll kingdom are the ruler, Geirrodur, and his slave, Orikal, a mysterious being from another realm who is held captive to power the trolls. There are the mysterious Enchanters, made up of the trio Magnir, Forsung and Brona, who rule another dimension and now seek to conquer Asgard. In one brief adventure Thor battles longstanding Avengers foe Kang the Conqueror and his new weapon, the Growing Man. Another sees Thor take on both the crime boss Slugger Sykes and the ever adapting android Replicus, who feels like another variant on the Mad Thinker's Android and the Super Adaptoid. Asgard comes under attack from the Trolls and the Enchanters but the biggest threat comes in the form of Mangog, the gestalt embodiment of a race defeated long ago by Odin. Mangog is a giant monster that seems impossible to stop as it rampages towards Asgard to seize the Odinsword and cause Ragnarok, the ultimate day of destruction, making for a desperate struggle to stop him.

Loki's schemes and improvisations are responsible for a number of battles including with pre-existing foes such as the Super Skrull but also new ones. In order to regain his own powers Loki turns to Karnilla but at the time when she sends the power Loki's helmet has been taken by a burglar known as the Wrecker and he gets empowered instead. Armed with a now enchanted crowbar, the Wrecker takes on the role of the ordinary mortal empowered by Asgardian magic just before the retcon removes the last possibility that Thor himself falls into this category. Still the Wrecker makes for a good physical foe.

The last few issues see Thor in deep space, this time helping the Rigellians to confront Galactus who in turn is going after Ego the Living Planet. This leads to a confrontation between two very different kinds of gods, with a dramatic showdown. Later Odin shows part of the origin of Galactus. Following this there's another confrontation with Pluto and finally a battle with the mysterious "Him" (later renamed Adam Warlock), created by the Enclave, now seeking a mate and settling on Sif. Thor defeats him but is now succumbing to the Warrior Madness and has to seek redemption. The volume ends with Thor about to embark on a deep space expedition to achieve this.

In some of the adventures Thor is fighting solo but at times he has regular aid from variously the Rigellian Recorder, Balder and Sif. Balder is built up as a good loyal ally of Thor but faces his own problems when Karnilla falls for him and goes courting in her own unique way, even turning to the sorceress Haag to enchant him. But it's Sif who's given the strongest attention. Time and again she is shown as a strong warrior and though she's not a physical match for Thor she can more than hold her own. The affection between the two is strong though it brings its own dangers when Karnilla tricks Sif's spirit into occupying the Destroyer to help Thor only for the armour to overwhelm her, take control and nearly kill him. Later she takes a blast intended for Thor and nearly dies, but Blake's skill as a surgeon saves her. The two work well together and she is a far more suitable companion for Thor in this style of adventure than Jane Foster.

Although there are some problematic pages, in general the reproduction in this volume is quite good and in particular reproduces Vince Colletta's inks sympathetically. Also of note are some of the later issues where in certain shots space and/or Ego appear to be represented by photographs of either paintings or sculptures - it's a bit difficult to tell in black and white but the actual pages have reproduced quite well without the mix of line drawings and photographs turning into the mess seen in other volumes.

As a whole this volume shows a strong coherence and direction. With the totally consistent presence of Kirby and Lee this volume feels like the definitive take on Thor. Over the three volumes so far they have tried and tested a variety of elements and refined them to the point where it's now clear what works. At the same time they have either explained away or steadily phased out some of the more problematic elements. The result is now a solid run showing the series at its height.

Essential Thor volume 2

Essential Thor volume 2 reprints issues #113-136 plus Annuals #1 & #2. Issue #113-125 & annual #1 still have the formal title of "Journey into Mystery" but the logo and the contents mean that issue #126 is rather less of a change than a listing would imply. (Indeed references to earlier issues even call the series "Thor" not "Journey into Mystery" and there is no acknowledgement on the covers or strip pages that the series title has changed. This is already an-all Thor series.) Everything is by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, initially usually credited as writer and penciller respectively but from a back-up strip on #133 onwards they're always just credited together as producing the story and at this point the volume's contents page starts giving Kirby a co-plotting credit.

That credit may be lifted from the files or represent a latter-day effort to try to rebalance things given the lengthy debates about Lee and Kirby. But this volume brings up the other great controversy about Kirby and another name on the credits. For everything bar the first three lead stories is inked by Vince Colletta.

