Customer Reviews

Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor Volume 5

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

this volume contains some of the best stories of the whole LEE and KIRBY run on THOR. included are; THOR'S trip to RIGEL, EGO the living planet, JANE FOSTER in ASGARD, the LADY SIF, ULIK and the ROCK TROLL invasion of ASGARD. this should be a 10 star volume. what's the caveat then? it's the color reconstruction. it doesn't look quite right. some of the subtlety of KIRBY'S magnificent artwork is missing. this is also true of volumes 3 and 4 of this series. when compared to the black and white softcover THOR ESSENTIAL series this same artwork looks somewhat crude and garish. i suppose we're lucky to even have a hardcover version of these great stories. they are some of the very best of the whole silver age of MARVEL COMICS. unfortunately due to the color reconstruction i think they look better in the ESSENTIAL'S black and white than the MASTERWORK'S color. ps. for information about art reconstruction in comic book reprints check out watcher's review (and comments) of "marvel masterworks: the mighty thor vol. 6". it's very enlightening and it explains why some of the artwork in the marvel masterworks series doesn't look right.

Once upon a time I had a complete run of Silver age "Thor" books, and I have to confess that the series did get rather dull, starting around... hmmmm... let's see... maybe in the issue numbers 160-something? By the 180's it was so totally over. Thor was in a gigantic creative rut that wouldn't be cured until Walt Simonson took over in the 1980s.

But *these* issues -- oh, my! -- the issues collected in this volume of Marvel Masterworks... These glorious episodes from "The Mighty Thor" #131-140, these are the Jack Kirby-Marvel motherlode. Here, Thor went sci-fi in a big, big way, and Kirby never came up with anything as mindblowingly grand, or fabulous, or far-out as these issues. Great concepts and crazy characters such as Tana Nile, the Colonizers and -- WOW! -- Ego, The Living Planet(!) were perhaps the best-realized and best-illustrated sci-fi concepts of his career. This stuff is even better than most of the peak-era "Fantastic Four," and certainly better than the sloppy-looking stuff he did in the 'Seventies ("Forever People," etc.) Overall, "Thor" was a pretty lame book, but these issues were really amazing. If you want Jack Kirby at his best, this is where to look. Too bad they couldn't have kept it at this level forever. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

Now I'm up to Thor #5, or Marvel Masterworks Volume #69, which contains eleven more Stan Lee/Jack Kirby collaborations, Thor #131-140, plus a story from Annual #2. They are all inked by Vinnie Colletta, again. He's not my favorite for Kirby, as I've said before, but at least the inks are better and bolder on the main stories, when compared to the Tales of Asgard segments, which are quite thin and sketchy.

Some fairly big things happen in Thor World during these issues. The stories get more `galactic'...there's a lot of stuff happening off Earth and out of Asgard. Lots of aliens, and spaceships, and eye-popping Kirby spacey-stuff that I didn't (couldn't?) appreciate when I was younger (give me Gil Kane any day of the week...). Now, in these gorgeous Masterwork volumes (here, FF, etc), I'm beginning to see what all the hubbub was about.
The book opens with his return from Pluto's netherworld; he promptly dumps Hercules to hyperventilate with Ares, while he goes off in search of his beloved Jane Foster.
Aliens from the planet Rigel (which I thought was a star, but no matter) have rudely decided to colonize Earth, just at the moment when Odin finally caves in, and tells Thor to go get Jane and procreate. More or less.
Thor has to go off to Rigel to save the Earth, but the Rigelians end up all afraid of something in The Black Galaxy, in which resides Ego, The Living Planet. There are some Kirby panels that simply must have been drawn under the influence of LSD.
Jane Foster, meanwhile, is having lunch in a "mountain village in Europe" with two creep-a-zoids named Tagar and his sidekick, Porgia. The fact they kinda look like a tiger and a pig with bad plastic surgery is a clue, if the names weren't.
We meet the High Evolutionary and the Knights of Wundagore, in a multi-issue epic. There's a killer cameo, given one whole full-page panel, from a big bad guy often seen over in the Fantastic Four books. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch make a brief appearance, setting up the link between them and the Knights. (I think it plays out later in the Avengers, but I'd have to go check...)
Thor uses a "psyche-search gauge" to find Jane, which totally looks like an iPhone with Google maps.
Jane gets to go to Asgard, and becomes an Immortal. This story blew me away, unexpectedly. I'm toodling along, roaring through these awesome fight scenes with all these half-animal/half-human creatures, when Odin invites Jane up for an Asgardian dinner party. Since Thor should marry a God, Odin makes that happen. She gets big-time powers, a groovy green-and-white costume, and flies around like a banshee.
But she can't handle it...leading to a denouement that surprised me.
Thor mopes around for a while, but within a few pages, he's making goo-goo eyes with the hot Sif, who has apparently had a thing for the God of Thunder forever.
The Annual story is placed in it's chronological order, with a big ol' Tournament of Titans, the return of the Destroyer, and Loki. Loki's been conspicuously absent from Thor books for some time...man, he was everywhere in the first few dozen stories.
Next up is The Troll War, with super ugly Ulik, going back and forth between Earth and Asgard. Again with the huge battle scenes!
This volume ends with Thor being a total wuss with Sif (even Odin says something to the effect that Thor needs to learn how to talk to a girl...this from Odin?), heading back to Earth to fight Kang the Conqueror and the imaginatively-named Growing Man.
He grows!
The story ends with a ridiculously wishy-washy Thor, navel-gazing, almost literally saying to us, "Woe is me."

This volume includes the short "Tales of Asgard" segments, concluding with some goofy stuff about a "jinni devil" that looks like Jack Kirby trying to draw a mean Genie from Disney's "Aladdin", in green.

I love this stuff!