Thor: The Mangog Saga!

Our story today is "The Mangog Saga," but it wasn't written down by Snorri Sturluson a thousand years ago - it's of much fresher vintage. This is a four-part tale that ran in "The Mighty Thor" back in 1968, a grand, rip-snortingly epic tale brought to life by writer Stan Lee, penciller Jack Kirby, inker Vince Colletta, and colorist Sam Rosen.

Obviously, I was nudged to revisit this story by that last comics entry, where I mentioned that the revamped "Kid Thor" hero Thunderstrike faced off in his latest issue against a Thor super-villain named Mangog, a gigantic claw-fisted creature with a long tail, troubling teeth, and ... the strength of a billion billion beings. Some of you wrote in (some taking advantage of the snazzy new 'write to me' box the right-hand margin; more such improvements to follow!) curious about my all-too-obvious eagerness to talk about this particular villain, but honestly, when it comes to all things Thor-related, I probably didn't need the urging. I've read the four-issue run I'm dubbing "The Mangog Saga" many, many times in the forty-something years since it first appeared - indeed, I read it first as it was appearing, traipsing with my beagles to the town variety store month after nail-biting month. It's something of an Asgardian miracle my issues haven't disintegrated completely.

Our story starts in "The Mighty Thor" #154, a chapter called "To Wake the Mangog!" - and that chapter starts where pretty much every Thor story starts: in the middle of a fight between him and his scheming half-brother Loki. This fight is interrupted by an abrupt call from Asgard, the home of the Norse gods - a call from Odin, Thor's irascible father, the king of the gods. Odin has sensed a menace looming in Asgard's future, and he's calling all his people back home to face it. While Thor stands at rapt attention listening to this warning, Loki takes the opportunity to flee - but then the warning stops, no further details forthcoming, and when Thor realizes Loki has escaped, he flies to the hospital where his immortal beloved, the goddess Sif, lies recovering from wounds she suffered at Loki's hands. Thor finds her sleeping peacefully ("Thought the eyes of the thunder god now peruse my lady's medical report," he muses, "'twill require the brain of Dr. Donald Blake to comprehend what it doth signify" - an interesting indication that in Stan Lee's original conception, Thor and his mortal alter ego Dr. Blake are entirely separate entities - they don't even share the same knowledge - which is a far cry from how things are nowadays).

It's always in hospitals that we're most aware of how close 'resting peacefully' is to 'rest in peace' - and we're not the only ones! While Thor is standing there fumbling with Sif's chart, Hela, the Norse goddess of death, suddenly appears in the room. Thor draws the natural conclusion and speaks up immediately, barring Sif's bed: "She did but suffer wound in battle! I vow she shall recover!"

But Hela's not there to claim Sif - she's there, for some inexplicable reason, to tempt Thor (that 'inexplicable reason' bit crops up more than once in this issue, reinforcing my theory - and longstanding gripe - that unlike so many writers, Lee always found the beginnings of big stories more difficult than any other part). She can't simply kill him until he's once again mortally wounded - a point of etiquette she's going to forget in only ten years, as we've seen in a previous Thor post - but she can show him the wonders that await him: "Now come I to show what thou hast but postponed! Behold - the promised glory of Valhalla! Do but say the word, and everlasting battle can be thine!" She gestures, and Thor sees a hilly vista covered in armies with banners flying - it's here that we get our first real taste of the great job Rosen will do in these four issues, masterfully playing somber deep-blues against garish bright yellows.

And Hela has an extra spokesman: Harokin! "God of Thunder - join us!! 'Tis they once and former foe Harokin who calls thee! Eagerly we await thee - for thou art surely the mightiest of all!" As we've seen here at Stevereads, Lee introduced Harokin in his "Tales of Asgard" backup feature (a feature that had been all but shelved by the time of this issue) - that storyline was immensely popular with readers, hence the nod to Harokin here. It's a very nice little gesture, but Thor declines the invitation, and Hela and her infomercial vanish. Lee shifts the scene to a far outlying district of Asgard, where the troll Ulik encounters a mysterious door inscribed "Let No Living Being Disturb What Lies Within." As any fan of old Bugs Bunny cartoons will attest, there is only one moral thing to do when confronted with a door that says "Don't Open Me" - and Ulik promptly does it. Thereby releasing the Mangog, who's very big, very ugly, and very ticked off: "Let the Universe tremble! The Mangog Lives Again! I have one goal - one aim - one destiny: to destroy him who crushed the invasion of my race!"

But like so many of Thor's villains, Mangog isn't exactly well-stocked in the brains department; only one panel later, he tells Ulik "Mangog is the foe of all who live!" ... not just Odin and Asgard. And he goes on to prove that point, but first, we cut back to Thor, who changes back to Dr. Blake and sits vigil at Sif's bedside. Once she wakes up and he's fairly certain she's out of danger, he turns back into Thor and resumes his search for Loki, who in the meantime has fled to Asgard. There he finds turmoil - the city's defenses are in hurried preparation, because they're aware that Mangog's chamber has at long last been opened and that one of the greatest evils of the city's past is now free again. Loki's nonplussed by all this - Odin jailed Mangog originally, after all, can't Odin just re-jail him? Then Loki learns that Odin is sleeping the Odin-sleep: a deep regenerative trance from which he can't be awoken. Lee introduced this rather homely plot device - an old guy who's naps absolutely can't be interrupted - and future writers would make great use of it, for obvious reasons: it takes the deus out of the machina long enough to make things interesting. Naturally, Loki only sees it in selfish terms - with Odin sleeping and Thor still on Earth, he himself is in charge: "Know you all that Loki now doth rule! Asgard at last is mine!"