Colletta's inking has been the subject of much discussion over the years with a lot of pencillers doing their best to avoid their work going to him at the time and saying so since. Subsequently many fans have piled in to the point that Colletta has become the poster child for slapdash inking that destroys the penciller's intentions. But Colletta has his fans as well and in recent years they have become louder. There are two lines of quite reasonable defence for some of the problems. Firstly Colletta was so fast and reliable that he often did emergency fill-in issues where a rush job was essential to getting the book out on time. On such an issue it was natural to cut corners. Secondly Colletta's work suffered particularly badly in the 20th century reprints which often had crude reproduction that undermined his fine lines. Now the first defence has a lot of validity but it should not apply to a regular assignment with a reliable artist who delivered the pencils on time. The second rebuttal is mixed here because the reproduction quality is variable. Some of the pages appear to reuse remastered versions prepared for the Masterworks or other reprints. But other pages were apparently either missing or not yet remastered - this volume came out midway through the Masterworks covering the same period - and they seem to have been sourced from elsewhere, possibly including some of the 1970s reprints that went one copy generation down rather than going back to the source.

Looking at the results in this volume I begin to think that Colletta's defenders have a point. When the reproduction works well it shows some quite charming imagery that gives the artwork a mythic quality - I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say it looks like woodcuttings, but certainly it feels appropriately old worldly - but when the reproduction is poor then the ink can get fused together and it really drags the art down. But then foresight is something many in the comics industry have lacked and so one can hardly blame Colletta for working for the original printing and not taking later reprints, of which he had no control over the methods, into account. It's hard to judge the impact of his habit of erasing lines, figures and objects in order to simplify the task as this volume only offers the finished work, but this may explain why so many pencillers were critical yet editors and art directors did not see the impact and so continued to assign him. But what is clear is that Colletta's inking is an acquired taste. Leaving aside his numerous fill-ins as necessarily requiring a short cut approach, on some regular assignments it can really drag the art down but here when allowed to breathe it can really enhance it.

The use of Norse mythology continues to be expanded in this run but increasingly the task is taken on by the "Tales of Asgard" back-up strips. Some are set during Thor's childhood, showing the deviousness of Loki beginning at a very early age, but others are set at an indeterminate point during his adulthood in Asgard. (By now Thor is treated as having always been the Norse deity and this volume doesn't touch on just what he was doing as Donald Blake before he rediscovered the hammer.) There are one parters and epics, showing the warriors of Asgard in training at home and on far away quests. Amongst the characters introduced are the Warriors Three - Fandrall, Hogun, and Volstagg - and the Vizier, all of whom subsequently appear in the present day adventures. There are also debuts by other races such as the Storm Giants and the Flying Trolls or individual foes like the dragon Fafnir. We also meet some of the great objects for the first time such as the enormous Odinsword that wields great destruction. There's even the first use of the name "Mjolnir" for Thor's hammer. And we get a glimpse of the future as Odin recounts how Ragnarok will come and destroy Asgard and all the gods, but from the ashes will rise new life. (It seems that as early as the start of 1966 Kirby was thinking about the ideas that would eventually manifest themselves at DC as the New Gods.) My knowledge of Norse mythology is quite limited so I don't know how well these adventures match the tales the Vikings told, or if they had any greater research done for them than looking at a children's story book.

Although not explicitly billed as "Tales of Asgard", perhaps because it ventures outside Norse mythology, the new story in annual #1 is also set in the past to set things up for the present. For here Thor stumbles across Olympus, home of the Greek gods, and meets Hercules for the first time. There's no attempt made to explore the simultaneous existence of two different sets of gods or to show which ones have greater powers, but instead we get a source of enemies and sometimes allies starting with a rivalry with Hercules. Later on in the present day adventures Hercules returns for further fights and briefly wins over Jane Foster but subsequently he's captured by the Greek god of death Pluto (I have never understood why Marvel calls him by his Roman name instead of his Greek name "Hades") and Thor serves as his champion to save him from being trapped as the new ruler of the underworld. Hercules's father Zeus also appears, but isn't developed too much beyond a traditional ruler sending warriors on missions and passing judgement on contracts so it's hard to judge how his parenting skills compared to Odin's. In the background of the glimpses of Olympus we also meet other Greek gods such as Hera, Ares, Pan, Dionysus, Hermes, Artemis and Hephaestus whilst Pluto's underworld is guarded by Cerberus. The god of death is also aided by Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons and one of Hercules's past conquests.

