Another series that I had been buying for a long time simply out of rote was THOR, so it was a simple matter to put it on the chopping block during my necessary purge. If I’m honest about it, looking back, THOR was a series that suffered throughout the entirety of the 1970s. Jack Kirby had given it its spark for its formative years, but nobody who came after his departure seemed capable of capturing the same combination of godly adventure and cosmic wonderment. Accordingly–and appropriate for the time, given the rise of sword & sorcery as a viable genre in the field–THOR often read like a watered down barbarian comic, and that just wasn’t of much interest to me.
The first issue of THOR that I ever read was this one, almost a hundred issues earlier. It was another of the comics that helped to convince me that Marvel Comics were just not for me, a position I maintained for several years during my youth. I didn’t really connect with much of anything that was happening here, as the Thunder God teamed up with an army regiment to attempt to repel Loki’s invasion of Earth. And all the while, All-Father Odin was amnesiac in some remote location on Midgard, and unable to intercede. The adventure was continued next issue, something I also hated as I could never be sure that I would ever be able to get the next issue.
The first regular issue of THOR that I bought was this one. It was one of the last Marvel super hero series that I sampled, mainly because my interest in sword and sorcery adventures was so limited. As it turned out, I liked it, though I recognized the flashback story in this issue as being a genuine Norse myth that I had read in school. But this was slightly more grounded, slightly more palatable, and as I was expanding my interest into all things Marvel after years of abstaining, I chose to go along with it and continue reading. And while I’d come close to dropping the series at a couple of points in the intervening time–most particularly during the interminable Eternals/Ring of the Niebelungen cycle of stories, which tried my patience as a reader repeatedly. The fact that Thor was also a fixture in AVENGERS was about all that kept him from the chopping block earlier.
But even with that, THOR was a dull comic book for a very long time. Upon becoming editor in chief of Marvel, one of the moves Jim Shooter made was to bring the THOR series back to what he perceived to be its roots, making it largely earthbound once again. While this should have been to my liking, the end result was a long string of faux Superman stories with heavy emphasis placed on Don Blake and his cane-changing situation. Additionally, Shooter was pushing for greater clarity in storytelling, which meant a much greater preponderance of static mid-shots, which made the book seem quiet and unenergetic. The lifeless inks of Vince Colletta didn’t help anything either, despite his long association with the character. He crushed the energy out of a number of pencilers over the course of this period.
Very much like the GHOST RIDER issue that we looked at last week, this issue is largely an extended fight sequence between the Thunder God and the enchanted divinity student The Crusader. And it’s dull as dishwater. Lifeless figures, sparse-to-non-existent backgrounds and a complete lack of stakes, despite the fact that there are bystanders all around who are potentially imperiled by this conflict. Everything is absolutely clear, I’ll give it that. But there’s nothing here to get me invested, nothing here to make me want to keep reading. It fulfills the letter of Shooter’s law while abandoning the spirit of Marvel Comics.
The writer of the series at this point was Alan Zelenetz, a relative newcomer to Marvel who tried gamely. But he didn’t really have a strong handle on the series apart from what had gone before, and bound by Shooter’s edict that Thor remain largely earthbound, he struggled to come up with compelling conflicts for the overpowered hero. This storyline, in which Thor is accosted by a fanatical believer in the Christian God who has been magically enchanted, turning him into the Crusader, sounds good as a log line. In practice, though, the Crusader winds up being a one-note character, and the conflict between him and Thor feels thin.
So, yeah, it’s no real wonder that I axed this series when it became necessary to cull down my buying list. THOR was a series that I’d been purchasing by rote simply because I could afford it and it seemed like a comic book that I “should” be reading.
Of course, it would only be a few issues until Walt Simonson came on board and gave THOR the best run of stories he’d had since Kirby’s departure. I wouldn’t return for it, though. Despite all of the feeding frenzy over issue #337 when it first came out, I refused to be drawn back in. A position I maintained for several years, until I began to hang out with other comic book readers in my college years. They were huge boosters of Walt’s THOR run, and so I eventually took the plunge by buying Simonson’s penultimate issue as writer, #381. I tend spend the next month frantically buying up all of the back issues so that I had read just about everything prior when #382, Walt’s last issue, hit the stands.
I also dropped in for issue #400, as I was a sucker for anniversary issues. The tenure of the creative team of Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz is a really excellent period for the character, but I didn’t care for it at the time. Largely this was due to them taking their first year to reverse a number of the developments that Simonson had made, including resurrecting Odin and returning Thor to having a human alter ego in the person of Eric Masterson. I really appreciate the quasi-Lee and Kirby approach the team took now, but at that moment, it wasn’t my cup of tea. So I didn’t become a regular reader of THOR again until I started at Marvel as an intern. My first issue back, #408, can be seen above.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Bob Hall’s drawing was just wasted here. I liked a lot of his work in the 1980s. Alan Zelenetz went on to write stories I liked, in the 2nd Moon Knight series, and the “Raven Banner”.
Shame about Shooter’s mandate. Just because someone has the power to make the final decisions doesn’t mean they’ll make the best ones. It’s good to, as Giordano & O]Neil publicly stated, pick the best creative people, and get out of their way.
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I loved both Walt’s & big John Buscema’s versions of Thor. They each captured the raw power & nobility in different ways. Walt seemed to a have a real affinity for the background, & brought an energy previous directions lacked. Walt used the mythology as inspiration, but I don’t feel it bogged him down.
