I think that, more than anything, it’s the coloring that makes this THOR cover by Jack Kirby stand out. There’s a lot of interesting modeling being done, in a way that wasn’t typical for the time, and the overall red hue gets across a real feeling of Armageddon. Also impressive is the fact that Mangog is so large that only his talon can fit onto the cover, and Thor seems as helpless as a rag doll within it.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
First read this Thor vs. Mangog saga in one of the Treasury Editions and the story was practically made for that sort of over-sized comic format. Prime Kirby art & modern mythmaking, even if he had to resort to the “Odin wakes up just in time to make the problem go away” ending. I almost wonder if Kirby had in the back of his mind that if he had been given full control of the stories he mostly plotted and drew for Marvel in this period, if this is where he would have depicted the destruction of Asgard and death of Thor and his fellow Norse gods and then brought on the New Gods? As with the Galactus trilogy in FF, this is yet another story wherein the mag’s heroes were truly outmatched by their opponent and had to rely on the intervention of a much more powerful being to avoid defeat and global destruction. Of course, as to my understanding, Thor was one of Marvel’s best-selling titles in in the late ’60s, the chances of Lee or Goodman allowing Kirby to kill off Thor were nil.
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