The back-up strips may do a lot to enhance the mythology of the series but the lead stories don't skimp on this task either. We're now into a period when a lot of Marvel series were run as ongoing sagas with subplots dragging over multiple issues rather than the earlier set of standalone adventures. This allows a whole series of themes to run together. Early on we get the debut of one of the most powerful foes Thor has yet encountered, the Absorbing Man. With the power to duplicate the properties of any substance he touches, this ex-criminal becomes a pawn of Loki and battles Thor multiple times, often duplicating the properties of the hammer to become even stronger. Amazingly Thor never actually manages to defeat him directly, although at one point Loki extracts his pawn out of fear defeat is coming, and it takes Odin's trickery to finally exile him to space. The other significant sort of Asgardian foe to appear is the Destroyer but this is a lifeless suit of armour that can be animated by the spirits of others. Elsewhere Thor fights a mixture of recurring foes - Loki continues to be especially persistent - but also has an adventure in Vietnam where in the most overt propaganda in the volume he encounters a man twisted by Communism to the point where he guns down most of his family, only to then repent and destroy a weapons stockpile. This is probably the most generic of all the adventures and could have featured almost any hero.

On a grander scale we get some cosmic adventures with the introduction of the Rigellian colonisers including Tana Nile. It's almost comical to see Nile wandering the streets of New York trying to establish her position as the ruler of the world and dealing with police officers who think they're on Candid Camera, a prank TV show similar to Beadle's About. It leads to Thor flying off into space to tackle the Rigellian homeworld but then agreeing to Earth's release in exchange for serving them on a mission into the mysterious Black Galaxy. Accompanied by a Recorder unit, a robotic anthropologist, Thor heads there and encounters the wonder of Ego the Living Planet. Coming back to Earth Thor encounters a new Camelot in Mount Wundagore in the Balkans as he meets the High Evolutionary and his Knight of Wundagore, New Men created by a accelerated "evolution" ray carried out on animals. Lee and Kirby seem unaware that evolution isn't just about growth over generations but also about adaptation to the circumstances. Nevertheless Thor's intervention causes a distraction that leads to the over-evolution of a wolf into the uncontrollable Man Beast.

The heavy pace of the series means that Thor rarely gets a chance to relax and sometimes he finds events moving rapidly without him. He goes away for a while and comes back to discover Jane Foster has been kidnapped, leading to a mystery with few suspects and so it's no surprise to discover it's journalist Harris Hobbs in search of a story. Hobbs briefly discovers Thor's identity and blackmails his way to Asgard but is returned to Earth with amnesia. Meanwhile Donald Blake finds his practice has fallen away in his absence with his patients leaving for other doctors, whilst Thor discovers the Avengers' line-up changed while he was in Asgard for an extended period. His main remaining tie to the mortal world is his nurse Jane, with this volume bookended by major developments between them. In the first issue Thor reveals his identity to her and she retains the knowledge despite Odin's disapproval. Over subsequent issues Thor finally wins his father's approval to marry Jane, though this is delayed by first her being drawn to Hercules and then by Tana Nile using her powers to make Jane go a long way away, eventually winding up as a teacher/nurse for the New Men on Wundagore. In the very last issue Thor takes Jane to Asgard but she is forced to endure a series of tests that scare her off. Jane demands to be sent back to Earth and Odin willingly complies, dropping her at a hospital with amnesia where she is immediately drawn to doctor Keith Kincaird, who resembles Donald Blake. Odin had manipulated things all along and Thor is let angry but soon calms after a battle against trolls in which he is aided by Sif. The two reunite and walk away together.