Lee then temporizes again, putting Thor through some fairly mundane adventures - he stops a robbery and gives a pep-talk to some hippies (for you youngsters out there, 'hippie' was our word for 'hipster' - but the revolting, pretentious, unwashed phenomenon itself was completely the same) - before shifting to one last plot-strand: Balder the Brave, who's dallying with Karnilla, the Queen of the Norns, when he suddenly senses the danger facing Asgard and tries to take his leave. This angers Karnilla, who's hopelessly in love with Balder, and she shows him the price of defying her: there stands the Legion of the Lost, a small group of long-missing Asgardian warriors who now stand like statues on display in Karnilla's hall.

It's an odd, disjointed start, but things pick up pace considerably in the next chapter, "Now Ends the Universe." The sense of menace has increased a dozenfold, and Balder's not the only Asgardian who can sense it: Thor now grimly flies back to Lady Sif's hospital room, where a nurse is sitting reading by her bedside. She's startled when Sif suddenly sits bolt upright, and she's terrified when Thor shows up in the room. Kirby and his inker and colorist do a very effective job here - by throwing Thor's face entirely into shadow, they make this day-glo colored good guy suddenly alien and menacing. The technique works so well that David Mazzucchelli would use it forty years later in the great story "Daredevil: Born Again," shrouding Thor in shadow to maximize the mystery and power of his one-panel-only appearance:



Thor is here on business this time: "Thou hast seen the omens! Thou hast heard the silent call!" He transports them both to Asgard, where they find the same chaos Loki found before them: the city in arms, dire reports already coming back from outlying garrisons .... and they find Loki himself on the throne.

At which point, characteristically, Lee pauses to check on his sub-plots! First he takes us back to Karnilla's stand-off with Balder, as she reveals the "The Legion of the Lost" aren't just a collection of statues - they're the warriors themselves, which she now brings out of suspended animation and unleashes on the man who spurned her love. Balder is more annoyed by this than anything else - he can sense that Asgard is in danger, and he longs to answer the call, not fight some brainwashed minions. The second sub-plot Lee invents on the spot, again for no discernible reason: he shows us the far-distant Colonizers of Rigel dispatching the robot Recorder to investigate the source of the energy-waves they sense coming from Asgard. How they can sense energy-wave disturbances that haven't happened yet - much less how the Recorder can simply fly to the mystical dimension where Asgard is located - isn't explained, but this is something of a habit of Lee's, this invoking an impartial witness to comics events he's writing on a grand scale (the Watcher serves the same purpose in that first great Galactus story over in "The Fantastic Four")

In any case, Loki shrilly defends his right to the throne and sends Thor and the Warriors Three - Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg - out to face Mangog, whose rampage through the outlying districts of Asgard we see in some typically rollicking action-panels by Kirby. During this rampage, Mangog begins hinting at why he's such a bad-ass: an evil race, in a final act of defiance against Odin, distilled their entire population's life-essence into the creature called Mangog: all their hate, all their thirst for revenge, and all their physical power. The result? You only have to listen to Mangog for about five seconds to know the result, because from this point out he repeats it whenever he opens his mouth: he has the strength of a billion billion beings! In other words, incalculable power - just as Doctor Strange can't possibly defeat Eternity, just as the Fantastic Four can't possibly defeat Galactus, just as the Silver Surfer can't possibly defeat Mephisto, so even Thor can't defeat a being with incalculable physical power. As one fallen Asgardian croaks out before he dies, "Not all the fabled strength of Thor - nor a thousand such - can make him cancel half a step!"

Lee likes this gambit - it allows him to throw the sheer courage of his heroes into sharp relief. Mangog can't be stopped, yet all of Asgard (with the exception of Odin, who's still sleeping, Balder, who's still battling the brainwashed Legion of the Lost, and Loki, who's still under the impression he'll have a kingdom left to rule when Mangog's finished) marshals in a desperate attempt to do just that. As this chapter ends, Asgard's defenses lie in ruins, the Warriors Three are trapped under boulders, and Thor himself is in pitched, losing combat with Mangog.

The next issue, "The Hammer and the Holocaust," that battle is fought in earnest, and here's where a novice reader might expect Lee to pull back from his own premise, to make the give-and-take between hero and villain more even - but it doesn't happen: Thor is completely and hopelessly outclassed from the beginning. The most he can do is slow Mangog down a bit with storm and wind and rain (Colletta and especially Rosen do fantastic work in these sequences), all the while rousing his comrades: "Are we not warriors born? Are we not Asgardians all? Are we not akin to gods? Not for such as we the pale cast of surrender! Whilst we live, we fight! And as we dare - so shall we win!"

Winning isn't an option, however, and in very short order our heroes retreat to Asgard just ahead of Mangog. In the center of the city itself, Thor joins the final knot of resistance, the last line of defense before the main palace. Everybody now knows - because Mangog has been repeating it every few seconds, that the monster's goal is now to pull from its scabbard the gigantic Odin-sword, which will release shock-waves of such ferocious power that they'll destroy the entire universe. Why Odin would forge such a device and then leave it lying around like a Ming vase in the front foyer is yet another journey into mystery - and I'm also more than a little curious how in the dickens Mangog even knows the thing exists. Maybe he became a fan of Marvel comics during all those eons he was imprisoned behind that warning door (and as for why a monster with the strength of a billion billion beings couldn't break down that door but scruffy old Ulik the troll could, well, it's not all that clear to me either).

However he came by the knowledge, Mangog is in the home-stretch when our fourth chapter, "Behind Him - Ragnarok!" opens. He's wading through the cream of Asgard's defenders with no trouble at all when suddenly a wave of reinforcements arrives - Balder, leading Odin's reserves, headed by the Legion of the Lost, who've been freed from their brainwashing by the sight of his bravery! This four-part saga is liberal with full-page shots, and all the artwork is quintessential Kirby, a bludgeoning symphony of action, but this panel, with Balder leading one last desperate charge of mounted warriors, is a hum-dinger (it's the kind of thing a modern artist would ostentatiously sign and sell at conventions).



