When trying to come up with an impressive new hero in the early 1960s, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby thought that it would be interesting to develop not just a superhero, but an actual demigod. Since the public was already familiar with the ancient Greek and Roman gods, Lee and Kirby decided to delve into Norse mythology. Thus, the Mighty Thor made his debut in Marvel Comics in August of 1962. Given how successful the 1960s were for Marvel, it’s incredible what clunkers were produced. The following comics are among the worst of Thor’s earlier stories, exhibiting massive plot holes, weak storylines, ridiculous super-villain schemes, and overall nonsense.
1. LOKI STEALS THOR’S HAMMER, USES POWERS TO MILDLY INCONVENIENCE NEW YORKERS
(Journey Into Mystery #88 January 1963 “The Terrible Vengeance of Loki!”)
Despite what the title indicates, Loki’s vengeance is more annoying than it is terrible. In this issue, Loki is once again being punished by Odin for causing trouble on Earth and is forbidden from ever leaving Asgard. Loki spies on Thor from Asgard and learns his secret identity as Dr. Donald Blake which requires having his hammer on hand to become Thor. With this knowledge, Loki manages to sneak down the rainbow bridge and get past Heimdall. Apparently, when it comes to Loki, Asgardian security is about as effective as the TSA. Loki visits Dr. Blake’s office and challenges Thor to a fight in Central Park. Thor accepts Loki’s challenge, but during the battle, Loki endangers the life of Thor’s love interest, Jane Foster. Thor is forced to choose to either save Jane or catch his hammer. Thor chooses the former, but after being away from his hammer for too long, he turns back into Donald Blake. Loki prevents Blake from grabbing his hammer by putting a force field around it. With his half-brother unable to become the God of Thunder, this leaves Loki free to conquer Earth. With that, Loki flies off to commit unspeakable acts of terror, such as turning cars into ice cream! And turning buildings into candy!
Yes, Loki plans to take over the world by turning inanimate objects into dessert. He does a few other tricks such as turning New Yorkers invisible for a little while and rendering potential attackers’ weapons useless against him, but really, this is pretty mild for someone who wants to take over the world. His acts of terror are at best, annoying and inconvenient to people. In the recent movies, Loki wouldn’t hesitate to get down to the business of killing people and at least conquering one city. This Loki is just procrastinating and wasting time with a couple of magic tricks. Plus, with Thor out of commission for at least a few days, Loki should be getting on the ball with the whole world-conquering thing. Movie Loki would be pretty disgusted with this Loki’s lack of initiative.
Blake comes up with an idea to trick Loki, by leaking a story to the papers about Thor promising Loki’s defeat by the end of the week. Loki goes to check on Thor’s imprisoned hammer when he spots a fully transformed Thor with his hammer in hand right in front of the force field. Since he can’t see into the force field, Loki quickly takes it down to see if the hammer is gone. Donald Blake suddenly pops out of a bush, reclaims his hammer, and turns back into Thor. It turns out Loki was deceived by a mannequin made to look like Thor and his hammer. Loki is defeated once more and sent back to Asgard for punishment (which will not last long). This is a particularly embarrassing defeat for Loki. Not only did he squander his conquest time with idiotic pranks, but a Thor mannequin fooled him. Loki is supposed to be the trickster god, the sharpest person on Asgard. Shouldn’t he have noticed Thor’s somewhat plastic appearance? Come on Loki. You’re better than this. Get with the program.
2. THOR VERSUS THE GENERIC MEDIEVAL WIZARD
(Journey Into Mystery #96 September 1963 “Defying the Magic of Mad Merlin!”)
This issue features probably one of the dumbest Thor villains. The tomb of Merlin has been discovered and sent to the local museum. Merlin wakes up because he’s not actually dead; he’s been in a magic-induced coma (apparently with the Plague going around, no one bothered to inspect the dead too carefully). Anyway, “Mad Merlin” suddenly decides he wants to take over the country and heads to Washington, D.C. to oust President Kennedy.
Thor arrives in D.C. to defend the country. A fierce battle between Merlin and Thor ensues in which Merlin throws a bunch of local landmarks at Thor. First, he tries to shank Thor with the Washington Monument, then to crush him by dropping the Pentagon on him, and finally siccing a brought-to-life Lincoln Memorial statue.
In the end, Thor gets the landmarks back to their proper places and tricks Merlin into going back into his coma.
Again, Mad Merlin is among the most idiotic villains ever; not just for Thor, but for any Marvel hero. First of all, there’s barely any backstory on Merlin, which doesn’t matter because there is no character development either. Merlin is just a completely generic wizard in a cheap costume from Halloween Express. Seriously, the wizard from the Middle Ages is sporting a star-moon print robe in neon green with a matching pointed hat.