More so than the first volume, the issues in this one represents the key foundations for the series in the long run. Thor is no longer just a hero with a name and some other cast members lifted from mythology but a well developed modern day interpretation of a key individual, existing in a universe

Essential Tales of the Zombie volume 1

Essential Tales of the Zombie volume 1 contains all ten issues of the magazine Tales of the Zombie plus a story from each of the first couple of issues of the magazine Dracula Lives! Bonus material consists of the cover of Annual #1, an all reprint issue. The early issues of Tales of the Zombie and one of Dracula Lives! also carried some reprints of stories from Marvel's earlier horror comics and these are included here; they come from the likes of Mystic, Menace, Journey into Mystery and Chamber of Darkness. Writers on the series include Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, Kit Pearson, Marv Wolfman, Tom Sutton, Tony Isabella, Doug Moench, Gerry Conway, John Albano, Len Wein, Carl Wessler, Larry Lieber, David Anthony Kraft, Chris Claremont and John Warner. Artists include Sutton, John Buscema, Pablo Marcos, Win Mortimer, Vincente Alcazar, Enrique Badia, Rich Buckler, Vic Martin, Ron Wilson, Ernie Chan, Syd Shores, Dick Ayers, Frank Springer, Alfredo Alcala, Michael Kaluta, Virgilio Redondo, Yong Montano and Tony DeZuniga. Unfortunately some of the reprints predate the era of credited creators so there's a degree of omission and guess work (which invariably is better at identifying artists than writers) involved here. Identified creators include writers Stan Lee and Chuck Robinson, and artists Ayers, Gene Colan, Bill Everett, George Tuska, Ralph Reese, Tony Dipreta, Bill Walton and Russ Heath. One of the Dracula Lives! stories is a reprint drawn by Dipreta, the other is new and written by Thomas and drawn by Colan. That's a HUGE amount of credits so the labels have spilled over into three other posts, one and two for new work and a third for reprints.

One of the joys of the Essentials is to be shown glimpses of fads in popular culture that have otherwise been generally forgotten. Here is a strong reminder of early 1970s America's fad for all things Voodoo (and that's the spelling used throughout rather "Vodou" or "Vodun"), which is otherwise primarily preserved for modern audiences in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. (Issue #4 of the magazine even carried a rather critical review of that film by Don McGregor, reproduced here along with so many other text features. I had to suppress a chuckle at the text's comment about how actor David Hedison was probably one of the few glad that the film lacked the scene from the book where Felix Leiter is fed to a shark. But it took sixteen years before Licence to Kill dipped Hedison into a shark tank.) Voodoo magic, especially the walking dead, was fascinating many. The magazine format meant that Marvel could produce, or reproduce, material that wasn't bound by the shackles of the Comics Code Authority, starting with the series's very name as the lead character could be unambiguously presented as a "zombie" rather than a "zuvembie" or some other Code friendly spelling that takes away the impact and sheer horror associated with the word.

But this series wasn't the first time Marvel had dabbled with zombies. A number of their 1950s titles had featured them and several stories are reprinted here. Such was the impact of the original stories that one of them, simply entitled "Zombie!" from Menace #5, was selected and built upon to provide the main character and his daughter. Bill Everett thus emerged as the creator of an ongoing character some two decades after working upon the original strip and right at the end of his life. (An editorial in the first issue wishes Everett a speedy recovery but sadly it was not to be. Not included here is a tribute piece from the second issue.) Oddly the first issue doesn't credit Stan Lee's work on the story - maybe his infamously bad memory was at work and perhaps just once he failed to do what he semi-jokes he always does and take any credit that isn't nailed down. The original story is reprinted as the Zombie's chronological second appearance, but the twist at the end of the tale is now lost because of what is shown before it. However the newly created origin ties in well with the original story, though I don't know if the latter underwent any modifications from what was printed in the 1950s in order to match the new material. And the new material came in many different forms.

The magazines were more than just comics by another name. As well as several strips, both new and old, they also contained a number of features and the occasional text story. In several ways they remind me of London Editions Magazines/Fleetway Editions's Superman and Batman titles from c1988-1995 which had a similar strip and text feature approach and which were amongst my introduction to US superhero comics (if I remember and understand correctly, the earlier years of LEM's output was in an exceptionally rare period when the DC superheroes had a better presence on the British newsstands than the Marvel ones; Marvel UK at the time being primarily focused on licensed spin-off titles). These articles delve into a number of aspects relating to both zombies and Voodoo, ranging from the origins of the religion to some of the best books then available on the subject to the portrayal in movies to the culture clash in New York as the rituals of animal sacrifice met legislation barring them and the public's reaction to finding decapitated animals in the park. There are in-depth looks at a number of Voodoo and zombie movies, including some previews. Overall the tone of the articles is highly sympathetic to Voodoo, even though most of the authors appear to be atheists, noting that it has been distorted by media depictions but in fact is rather harmless. "In fact, with the exception of those rites involving animal sacrifice, Voodoo is probably as harmless as Presbyterianism, albeit more colorful," writes Chris Claremont in issue #7 before going on to point out "...there have been no Voodoo holy wars, no Voodoo inquisitions, and no Voodoo tax-exempt real estate holdings." In general the series sets out to portray Voodoo in a non-negative light despite also having to meet popular expectations. However it's not so clear about the differences between the Voodoo practised in Haiti, in west Africa and in Louisiana and in other parts of the United States, tending to present them all as one.