It's all for naught, however - Balder and his reinforcements are brushed aside just as every other defense has been. Thor races to the palace of sleeping Odin (there's a wonderfully understated moment where he encounters Loki in the chaos - the one brother hurrying to the center of the danger, the other fleeing from it - neither has any use for the other, and they part with harsh, dismissive words), where he finds the Lady Sif and the robotic Recorder standing lonely vigil by the Odin-Sword. Lee gives us a perfect cinematic counterpoint, slowing down all the action to a single moment, which Kirby captures with an extreme close-up: "The very walls begin to crumble," Thor marvels. "Art thou frightened, most fair Sif?" Sif answers serenely: "Whilst I stand with thee, my lord? Nay - whatever befalls, my heart is calm ... and ever thine!" Then the moment is shattered in a classic Kirby panel of explosive movement, as Mangog breaches the final wall and sees the Odin-Sword at last.

This is yet another point where you might expect Lee to side with his embattled heroes even at the cost of his own premise - last-ditch efforts and characters shiningly out-doing themselves are, after all, stables of his comic book writing, especially when the end of the world is at stake. But again, it doesn't happen - Mangog is simply too powerful to be inconvenienced. He swats aside all last-minute opposition and seizes the Odin-Sword. The Recorder observes, "And now begins the ultimate end ... already the cosmic shock waves start to form." But still Thor doesn't yield - he summons a raging thunderstorm, and at the very last minute, it becomes clear why: he's trying to wake up Odin - and it works. Odin halts Mangog, re-sheathes the Odin-Sword, and then undoes the process by which Mangog was created: we see an image of a billion billion beings repopulating distant planets. Odin implies that these are now a peaceful people, and he declares that the crisis is passed (he also implies that it was he himself who bottled up their collective essence in the form of Mangog, whereas earlier Mangog states categorically that 'his people' created him themselves). It's an abrupt ending to a rousing Lee-Kirby cosmic saga, a four-issue gasp of sharp air before Thor inevitably returns to Earth and resumes battling with armed gangsters and giant robots. Lee was never truly able to reconcile the two worlds of his mightiest hero; when Thor's on Earth fighting super-villains, he ridiculously over-matches his opponents - but Lee feared that if he spent all his time in Asgard fighting cosmic menaces like Mangog, he'd lose his super-hero appeal. Personally, I never believed this (and most of the fans who wrote in to the magazine during those years didn't believe it either - "Tales of Asgard" arose in part from those letters imploring Lee to give readers more of super-heroic Asgard), although taking Thor entirely out of his more mundane story lines would have deprived readers of some peachy moments.

Shall we deal with one of those Earthbound story-arcs next time we examine Thor in Marvel Comics? Or shall we pick another mega-saga instead? Only the spinning Norns know for sure! In the meantime, here's an image to cut-and-paste into your Christmas cards next winter:

Comics! Thor relaunches!

Well, here the issue itself is, the capstone on our aforementioned glut of Thor-comics, so I could hardly refrain from mentioning it. It's Thor #615 (flat-out amazing that Marvel didn't relaunch the whole thing with a spurious first issue – an adult must temporarily be in charge at the House of Ideas), featuring writing by Matt Fraction and typically gorgeous artwork by fan favorite Pasqual Ferry.

Those two names – especially the latter – will give any alert reader the tip-off why more hasn't been made of this change in creative team: neither Fraction nor Ferry will be sticking around. My guess is that they were both contracted for six issues – the length of a graphic novel – and that Fraction will write all six and Ferry will draw four before bailing (if reneging on work-contracts were a super-crime, every single creator in comics today would have to start wearing iron face-masks and calling themselves “Doctor”).

In the meantime, the two are faced with the same old problem that's always confronted writer and artist teams working on Thor: how do you handle his dual heritage as a character? Tough enough to write a super-hero who's as powerful as a god and keep things dramatically interesting (ask any Superman writer), but what do you do when your character is a god?

Naturally, us long-time Thor fans can't help but hark back to Stan Lee, who knew perfectly well that this would be the central dramatic hurdle of the character. And he was typically canny about it: not only did he saddle Thor with a fairly draconian weakness (if he lets go of his hammer for longer than a minute, he reverts not just to the powerless mortal Don Blake but to the crippled powerless mortal Don Blake – sheer Lee over-the-top genius), and not only did he periodically have Thor get banished to Earth by his tubby nutso father Odin, but he was careful to switch up the nature of the character's adventures. For three months, he'd be fighting the Absorbing Man or androids on Earth, and for the next three months he'd be off in space saving the Colonizers of Rigel from Ego the Living Planet.

(Lee and Jack Kirby also had the inspired idea of cutting Thor's actual adventures in half and putting a back-up feature in almost every issue, “Tales of Asgard,” where they could give readers their fill of the cosmic Wagnerian side of the character, thus freeing the front half of the book for often more mundane adventures)

The old challenges with the character are still here in this effective relaunch: Thor is still the most powerful Marvel character (able to lift well over 100 tons, able to fly, invulnerable, able to control the weather, and possessing roughly 2000 years of combat experience), effectively ruling out the viability of nine-tenths of the potential villains you might run against him. And in response to this challenge, Matt Fraction does indeed hark back – but only about ten years, to the character relaunch done by Dan Jurgens and John Romita Jr. in 1998. Then, as now, Asgard is attacked by a new group of immensely-powerful super-baddies we've never heard of, setting the stage for some of the epic action sequences Ferry does so well.



The main difference here is that Asgard isn't attacked directly – it's in ruins on Earth, after all, in the wake of the “Siege” storyline. Instead, the extra-dimensional void left by Asgard's absence is attacked by the aforementioned super-baddies, who are trying to take advantage of the fact that the universe is out of joint to score a little quick real estate.