Really, this is a truly pathetic villain to put up against the God of Thunder.
3. THOR BATTLES HIS EVIL TWIN AND THE FATE OF A BUNCH OF CLONES GOES UNEXPLAINED
(Journey Into Mystery #95 August 1963 “The Demon Duplicators!”)
Dear God, not an evil twin story. There’s nothing more irritating than an evil twin plot. When you come across an evil twin story, that’s when you know that the writers are low on ideas for a plot and decent villain. At that point, it’s just easier to let the hero battle himself. In Journey Into Mystery #95, Thor’s alter ego, Dr. Donald Blake, creates a (supposedly) invincible, super intelligent android for the government. Blake’s rival, Professor Zaxton, in a true dick move, sabotages Blake’s android in the middle of his presentation by causing the controls to malfunction.
If that wasn’t enough, Zaxton, still driven by some inherent need to one-up Blake, invents a duplicating machine. After kidnapping Jane Foster, Zaxton blackmails Blake into helping him perfect the duplicating machine so it can work on living beings. Once Blake becomes Thor, Zaxton manages to create a duplicate of Thor.
The duplicate is almost like a Frankenstein monster version of the God of Thunder. For the purpose of this commentary, Thor’s duplicate will hereby be referred to as “Franken-Thor.” Anyway, Franken-Thor loudly proclaims himself as the one enemy Thor can never defeat: Himself (very original). Thor and Franken-Thor battle each other in a bunch of pointless frames while Zaxton fights from the ground by duplicating anything in sight. Suddenly, there are a bunch of duplicate alley cats, random objects, and even copies of commercial jetliners all over New York.
At one point, Franken-Thor gets a hold of Real Thor’s hammer and throws it at the Real Thor. The hammer has no effect on Real Thor. Since Mjolner’s inscription dictates “Only one who is worthy can wield the power of Thor,” we can interpret this to mean that Franken-Thor is not worthy to be Real Thor. Real Thor only has to throw his hammer back at Franken-Thor, and that’s the end of the duplicate. The End. Oh yeah, and then Zaxton creates a duplicate of himself while trying to escape, falls off a building, and is assumed dead. Zaxton’s copy conveniently turns out to be a nice guy, so he simply takes Jackass Zaxton’s place in the real world.
Besides this hogwash of a story, we are also left to question what happened to all the duplicates that Zaxton created during the fight. Cats are one thing, but Zaxton created duplicate airliners, with people on board who were also presumably duplicated. There’s no mention as to what happened to the planes and the people on board. We have no idea whether the duplicates just disappeared, or if now there are a bunch of unaccounted clones running around New York.
4. THOR GETS CONKED ON THE HEAD AND DESTROYS THE WORLD
(Journey Into Mystery #94 July 1963 “Thor and Loki Attack the Human Race!”)
Once again, Loki attempts to gain control of Thor so he can take over the world. Loki’s plan is to conk Thor on the head (through magic) with his own hammer. But he hits Thor in a specific area; “a chromosomatic gland which is supposed to determine personality.” This pseudo-scientific jargon only should convince readers that scriptwriter Robert Bernstein didn’t pass seventh-grade science. It’s great when science fiction writers incorporate actual science to explain the events of the story. It is not great when the writer throws out vague, jumbled, semi-scientific sounding language to sound cool.
Loki immediately takes advantage of Thor’s semi-amnesia and convinces him that they should destroy humanity together. Thor readily agrees to this. First, the two of them attack Asgard, and Thor assaults the other gods, even going so far as to threaten his father, Odin. It is serious shit when you threaten your own father who also happens to be King of the Norse Gods.
Thor then goes to wreak havoc on earth by creating numerous earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. He also flies around the planet destroying world monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Chaos ensues, and it looks like it’s the end of the human race.
Not to worry though, the other Asgardians have a plan. Disguised as U.N. delegates, the Asgardians confront Thor and determine that the best course of action is to hit Thor in the head with his hammer again (because this is always the quintessential cure for amnesia). Thor gets conked on the head once more (in the same made-up gland area), and he miraculously goes back to normal. Loki is imprisoned back on Asgard, and Thor promises to clean up the mess he made on earth. In light of the severe situation, the Asgardians decide they had better mind-wipe the entire planet so no one will ever remember the destruction that Thor caused.
This is very disturbing. Sure, Thor promised to clean up the planet, but no one even mentions any human casualties. It’s hard to believe that no one was killed or at least injured throughout all the devastation. How the hell are the Asgardians going to explain all the dead people after an interplanetary mind wipe? Fantastic, not only do we have to worry about supervillains destroying the world, but now we also have to be concerned about our superheroes going berserk one day and killing everyone on the planet.
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