Journey into Mystery # 83 - The Power of Thor

So, we have Donald Blake talking to himself as he explains all of Thor's mythos for anyone who might be hiding in the bushes. We get Jack Kirby defining a hero and we get a whole lot of rock butt getting kicked. But I think the more important thing is the clear differences between comics today and comics then. There is this very Cold War Age feel to the speech, which makes sense, the comic is broken into three-parts, I would believe so that people at the time thought they were getting three stories when they paged through it at the news stand before buying it, "Wow, three stories with this new hero! Neato!" Clearly if a comic had more than one story in it now, the comic community would freak out (example : Wolverine #73).

I love Donald Blake as a character, in the next issue we see Jane Foster for the first time and Blake points out that he is his lame, now he's obviously not being critical of himself, just that he's crippled. And Blake seems much older then he would portrayed now, which was likely due to the fact that a younger man with a walking stick would be odd even now, or that Kirby never thought his character would get picked up after more than 4 or 5 issue (Kirby was a rather long record of starting these bigger idea stories and having the plug pulled, example : The Eternals).

It's clear that the art is fantastic, the story is good, men from a moon of Saturn coming to Earth and getting rocked by a newly empowered Thor. A great origin story and a great character would goes on to wonderful things. Read this if you like Classics.