The issue itself is just dandy, with only a couple of reservations. Ferry's artwork is eye-popping as usual, and there's a quite good little moment where Thor reminisces about his evil half-brother Loki, conceding that he was evil but admitting that he misses his brother just the same. Don Blake is still here as Thor's alter-ego, but it's the least well thought-out aspect of this current incarnation of the character (and the new wrinkle that Thor and Blake aren't the same person, that they can have cute little internal bickering sessions, needs to die a speedy death). And Odin is still technically dead, off in the realm of death fighting eternal battles to protect the home dimension. So Fraction has some junk to clear away.

Because as is so often the case, the basic Stan Lee template for this character is the best one – not for sentimental reasons but because it works better than any other. Before Fraction departs for the next project he's always 'dreamed' of doing, he needs to fix three things: a) he needs to get Asgard off Earth and back into its normal place in the cosmos, b) he needs to return Odin to life and the kingship of Asgard, and c) he of course needs to return Loki to the ranks of the living, since you can't have Thor without his best villain.

Fortunately, the kind of big cosmic story Fraction has chosen to kick things off here can easily accomplish all three of these well before the Thor movie opens, and then all will be right again with my favorite Marvel character.

Great Moments in Comics!

I overlooked a comics title last week, but that's just as well, because the comic I'd have written about contains another Great Moment in Comics, and last week I hadn't yet come up with that stellar concept - so the timing is better this way. Fear not: this week's comics will get all the consideration they're due!

In the meantime, the moment in question comes in the 5th issue of the 6-issue limited series of Marvel reprints of the old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby "Tales of Asgard" backup feature that once ran in "Thor." You'll recall that I praised this reprint series not only because it's a damn refreshing odd choice for a reprint series (surely the monthly "Thor" comic can't be selling that well) but also because the reprints fantastically enhance the color, texture, delineation - the entire viewing experience of the originals. These reprints are done on high-quality paper, and the refurbished colors glow on the page; tremendous, picky care was taken in re-crafting these images, and it shows on every page.

Issue #5 contains the highlight of the entire series, the issue I've been waiting for throughout the run. The storyline goes like this: a warlord in Muspelheim, Harokin, has seized the unbeatable Warlock's Eye (it's a gigantic helmet that blasts its wearer's enemies with unstoppable waves of energy) and is threatening to march on Asgard itself. Odin dispatches Thor and the Warriors Three (Hogun the Grim, Fandral the Dashing, and Volstagg the really, really fat) to stop Harokin and retrieve the Warlock's Eye, and while Hogun and Fandral are fighting Harokin's henchmen (Volstagg contrives to be elsewhere, not being much for the unpredictability - not to mention the exertion - of combat), Thor tackles the warlord himself. Since Harokin is only a mortal man, Thor flattens him with one punch, and pretty soon the Warlock's Eye is in his possession and Muspelheim is liberated.

But it turns out Thor doesn't know his own strength - Harokin is dying (Harokin claims it's the result of a lifetime of fighting, but you don't accrue many injuries when your hat's doing your fighting for you). Shortly, Thor and his comrades hear a steady, ominous beat of muffled drums. "What foul infamy is this?" Volstagg asks. "Do they dare summon their forces against us once more?" But grim Hogun knows better: "It summons the great black Stallion of Doom! It means the death of a mighty warrior is near at hand!"

Kirby's artwork is perfect here, full of shadows and frightened faces, as a black horse steadily clop-clop-clops toward Harokin's citadel. The warlord is too weakened to stand; his men dress him in his armor and prop him onto the Stallion of Doom - and just in time, as Volstagg notices first: "Dost thou not see? From out of the mists she hath come, she before whom all who live must one day bow! For she is Hela, the ever-emotionless goddess of death! And behind her ... the silent, unyielding Valkyrie Guard!"


Towering, stolid Hela (who's shown up in these comics-entries before, as you'll recall - and if not, as always, just follow the labels at the bottom and do some catch-up reading!) and her valkyries lead the stricken, slumping Harokin away, until they reach the borders of their destination. "Thus far have we journeyed," Hela says. "No further may Hela venture forth! That which lies ahead may be viewed by none but the valkyrie maidens ... and by him who rides the Stallion of Doom!"

The horse moves forward across a glittering bridge as mists part and Harokin sees the towering hills of Valhalla and hears the enthusiastic calls of the warriors assembled there: "Know thou, Harokin, that death is more than an ending ... 'tis the greatest beginning of all!"


And Harokin lifts his face. "The weariness doth leave my limbs! I feel new strength within me ... vigor, such as I have never known! The sound of battle - the clang of armor - the most joyous music ever heard! To arms, then ... one and all! Let the trumpets blare! Let the flags unfurl! The call to battle fills the air! Now shall a warrior ride!"

And then comes the Great Moment, brought to you with the unabashed Cecil B. DeMille corniness of Stan Lee and the shorthand kinetic brilliance of Jack Kirby: a renewed Harokin, charging over the bridge toward an endless afterlife of battle:


It would be over twenty years before another "Thor" writer captured a similar moment with that kind of happy gusto (the true-blue geeks among you will know who I'm talking about, and perhaps even the precise issue - but if not, again, fear not! It, too, is a Great Moment and so will be featured here eventually), but in 1966, comics had seen nothing like it before. Glorious, dumb stuff, as all the best "Thor" moments invariably are!

Comics: The Infinity Saga!

Our 'book' today is the great seven-issue "Infinity Saga" story arc from 1970's Marvel Comics Thor, a baggy magnum opus that would mark Stan Lee's departure from regular scripting chores on this title (he was leaving all his usual Marvel haunts around this time, or had left them already and was 'training' the next generation of writers, uncredited, of course). He leaves Thor with a real flourish, uncorking just the kind of quasi-mystical cosmic-sized storyline that's perfect for the character and his mythological cast.


