User blog:Nausiated/Thorgasem

I never used to like Thor.

Back in the days when I first started collecting comic books, I was one of those kids in the 90's who got sucked into the X-Men bandwagon because it was the cool comic to read. It was mostly spawned by the advent of the classic X-Men animated series of the 90's. Of course, I always liked Spider-Man (What kid didn't?) and I slowly got sucked into various Marvel comics by proxy. Remember this was the early 90's, and the internet didn't have a whole lot in the way of comic book websites (I know, I was there! I've been on the internet for almost 15 years, can you believe that? Crazy! -- As an aside, I can remember when the official Marvel Comics website was just a promo for the Onslaught storyline... That right back in the mid 90's the only official presence Marvel Comics had on the internet was www.onslaught.com) So my only source of knowing other characters in the Marvel Universe were the Marvel Universe trading cards (I still have the entire set of the first four trading card series kicking around somewhere...)

So I got into the Fantastic Four, I got into the Avengers, but the one guy who I could never get into was Thor. This *was* the 90's Thor. Which was terrible. You had the tail end of the fusion with Eric Masterson, the advent of Thunderstrike, oh and the god-awful plot points and costume changes they gave the ol' Thunder God before they gave him the (even more hideous Rob Liefeld abomination) Heroes Reborn enema.

I never really read any good Thor stories, and I think there was a huge stretch between the Walt Simonson to J. Michael Strazynski runs where Thor was nothing but crap.

Mind you, I never read the early early Thor stuff that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had done. So naturally, when I started my obsessive collecting of Essential volumes, I eventually (after much reservation) started picking up the Thor volumes. Mostly because in a lot of cases with all the early issues of the Avengers and all the characters solo titles, they were constantly interacting between books and referencing what each other were doing in their solo titles. This piqued my interest as, well I'm a completest and wanted to know exactly what the "Trial of the Gods" was, or find out why Iron Man gave up that cool mask for that awful "rivet hole" helmet, or when Ant Man become Giant Man, or when Rick Jones started parading around in a Bucky costume.

So I've now read Journey Into Mystery #83 all the way to Thor #195, which accounts for the first 112 Thor stories ever written. Most of these were done by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (well a lot of the early stories were done by Larry Leiber based on Stan's plots and there were some Don Heck and other pencilers that would fill in on things, the latter ones were Gerry Conway and Sal Buscema which is still some nice work, but I digress...) A lot of the early stories were pretty goofy, (Thor's origins with the "Stone Men From Saturn" was laughably bad -- thank god for Retcons!) but the later stories focused more on Norse mythology (Which leads me to believe that Jack probably had a lot more sway with the story telling elements than the splash page would suggest, anyone who knows ol' Kirby knows that he liked his Gods.)

One thing that I noticed was that Thor went from fighting a variety of villains, from aliens from outer space, to super-powered criminals, to Communists (on top of regularly battling Loki, the Enchantress and the Executioner) to fighting JUST Asgardian villains for the most part. Every now and then, Stan and Jack would put Thor into space where he'd face Ego the Living Planet or learn the origins of Galactus, but he was usually just fighting other Gods.

I miss how Thor wasn't just always fighting Asgardian foes. Yeah, fighting other gods is fine and dandy, he's freakin' Thor, his rogues gallery should have Asgardian villains, BUT change it up a little willya guys?

Anyway.. This also leads me to a critique about Jack Kirby. Brace yourself and try not to get mad.

Jack Kirby the artist is amazing, I always loved his art it had a style of it's own and it is iconic. The Kirby Crackle warms my heart.

Kirby the writer? A bit of a one trick pony. I attribute this to the fact that he had a BIG BIG interest in mythology and different pantheons. Mostly Norse and Greek myth. Which... Might have been revolutionary back in his time and in context to the reading audience, but I'm not sure about the rest of you all, but I find it all kind of tired. Also, it's not a really creative leap at all. I mean, you're taking something that is already pre-established and reinventing it. It's kind of like a modern day movie remake. A lot of them are unnecessary, and really I find that it cites a lack of creativity to create something new. I mean you can come up with amazing stories, fine, but your base material is recycled from something else.

I mean, Kirby did Thor, he did the New Gods for DC, and the Eternals. All had the similar presence, god like characters doing their thing and being super-heroes. I think one of the worst was Kirby's Eternals. The premise was interesting, but his storytelling method was like he had ADD or something when he wrote it. I think you can attribute it to the fact that New Gods was cancelled just prior to that, and Marvel had rehired him and he wanted to do a similar thing. I think perhaps Kirby -- having to start from square one -- wanted to inject as much as he could as possible, and what you get is a story where all these plot threads are being left open without much explanation, characters are introduced and then forgotten about, and well... Again it got cancelled and it was like, well now what? Didn't help that Kirby didn't want the Eternals to be part of the Marvel Universe, but then after he left Marvel again they snuck them in.

Anyway, yeah, not a big fan of Kirby's writing. I had too much awe-to-the-gods and almost zero human elements (like Stan's work on Thor, yeah he was the God of Thunder, but he had his hang ups.)

Ah well, what I'm trying to say is that after reading all this Thor, I have to admit, I like the hammer throwing Sweede a lot more than I did before. If you want to get some good reads in there, pick up some of the early Thor stories, the really early ones are VERY campy, but once Lee and Kirby settled into the character that's when you got some amazing stuff. Kirby's artwork in this run is phenomenal.