Within that we get a mixture of new and reprinted stories, some focusing upon the title character, others telling one-off tales of encounters with zombies and Voodoo. Whether original or reprinted, these back-up strips are often highly entertaining and at the same time quite dark. We see the fate of an butterfly collector as his son's wish that he'd stop capturing and sticking pins into the insects comes true, or four female prisoners escape and reach the isolated home of one of their aunts only to come to grief one by one. Then there's the white hunter in Dahomey (now Benin) who is searching for gold and his long lost brother, but his atrocious treatment of the locals backfires on him. There are tales of murder victims taking their own revenge or of families turning upon one another and more. The anthology format is now rarely seen amongst US comics but it's always good to allow creators the chance to come up with completely one-off stories and the results are a strong pleasing mix.

However the main attraction is the lead feature, telling the story of the zombie that was New Orleans businessman Simon Garth. Reading through these tales I found it absolutely astounding that there is an almost total lack of appearances by the wider Marvel universe. Simon Garth may have popped up in Dracula Lives! but only as a passing cameo when Dracula visits New Orleans. Indeed the story could easily have been left out but I guess somebody wanted this volume to be the definitive Zombie collection. (The story had already seen print in Essential Tomb of Dracula volume 4 so it wasn't as if people might assume a major team-up was missing.) Otherwise the only visitor from another series is Brother Voodoo in a couple of stories, one filling in for the lost Zombie tale. These stories are both fairly okay but fall into the realm of back-up strips and so aren't the main attractions. Still it's good to see Brother Voodoo operating without the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, even if he does still talk about "Zuvembies" instead of "Zombies". This restraint is probably the main reason why Simon Garth didn't get used in other Marvel comics at the time - significantly he didn't appear in either Marvel Team-Up or Marvel Two-in-One when virtually every other Marvel horror star did at some stage or other. This isolation works well, reflecting the lead character's own isolation but also allows the series to stand on its own feet instead of swamping things out with an endless stream of guest stars.

The first story introduces the main characters who recur throughout the series. Simon Garth is a ruthless businessman who has climbed to the top in the coffee industry but in the process he's lost much of his humanity. Arrogant and domineering in both the boardroom and the home, he has alienated his wife and tries to run his adult daughter Donna's life. He is also oblivious to the feelings of his secretary Layla. Then he is brought down when he dismisses the gardener Gyps for making unwanted advances on Donna but in retaliation Gyps kidnaps him and takes him to a Voodoo ceremony where the mambo (priestess) is Layla. She tries to free him but Gyps catches up with him and kills him, then forces Layla to bring Garth back as a zombie. Wearing the Amulet of Damballah which allows anyone holding its twin to control him, Garth now wanders the Earth as a stumbling corpse. However vestiges of his former life remain and he refuses Gyps's command to kidnap Donna, instead killing Gyps. He then spends much of the rest of the series wandering, occasionally coming under someone's control as the Amulet is successively found and lost, and otherwise surviving. The series doesn't pull its punches - the violence isn't gratuitous but it's also held back on and we see the impact on humans and animals as Garth takes action against them.

The setting shifts between Louisiana and Haiti and back again, with Garth a noble figure whose lack of speech and thought is compensated for by one of the few occasions when second person narration works. Over the course of his wanderings he encounters a number of bizarre situations, ranging from a mad scientist who briefly transforms Donna into a giant spider, to a house murder where members of a family are being picked off, to a New Orleans cult in association with a local crime lord, to a reclusive family looking after their deformed son. Garth is used and abused by a succession of individuals, most notably a group of "swingers" (party types rather than switchers) who use him to perform pranks on a number of people who've annoyed them, not realising just how dangerous this can be. Despite such abuses, Garth manages to maintain a degree of dignity throughout, helped by a part of the zombie curse that gives him a fast healing power. Midway through the series Garth is reunited with Layla, now an outcast after she tried to save him, yet tragically the swingers make him attack her for her past actions in the typing pool. However she survives long enough to give her soul to allow Garth to be restored to full life for twenty-four hours.