Perfect because what other good use can you find for Thor? The character is as strong as the Hulk, and he controls the weather, and he's got thousands of years of experience in combat - in normal comic book terms (A.I.M., Magneto, the Red Skull), he's pretty much unbeatable. And unbelievable - as I've mentioned here before, why would the Norse god of thunder bother to spend any time at all stopping the Stilt-Man's latest crime-spree? No, the character is much better served with sprawling cosmic epics - and despite his undeniable skill at small interpersonal moments, Lee clearly relishes such epics. His run on Thor is saturated with them (especially if you include his Tales of Asgard backup features, where he simply gave the tendency full rein), and "The Infinity Saga" is one of the best, despite the obvious signs all through it that Lee was growing a bit tired of the genre - or worse, finally running out of nifty ideas.

The story starts clean enough - Thor is striding down the streets of Asgard, home of the gods, having been summoned from Earth (where he'd just spent two issues kicking Doctor Doom's ass and off-handedly destroying the armed forces of Latveria) by his father, Odin. At the time of this story, Thor and Odin are on good terms - which is fairly remarkable as far as Thor goes during Lee's run (in fact, Lee's Odin might be one of the most consistently unpleasant parent-figures in all of comics - if Superman ever read these comics, he'd be glad Jor-el wasn't around to endlessly criticize his taste in girlfriends). Thor shows up in the royal audience chamber and finds Odin mighty perturbed. He's been troubled by portents of dark evil at the edge of the known universe, a great nebulous hand that seems to be wiping out whole worlds. These portents are matched by some closer to home: not only is the weather on Earth all screwed up, but in Asgard the massive Odin-sword is slowly inching from its sheath. If it were ever to be unsheathed, the resulting shockwaves would tear apart all creation, as Thor well knows (it came up in a previous Lee Thor epic, one we'll cover in the fullness of time). "Each fateful day I find it thus!" Odin says, re-sheathing it. "Each fateful day I sheath it anew!"


And that's not all: all through these things, Odin's had one word repeating in his head: Infinity, Infinity, Infinity! He has no idea what it means, but, as he tells Thor, he suspects knows somebody who does: the Silent One, a mysterious robed figure who appeared recently and, true to his billing, says nothing. Odin's sure he's connected to the mystery of Infinity - and he's sure the danger can only be faced in the heart of nebulous disturbance - the World Beyond (you can see what I mean here, right, about Lee's slightly flagging inspiration? The names in this story tell it all: The World Beyond, Infinity, The Silent One, The Guardian ... as generic as as generic gets). Odin has already sent three of Thor's friends, Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg, to investigate the World Beyond, and now, over Thor's objections, he goes himself - with the Silent One following right behind.

Loki, Thor's evil half-brother, sees the fireball of Odin's departure and takes the opportunity to return from exile and raise a troll-and-giant army to attack Asgard. His minions capture Thor's best friend Baldur the Brave and Thor's Asgardian girlfriend Sif (the fact that Thor for the longest time kept a girlfriend in Asgard and a girlfriend on Earth can be chalked up to the fact that Lee was, pound for pound, the coolest writer comics have ever had), but Thor quickly rescues them and tells off his brother, irritated that Loki can be so petty even when something as big as the World Beyond is threatening them all. Evil half-brothers! There's simply no living with them!

Predictably, Thor decides to go after Odin. He whirls his hammer and flies to the World Beyond, which turns out to look a lot like Scotland - lots of rocks and mist, plus irritable natives: in the case, a four-armed giant who calls himself the Guardian and insist Thor has to die. While they're grappling, the Guardian points out that the only exception he's ever seen to the rule was the white-haired old guy who showed up recently and was claimed by Infinity himself - naturally, on hearing that Odin passed this way, Thor goes wild to find his father and promptly kills the Guardian to get him out of the way (this also is a feature unique to Thor during Lee's run at Marvel: although he's careful to observe Earth politeness when he's on Earth, when he's offworld Thor kills his enemies with a happy recklessness). But there's another obstacle: out of the mist steps Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg, who've been taken over by Infinity and turned into Thor's enemies! They mindlessly shuffle forward to do battle with him, but since he can't bear to lift a hand against them, he creates a cyclone with his hammer and sends the three of them back to Asgard - along with his hammer.


At the same time, we get some great surrealistic shots of Odin off somewhere fighting against the unseen Infinity while the Silent One watches - these and other panels throughout "The Infinity Saga" really give artist John Buscema a chance to strut his cosmic stuff in a way he wasn't doing in any of the other Marvel titles he was drawing at the time (yes, you heard that right: he was drawing more than one title a month, all superbly, and all on deadline, often for years at a stretch ... sounds impossible, doesn't it?)(of course the pinnacle of his 'cosmic' style happened in Silver Surfer, but it's more prolonged here in Thor)(his artistry is here immensely helped out by the stunningly clean inking job of Sam Grainger and Joe Sinnott, and by a superb coloring job done throughout by an uncredited master, Stan Goldberg).


There are two problems with Thor's strategy for disposing of his brainwashed friends: first, according to the enchantment Odin put on his hammer, if it's away from his possession for longer than one minute, he reverts to the puny mortal surgeon Don Blake, and second, whenever the Guardian gets killed, he gets revived by Infinity. That happens now, and poor schlub Don Blake is facing a quick, messy end as the Guardian advances on him.


Even in the midst of his own battle, Odin sees the trouble his son's alter ego is in and fires off an energy-bolt that stuns the Guardian long enough for Thor's hammer to return to him. Thor and the Guardian face off again, Thor charging straight at him with inimitable ferocity and hitting his favorite refrain from the Lee/Kirby years: "As thou art strong, so Thor is strong! As thou canst fight, so Thor canst fight! But as thou be mortal, Thor be God of Thunder!" Nothing like a little taxonomy to clarify a scrap.