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We definitely have very different taste. I LOVED what Gerry Conway did with the book, by the time Conway took over Marvel was a very well oiled machine where Stan and Jack had left everything perfectly setup and editorial worked BEAUTIFUL to keep characterization and EVERYTHING reading like a cohesive universe. Loved what Conway did with the buddy god team up with Hercules, the return of Jane Foster, the self exile of Odin to earth, the creation of Firelord, the return of Galactus, Ego, the Absorbing Man, the first hints at Thor having brotherly feelings for Loki at the end of Loki’s invasion to earth where Thor sheds a tear, before that, Ego Prime, Tana Nile, Mephisto, everything framed within impeccable John Buscema artwork! It was when Walt Simonson took over the book that I left the book in the middle of Walt’s run for the first time. I enjoyed the Sigurd Jarlson alter ego but despised the Beta Ray Bill character and the changes Walt brought to the aesthetics of Asgard from Kirby’s plus I wasn’t such a fan of Simonson’s art either or Sal Buscema that also illustrated the book, I mean both were alright but they weren’t John Buscema. I returned with Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz but disliked that they moved Thor out of the book for a big chunk of their tenure in favor of Thunderstrike. I really don’t think the book has ever been as good as it was from JIM 83 to Thor #300!
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Thor in this era was a book I enjoyed flipping through on the stands but rarely bought. I skipped the first arc of Simonson’s run but then got hooked.
One odd thing is that even after establishing Don Blake was a fictitious personality created by Odin, he was always written as if he was as real as Eric Masterson.
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Giving Walt Simonson the Thor assignment was one of Jim Shooter’s best calls. It certainly did a lot for sales. The sales year pre-Simonson? The average per-issue sales were 147,735. Better than any ongoing newsstand title from DC apart from Legion of Super-Heroes and, reputedly, New Teen Titans, but outside Marvel’s top dozen ongoing titles. The first sales year with Simonson saw average per-issue sales of 303,055, a number only exceeded among color comics by Uncanny X-Men.
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I must disagree with your assessment of artists and, in particular, inkers. have you ever been a comic book creator? Inking is such a precise form of art and the most important part of the assembly line that produces a comic book. I’m not sure that you can find a more nicely-inked story than the one that accompanies your article. Vince Colletta and his contributions to the genre are astonishing! Most published artist ever. Saved hundreds of books from missing print deadlines. And, in the process, managed to create some indelible art. Try inking a comic book page sometime, Tom. You will gain a more healthy respect for all of those who labored at that task.
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I’m astonished at how much hate Vince Colletta gets. Yes, he simplified Kirby’s drawings and that may be a sin but those issues still look fantastic. I like Colletta on Kirby more than any other inker.
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Yeah, Thor never excited me either. If I weren’t such a completist I would have bailed during just about every Thomas story arc. I’m glad I was still there for Simonson’s run but I checked out for keeps during DeFalco’s run, only coming back to sample Ellis’ run and then Coipel’s. Only Jane Foster as the female Thor brought me back but when that ended, I haven’t bought another issue of Thor and probably never will.
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There were plenty of books during Shooter’s term as EIC that didn’t sacrifice dynamics for the sake of clarity (Simonson’s Thor, Byrne’s X-men, Romita /Layton’s Ironman, Miller’s Daredevil, Sienkiewicz’s Moon Knight to name some standouts) so I don’t know what to make of that particular edict being the culprit for dull stories. For instance…Sal Buscema’s pages look pretty much the same to me pre-Shooter as they do during Shooter’s term in regards to how he breaks down a story.
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I’m not sure why I never warmed up to Thor, pre-Simonson. I liked him fine in Avengers. Possibly, like Tom, I was put off by the “swords & sorcery” vibes the series was giving off…as a kid I was very leery of anything that didn’t look like “pure” superheroes (causing me to miss out on a lot of really great fantasy, horror, kung fu, etc. books…I eventually wised up).
I do remember buying the issues leading up to #300, mainly out of curiosity as to how they would reconcile the Eternals with the established Marvel pantheons. Spoiler alert: not very well, as it turned out, although #300 does have a lot of cool, epic scenes in it. But I didn’t stick around after that.
Walt Simonson, of course, blew everyone’s socks off. For one thing, he seemed genuinely excited to be on the book, whereas a lot of the folks before him seemed to be just going through the motions. And that excitement was contagious. I left the book when Walt did, and haven’t really looked at it since.
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I started reading Thor with the DeFalco/Frenz era… more specifically, during ACTS OF VENGEANCE. I had gotten a paper route and rewarded myself with buying the entire Marvel line that month… which could be done for about $40 back in those days!
Of course, the introduction of the New Warriors drew me in, but I liked Tom DeFalco’s attention to creating a great supporting cast for the series – something he also did with Fantastic Four a few years later, and similar to what Mark Gruenwald did with Cap.
I’m not surprised that the DeFalco Thor run is all in Epic Collection format now, though I really wish we’d get a volume or two of Thunderstrike to cap it off. Instead, though, we will probably get the remaining pre-Simonson issues that aren’t collected yet.
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I’ve been having a blast collecting the Epic Collection. I’m glad the line has been really successful. They are getting close to releasing some of the best comics runs too, Byrnes FF, Simonsons Thor, Millers DD.
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I enjoyed Thor in the Avengers, but other than getting an old (possibly reprint?) issue of him fighting Ulik, never really picked up his comic. There wasn’t enough interest in the character for me. So I missed out on the Lee/Kirby work, Buscema, Frenz, etc. I had heard Simonsons run was great, but didn’t feel compelled to buy it. I think I had read X-Factor at the time, and wasn’t too crazy about his art style. Years later, I finally picked up a tpb collection, and really enjoyed it. Especially those stories with him and Sal Buscema. It’s a shame I missed out earlier!
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