Issue #9 sees Garth now restored as he gets the chance to put right a lot of his past mistakes. He attends his daughter's wedding and reconciles with his ex-wife. He visits his business and apologises to his partner, then sells up and has the proceeds put into a fund for his ex-wife, his daughter and the deformed boy. And he takes action against the New Orleans crime lord and the cult who transformed him in the first place. Finally he returns to zombie form but retains enough control to use the Gris-Gris bottle Layla obtained that allows him to permanently die. The story may offer a sense of closure for Garth, but it wasn't intended that way. An editorial note at the start of issue #10 confesses how a story depicting his resurrection was written and drawn, but many of the pages were diverted in transit and ended up in Guam. It was rescheduled for issue #11 but then the series was cancelled, presumably as the Voodoo and zombie fad was now passing. Since there's nothing added after issue #10 it seems the story never saw print in any other series.

The format of the series means there aren't that many pages devoted to Simon Garth and so his story is much briefer than just about any other character with their own Essential volume. But it allows a much closer and personal story than is often the case, and shows how even the most obscure of characters from decades earlier can be put to great use. Meanwhile the other stories and features all work to give an enhanced experience. It's a pity that the magazine format will probably never be seen again as this volume offers a good look at how such a format can deliver so much.

Essential Thor volume 1

The same day that Spider-Man first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15, another hero made his debut in the pages of Journey into Mystery (yet another of Marvel's anthology series). Issue #83 introduced the Mighty Thor, as the Norse god of thunder was brought to life. Well in a way...

Essential Thor volume 1 reprints the Thor strips from Journey into Mystery #83-112, including the "Tales of Asgard" back-ups from issue #97 onwards. Also included is Thor's entry from the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition, though in the first edition (at least) the pages are out of order. There are also a couple of pin-ups.

The first issue is plotted by Stan Lee, scripted by Larry Lieber and drawn by Jack Kirby. Lee plots up to issue #96 and then takes over the full scripting on both the lead and back-ups, with issues before then scripted by first Lieber and then Robert Bernstein (under the semi-pseudonym "R. Berns"). Kirby draws all of the "Tales of Asgard" back-ups and most of the leads, with a handful done by variously Joe Sinnott, Don Heck and Al Hartley. The first three stories carry no credit on them, but later on the order of plot-script-art is used and the contents pages are structured accordingly. The order of credit for Thor has become a contentious issue, particularly when the movie of a few years ago carried a "based on" credit that was ordered Lee-Lieber-Kirby, but it seems likely that had there been a credit back in issue #83 it would have been ordered as such. Personally I feel the original order should be used as it's the only way to avoid awkward disputes to which there is no clear answer, but that isn't much help in this particular case.

The very first story in Journey into Mystery #83 is rather atypical of what was to come. Dr Don Blake is on holiday in Norway when he stumbles across first an alien invasion and then a cane that when struck gives him the body and power of Thor. The foes in this story would be forgotten were it not the very first story and there's none of the traditional material associated with the character from his nurse Jane Foster to Asgard and the various other Norse gods who dwell there. As is later made more explicit, this is far from the first time Thor or a Thor has walked the Earth so it's an origin story for Blake but not Thor, whoever that may be.