Thor defeats the Guardian and finds the Silent One beckoning him. The walk through the mist a bit, and then Thor meets the last person he'd expect to find out here in the middle of nowhere: Hela, the goddess of death! Buscema takes the old slightly frumpy Jack Kirby version of the character and makes her an arresting figure - eight feet tall and unapologetically curvaceous (she's a whole lot more impressive-looking than a little goth girl in a tank top, if you know what I mean).


She pops up out of nowhere and stuns Thor with a bolt of life-ending energy; as she vanishes from the scene, we see Thor rapidly aging and dying - until the Silent One revives him, at the cost of his own life. Thor takes one panel to grieve over the old creep, then he flies off to Odin's side ... only to find Odin looking just as brainwashed as Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg! Yep: while Thor was busy with Hela, Odin lost in his fight against Infinity and was taken over - and he promptly attacks Thor.


It's a fight he can't possibly win, and he knows it, and Odin knows it (even brainwashed, the guy's a champion windbag, telling Thor, "'Twas I who made thee what thou art! 'Twas I who gave thee godly power. For I am the Will, the Word, and the Way! And I say thee now ... thou must fall!") - so Thor flees back to Asgard, where in his absence the good guys - including Baldur and Sif - have been trying to come up with a way to push the Odin-sword back into its sheath, to no avail.



When Thor shows up and tells them the worst possible news, that Odin is possessed, they're naturally distraught. They've seen how tough it is to break Infinity's possession: the sexy Norn Queen Karnilla came to Asgard specifically to break that possession (she agreed to do so in exchange for the, er, gratitude of Thor's friend Baldur - she loves him, but he can't return that love as long as she's a kinda-sorta enemy of Asgard ... it's one of those fascinating quasi-subplots that Lee could string along literally for years) and failed until Loki reluctantly helped her. He's been hanging around this whole time, snarling and sniping, despite continuously having it pointed out to him that if the Odin-Sword actually comes out of its sheath, he'll die too. Evil half-brothers! I tell you!



Eventually, Loki sees the light and actively tries to help; he and Karnilla pool their vast magical energies and fire off a bolt of power designed to stop Infinity from merging completely with Odin. The bolt fails, but it gives Thor an idea: if Karnilla uses the life-force of all the strongest Asgardians for another try, it might work. They do, and it does - Odin wakes "as though from a haunted dream" and summarily destroys the remnant of Infinity still hovering around.


He returns to Asgard and undoes all the damage (everything on Earth is righted too), and everybody lives happily ever after. It turns out that months ago, while Odin was in one of his period semi-hibernations known as the Odin-sleep, Hela had split off a portion of his soul, and that portion had become Infinity, and Hela, being the goddess of death, had very much liked Infinity's world-gobbling ways (that's why she was on the spot to zap Thor when he was in the World Beyond). Since Infinity is now re-absorbed into Odin, the crisis is passed.


Or is it? In a coda only Stan Lee could pull off, Odin sternly warns everybody that since Hela was denied her prize of Odin's soul, she'll certainly come looking for Thor's (nobody - including Lee - seems to recall that she already did come looking for Thor's just a couple of issues ago). The triumphant chapter ends in looks of horror all around.

Odin comes up with a temporary plan: "Thou shalt assume thy human form - be the mortal Donald Blake and hide thyself 'pon the distant planet Earth. Once thou art safe, the time will come to plan." In a bolt of energy, Thor is sent back to Earth and into hiding, and then Lee shifts the scene to Hela's cold, foggy underworld and gives us one of those great, seemingly effortless glimpses into the souls of his so-called villains that were, up until he came along, utterly unheard of in comics. Hela, it turns out, isn't really a bad guy at all - at least, she doesn't see herself that way: "Why do the living so fear my touch? Do I not bring peace to those who long have borne life's burden? Do I not bring rest at the end of life's weary journey? Do I not banish pain from all who may suffer? Do I not cure all ills and put an end to all wounds? In truth I am gentle - in truth I am fair. To me, all are equal! I deny none my embrace." It's hammy stuff, true - but it's epic hammy.



Loki goes to Hela to tell her that Thor is hiding on Earth, and while he's doing that, Baldur is going to Karnilla to ask her help in saving Thor - help she's happy to give him, if he finally renounces his allegiance to Asgard and swears fealty to her. Outraged, he draws his sword in front of her minions, but ultimately her arguments sway him and he swears. She sends him to Hela's realm, where he's just in time to stop Loki from blurting out the part about Thor being in human form. There follows a panel-quick battle in which Loki uses his vast sorcerous powers to flatten Baldur - a good reminder that not all Asgardians are created equal: Thor and Loki are the two biggest hitters. But Hela, bored with the fighting, banishes them both from her realm before Loki can spill the beans.


She decides to visit Earth herself, and she tries to be inconspicuous by donning the world's sexiest pill hat .... but, um, she's still eight feet tall, which draws the attention of two gun-wielding lowlifes who try to mug her (this was 1970 New York, after all ... a Norse death-goddess walking the streets might be believable, but a nighttime stroll without a mugging? Please!). "It was not yet your time," she tells them (Buscema puts in a neat detail of her pupils turning to skulls), "but since life means so little to you that you would take another's, I shall hasten your entrance into my silent realm."

Still, the delays in finding Thor are irksome to her (she gets a little distracted, in fact - she keeps the disguise but starts walking in midair about twenty feet off the pavement, which is something of a dead giveaway, as it were), so she decides to take an indirect approach: she finds some fire-fighters saving people from a burning building and starts rapid-aging them. Don Blake hears about this on the radio and, despite the warnings of his friends and his father, he becomes Thor in order to save innocent lives. And as soon as he's done doing that, Hela stands waiting. He has no choice - if he resists, she'll just strike at bystanders again. Thor submits.

And just at that moment, Odin appears! "Hela, hear my words," the old windbag says, "though I be the Power and the Light, the Judgement and the Will, thou I be the Sovereign Supreme of all that was and is and yet shall be - I be one thing more: I be father to the Thunder God. And to thee I say ... Thor shall not die!"




She's unimpressed. She knows perfectly well that Odin has too much respect for the natural laws of the universe to kill her - she knows he won't do away with death itself, not even to save his son. "You know full well," she tells him, "while I do live, not even you may stop me. And even lordly Odin would not dare to slay me."

"To save my son - Odin dares!" he yells, and he kills her with an energy-burst (and a classic Stan Lee sound effect: "sshossp!"! That's the sound of death dying!).

Thor knows immediately the impossibility of what Odin's done - without death, the universe will be overrun with life and suffering (after all, Hela was right about the beneficial role death often plays in the natural cycle of things). Thor's not morbid by any means: "Believe me, father," he says, "I find life sweet - and have no wish to die! But, let me die a thousand times, rather than cause the calamity which is to come."


Odin knows all this. He knows he has no choice but to restore Hela to life, knowing full well the first thing she'll do is claim the life of Thor. With tears in his eyes, Odin says, "May the mighty Thor bring glory to Valhalla, as he hath brought glory to the grieving Odin." He restores Hela, and she begins the process of withering Thor into her silent realm. Odin embraces him briefly, then just before the end he tries one last gambit - he transports Sif to Earth, to Thor's side. She sees what's going on and right away turns to Hela:

"Hela! Though thou be the queen of death, thou art a woman too - surely love hath touched thy heart?"

"Why speakest thou to me of love?" Hela asks.

"'Tis all I know! 'Tis all there be!" Sif says. "Without it, life hath no meaning and no joy! Thou still couldst save the dying Thor - thou must! Thou must, O Hela! The regal Odin may not beg, for he be Lord ofAsgard. But I am a woman, as thou art a woman! I beg! I plead - Sif doth implore thee.

Or if my words should not move thee - this last request I make thee: do but spare the mighty Thor ... and take Sif's life in forfeit."

"Thou wouldst die to save thy true beloved?" Hela asks, with tears in her eyes. "Sif asked if Hela had e'er known love ... and now I answer nay! But at last, I know what it doth mean! Not even death may crush it"

She restores Thor to youth and vigor and vanishes, and Sif and Thor embrace. Thor openly wonders if Odin transported Sif to Earth merely to pay her last respects, or was it possible that Odin anticipated what might happen? Unfortunately, the old coot has fully recovered from his grief and is right back to his old self. "I am the Way! I am the Light!" he blusters. "And none may share my Odin-thoughts!" Whatever, gramps.

The final issue of this arc catapults our characters straight into the next story line (hint: Evil half-brothers! There's simply no living with them!), but shortly after that Stan Lee would begin 'sharing' his writing chores, and then he'd abandon regular comics altogether (in the '70s, we were told he was 'spearheading' Marvel productions in Hollywood - which seemed a dubious concept when it started producing garbage like the "Hulk" and "Spider-Man" TV series ... luckily, Marvel productions improved quite a bit once special effects grew up and the right people started getting involved - although still no Thor movie, and that's probably a good thing). "The Infinity Saga" was his last hurrah doing the kind of epic stories he brought to such perfection in Thor and Tales of Asgard ... after this, the title would go almost a hundred issues until it got this kind of treatment again (likewise Buscema would after this gradually lessen and then leave the Marvel fold, after spectacular runs on Thor, Fantastic Four, Silver Surfer, and Conan, not to mention some of the finest Tarzan work this side of Joe Kubert)(although as you can see, the one artist's trick Buscema almost never pulled off was the great cover - his mostly stink, only the last one in this arc being any good).


By my count, the next "Essential" Thor volume (7? 8?) will likely include "The Infinity Saga," and since my 1970 issues are literally falling apart, I'll certainly buy that volume (even though in this case it's really pretty coloring that's being left out of that black-and-white series) - and you all should too, to revel in the glories of comics' Silver Age!

Essential Fantastic Four, volume 6

Our book today is the sixth volume of Marvel Comics’ ongoing reprint series, ‘Essential Fantastic Four #6,’ collecting issues 111 through 137 of the Fantastic Four’s monthly comic book from the ‘60s and ‘70s.

The sheer number of you we lost just now with that little description is a sorry reflection on the cultural snobberies of our age, but we shall persevere, not only in the hopes of changing that status quo, but also because Kevin, Elmo, and all the other scattered faithful will appreciate the effort to level the playing field.

So: the Fantastic Four. For those of you languishing in ignorance (you know who you are, and you’ll need to be up to speed if you’re to take in the religious event known as ‘Fantastic Four - the Rise of the Silver Surfer’ in theaters as we speak), that means Reed Richards, the world’s smartest man, Sue Richards, his fiery and compassionate wife, Ben Grimm, his crusty old-school best friend, and heartthrob Johnny Storm, Sue’s younger brother. They go up into space in a stolen spacecraft, accidentally get exposed to cosmic rays, and get transformed into the Fantastic Four: Mister Fantastic, who can stretch his body like silly putty, the Invisible Woman, who can fade from sight and generate equally-invisible force fields, the Thing, rocklike monstrosity of enormous physical strength, and the Human Torch, a living firebrand capable of hurling flame.

They were Marvel’s flagship title, a super-group that was first and foremost a family, with squabblings and interpersonal dynamics that were, in the early ‘60s, virtually unheard of in comic books. Their identities are known to the public - indeed, they’re celebrities, and Stan Lee is a fine, funny chronicler of the ups and downs of that status. Far from a Fortress of Solitude or a Batcave (and we should remember that the Justice League originally hung out in a cave), our heroes make a Manhattan skyscraper their headquarters.

The list of Stan Lee’s innovations on this one title alone virtually defy tabulation, and they get taken for granted by today’s over-pampered comics-reading set, who think all the gritty givens that form the basis of every comic out there were somehow ALWAYS there. They weren’t. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby invented them.