Who is Thor? It may seem an obvious question at first but it's more complicated than it seems. Is he, as shown in his first story, Dr Donald Blake who has acquired the power of Thor? Or is he, as his relationship with Odin and the rest of Asgard in later issues implies, the true Norse Thunder God? And if he's the latter then just who is Donald Blake? If the two are separate beings fused together then why do they never speak or act as such? We're doubtless seeing the effect of the character not being fully thought through at the start and this would later lead to problems before an attempt to tidy it up (and then much later came one of the most ludicrously unnecessary retcons of all). Asgard first appears in the third story as Loki escapes an age-old imprisonment and seeks revenge on Thor. But the Thor he finds only recognises his foe from legends rather than having the memories. Despite this Loki and the other Asgardians assume that the real Thor is in action. Starting with issue #86 there are multiple times when Thor appeals to Odin for extra help, and then in issue #90 Odin orders Thor against revealing his identity and the latter accepts it without protesting that he isn't actually the original thunder god. In issue #89 Blake, temporarily without his cane, thinks "...even though I haven't the body of Thor, I still have his brain -- his thought processes!" as though he's still thinking of his two identities as more than just different bodies and powers. But increasingly this Thor is treated by all, including himself, as the actual god - in issue #92 he even thinks of Odin as "my father". This leaves open the questions of just who is Donald Blake and exactly what happened when Blake found the hammer Mjolnir, but otherwise the series gets on with things.

Donald Blake's life away from superheroing isn't especially explored. We see him as a reasonable successful medical practitioner who also dabbles in various experiments from time to time, making for a somewhat generic alter ego that isn't too far removed from contemporaries such as Hank Pym. The only supporting cast member at the mortal end of things is his nurse, Jane Foster. Each is attracted to the other but Blake is unable to declare his feelings. It may seem clichéd now, but Jane Foster is (by my reckoning) actually the first working woman girlfriend of the Marvel Silver Age, arriving before the likes of Betty Brant, Pepper Potts and Karen Page. Each works for a living in a white-collar environment, but in a subordinate role, and each is attracted to a man around the office. In three cases the man is their boss but there's no mention of malpractice, being an era when comics didn't descend into such complicated matters. Jane is no wallflower and at times stands up to both the various villains and to Donald Blake when she feels he's been cowardly. She's also drawn to Thor a little, but wisely there isn't a full-blown triangle involving the hero and his own secret identity - that approach had been done to death with Superman. Instead the main impediment to Jane and Donald finding happiness comes from a different source, edicts from Asgard.

Fairly early on we start to see more and more of the other Norse gods and Asgard, providing a steady source of foes but also of continued conflict. By far the key figures is Odin, the ruler of Asgard and Thor's father, and this volume contains a lot of tension as the two repeatedly clash over Thor's desire for Jane and wish to marry her and Odin's refusal to allow his son to marry a mortal. Unfortunately the reasons behind such a key conflict are never properly explored as we never get a very strong exploration of just why Odin feels it is such a bad move. Odin's orders to Thor are often come with the assumption, sometimes explicitly stated, that Odin is right by virtue of his positions both as ruler of Asgard and as Thor's father. Probably more by accident than design the series had stumbled across what would become one of the major social conflicts of the later 1960s as a whole generation rejected the notion of elders and officials having inherent wisdom and that one should do (or not do) something merely because such a person said so. Thor may have long hair but he's not the most natural teenage rebel. It also doesn't help that Odin seems rather quick to form judgements, and whilst he may be able to look down on Earth and see what's happening, he hasn't got sound with the picture and so doesn't always realise why Thor or Jane are acting as they do.

Odin isn't the only other Asgardian introduced here. Between Thor's various visits to Asgard and the back up feature "Tales of Asgard" we meet a variety of others. As well as the various villains we also meet Heimdall, the guardian of the Rainbow Bridge that leads to Asgard, and Balder the Brave. The goddess Sif appears, but at this stage only in "Tales of Asgard" and there's no sign of her role as a potential rival for Thor's affection for Jane Foster.

We get a mixture of the famous and forgotten foes, with several of a type familiar to the early Marvel Silver Age. Thor's very first adventure sees him fight off the Stone Men from Saturn - an alien race trying to conquer the planet. Then in his second story he fights the Executioner, who is no relation to his later Asgardian foe of that name, but the corrupt bearded leader of a Communist revolution in a Latin American country. Now I wonder who he was a parody of? And Communism isn't just seen in fictional countries, with one early tale revolving around the Soviets kidnapping key scientists and another showing "Red" China trying to invade India only to be turned back by Thor and subsequently creating the Radioactive Man to fight him. Back home there are more generic criminals such as Thug Thatcher, or Sandu the fortune-teller who steals from his audience until Loki powers him up. Then there's Professor Zaxton, a corrupt scientist who invents a duplication ray with the added power of giving the duplicates opposite personalities under his mental control. Or there's Merlin, who is revealed to be a mutant (he first appeared the same month as the X-Men launched) who used his powers to fake magic and who has been in suspended animation for a millennium. (I have a feeling he's been since retconned as not the actual Merlin.) Or there's the Lava Man, supreme warrior of his more often seen race, and Skagg the Storm Giant. At the, erm, fantastic end are the Carbon Copy Men, a race of aliens with the ability to disguise themselves. No, nothing like the Skrulls from the Fantastic Four. When captured they are forced to use their shape-changing power to permanently turn them into a form where they forget who they are. Again nothing like the fate of the Skrulls.