This presents problems in an of itself, namely: what do you do when the creating ur-titans get older and want to retire, or seek out new pastures? How do you pass the torch on something so newly minted?

In the case of Marvel comics, the answer is: pretty bloody awkwardly. Stan Lee insisted on being credited as writer long after he’d lost interest in the title and ceded actual scripting chores (writing and re-writing dialogue, checking continuity, etc) to three of the greatest wunderkins ever to grace a comic book company: Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, and Roy Thomas. DC Comics, during their own transitionary period, could only have dreamt of caretakers so conscientious (well, OK, they had one - Julie Schwartz - but he was unique).

But first, we have to get through the dwindling of the old order, and in the case of the Fantastic Four, that was a long, protracted, severely depressing trough of truly terrible issues (the sack of crap collected in Essential Fantastic Four #5 is a thing you wouldn’t drop on the head of your worst enemy).

Luckily, thanks to the growing influence of the trio named above, by volume #6 some light is breaking through the clouds. Stan Lee is credited with writing a great number of the early issues collected here, but he didn’t; Thomas and especially Goodwin were generating every word of dialogue, altough often enough under Lee’s heavy influence.

It must be admitted right up front that this volume’s worst misstep is also a really, really big misstep: the second coming of Galactus is botched so badly we here at Stevereads challenge any of you to tell us how that particular story ends, or even what-all happens in it.

Galactus this time around is heralded by Gabriel, perhaps his lamest-assed herald (Terrax was bad, but perhaps not quite so bad) Galactus has had so far. Gabriel walks on air like an angel and signals the end of the world - i.e. the world’s being gulped down whole by planet-chomping Galactus - by blowing on his horn. Get it?

He fights the FF almost to a standstill, despite the fact that he ends up being a friggin robot who they should have trashed in about four panels of trying. But that’s not the worst of it: when Galactus shows up, he displays his awesome presence and power by ... well, by talking a lot of trash and hanging out a lot at Coney Island. Suddenly, Galactus is Vinnie Pastoranza, the bad boy of Our Lady of Perptual Grace in Brooklyn. The story is so bad that we don’t even care a) when the Silver Surfer shows up, b) why he shows up, or c) what the hell he does once he’s there.

No ultimate sacrifice this time around. No Ultimate Nullifier. Galactus wears shortpants and plays around with the Cyclone for a weirdly unseemly amount of time, and all through it, you get the impression that this whole thing went wrong for the exact same reason so many Hollywood blockbusters go wrong: too many cooks, too much creative interference, or, as my somewhat disturbed old friend Franco always said, too many hands down the boy scout’s pants. (in case you’re wondering, it was at that exact moment that this review got Beepy’s attention)

You’d think nothing could save a collection that manages to feature a bad Galactus storyline, but you’d be wrong: there’s some strong stuff here, beginning with the volume’s first story-arc, featuring a big, fat baddie named the Over-Mind and a wonderful, protracted Thing/Hulk battle that displays some of John Buscema’s finest penciling on the title (the crisp inking by Joe Sinnott works perfectly here, where it would have been disastrous on, for instance, Kirby’s pencils). In the course of that battle, and in the course of the Over-Mind battle that follows, the FF inflict a great deal of property damage on Manhattan - for which they’re threatened with eviction by their landlord, and for which they’re actually arrested by the police (Reed Richards writes out a check for their $20,000 bail) - today’s readers will be forgiven for seeing seeds of Marvel’s recent wretched ‘Civil War’ storyline, and yesterday’s readers will be forgiven for wistfully wondering what glories could have been wrung from that premise by writers like Thomas or Goodwin.

It’s in this series of issues that Johnny Storm loses his sometime-girlfriend, Crystal of the Inhumans, to none other than Quicksilver, who’s just mutie-bastid enough to rub Johnny’s face in it. This is also the period in which Medusa of the Inhumans joins the team, and re-reading these issues gave us a fresh appreciation for how she’s portrayed: mature, capable, with just a hint of the disdain that might come naturally to royalty (this volume also features a great little sequence where heartsick Johnny looks up his old sweetheart Dorrie Evans - and finds her to be a cheery, plump house-frau mother of two... at a time in American history when even the squarest melvin could get some groovin, Johnny can’t catch a break)

The highlight of this volume, though, is also one of the single-issue highlights of the Fantastic Four’s entire history. It’s a story called “Three Stood Together,” in which the Black Panther, traveling incognito to the white supremacist African nation of (somewhat disappointingly) Rudyarda, is thrown in jail for being black, and the Thing and the Human Torch go there to break him out (and stop the bad guy, of course)(who’s Klaw, of course). From the start, the two heroes are disgusted by the country’s separate but equal doorways labeled ‘Europeans’ and ‘Coloreds,’ but the story raises a broad spectrum of racial issues (like, for instance, when the Thing questions why T’Challa is temporarily calling himself ‘The Black Leopard’ and T’Challa answers: “I contemplate a return to your country, Ben Grimm where the latter term [Black Panther] has ... political connotations. I neither condemn nor condone those who have taken up the name - but T’Challa is a law unto himself”).

At the end of the issue, after the bad guy has been beaten and all set right with the authorities, our heroes encounter once again a stone wall inset with separate doorways for ‘Europeans’ and ‘Coloreds,’ and the Thing, steaming over the whole concept, abruptly tears down the whole wall, and the three walk out over the shattered labels. It’s a little hokey, but when you consider how many times apartheid or black power movements had been mentioned in comics prior to that (i.e. never), you recall the power the issue had when you first read it.

The next volume of Essential Fantastic Four will contain, by our reckoning, five real high points in the history of the title. But this volume has its share of nifty bits and is by no means despicable. Despite some notable missteps (cosmic bikers? a big furry creature with a WWII land mine for a head?), this volume is well worth your handful of fivers.