More familiar foes include Loki, Thor's half-brother and master of mischief, who first appears in the third adventure and appears regularly thereafter, either attacking Thor directly or empowering agents. In total Loki appears as a villain in thirteen of the thirty lead stories here, as well as appearing in some of the Tales of Asgard back-ups as well. Other big name foes introduced include Zarrko the Tomorrow Man, the Radioactive Man (who originates from "Red" China), the Cobra, Mr. Hyde, the Enchantress, the Executioner, Hela the goddess of death, Surtur the Fire Demon and the Grey Gargoyle. (I'm surprised that his name is spelt that way rather than "Gray" - were both spellings common in the US in the mid 1960s or was the British spelling used to emphasise his foreignness?)

And the very last issue in the volume touches on one of Thor's other great rivalries. He comes across children arguing over who is tougher - himself or the Hulk - and relates a story of an encounter between the two that ended inconclusively. This may have been intended to set up a forthcoming rematch, but it feels odd to be getting a story told in flashback that takes place between panels of an early issue of Avengers, rather than introducing an original situation and building on it. It's also uncertain just which of the two actually is the strongest, in spite of Thor successfully appealing to Odin for all Mjolnir's magic to be suspended for a few minutes to allow a fight based on pure strength.

Indeed Thor's powers and strength levels are often altered in these tales thanks to either appeals to Odin or punishments being arbitrarily imposed (Odin also seems reluctant to just actually tell his son that a particular punishment has been given). It can make for a slightly uneven approach that undermines the tension when Thor is up against an especially powerful foe. However there's less of this as time progresses and Thor increasingly has to resort to brain rather than just brawn. The ultimate comes in his fight against the Grey Gargoyle when his Thor body is turned to stone for twenty-four hours and he has to defeat his foe as Donald Blake.

The early stories are relatively straightforward, perhaps due to the writing being split between plotting, drawing and scripting. There's also rather a heavy emphasis on anti-Communism, with some quite overt propaganda, especially on the point that democracy and communism are incompatible. However once Lee takes over the full scripting from issue #97 onwards we start to get more intricate tales with action flowing from issue to issue, multi-part tales and a sense of direction even if the actual direction isn't too clear beyond the rather repetitive conflict between Thor and Odin about Jane Foster without a great deal of advancement. Otherwise we have a succession of battles that keep to the spirit of Thor as a noble being who fights for the common good. These aren't the most dynamic of Thor stories but they do well to lay out the basic tapestry of the series, with "Tales of Asgard" providing an epic feel (though I'm not sure how true to recorded myths the series actually is). But with Thor the best is yet to come.

The material appears to have been sourced from a mixture of clear remastered black and white pictures and direct reproductions of the printed colour comics. However the latter is of a noticeably higher quality to all previous such scans in earlier Essentials (this volume first appeared in early 2001 and was the first to sport the second cover format), especially in the speech balloons and captions. It seems that developments in scanning technology and digital clean up were used to get a much better page than previous reproductions without master materials. Indeed it almost opens up the question of whether all the pages should have been scanned from colour copies, as sometimes the grey can enhance the effect. However in other places it can make the resulting image too dark and some of the colour doesn't scan so well, producing a dotted smeary grey effect.

Randoms and resting

Okay I've now reached the most recent Punisher volume. This isn't the end of this blog by any means but due in part to real life events I'll be posting sporadically in the months to come but will try to keep up with the latest releases, including guest appearances.

Watch out also for my thoughts on some of the other Essential volumes, starting with a character who first appeared on the newsstands the same day as Spider-Man. And as a bonus, here's a picture of one such newsstand from a contemporary television series called Naked City:

Thanks to Homages, Ripoffs, and Great Coincidences: Great Collaborations #1: Hold for Gloria Christmas  for highlighting this.