Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
Forget all of those lame, pretentious Jim Starlin-patented "kozmic"-style
wankfests, a la WARLOCK and THE INFINITY GAUNTLET. Avail thee not
of the Silver Surfer's (that big, bald-headed crybaby) piteous, non-stop mewling
and relentlessly jejune pontificating. Yes... and go tell that
weak-chinned, pouty-faced li'l farmboy ingenue, Luke Skywalker, to go
sit on a Yoda and rotate, while you're at it.
On Midgard As It Is In Asgard: The MIGHTY THOR
For the
penultimate, pluperfect word in gargantuan and all-encompassing space-and-time
epics... nobody's ever come close to the sheer, splendiferous
perfection that was Jack "King" Kirby's ground-breaking tenure on
THE MIGHTY THOR.
Mind, now...
the series didn't really start out as the inter-spatial carnival
thrill ride remembered nowadays, in fond and fannish retrospect.
In those earliest, JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY days, the Kirby/Lee duo were quite a bit more modest in their storytelling aspirations. [See cover, below] Those initial, crude (yet energetic) entries into the THOR canon were -- by and large -- the same wrap-it-up-by-Friday super-hero shenanigans which characterized the bulk of the nascent Marvel line, at that point. The Thunder God spent the greater part of his time chasing down such eminently forgettable foemen as "Mr. Hyde" and "the Cobra," [see panels, accompanying] and -- while in his mortal guise of "Dr. Donald Blake" -- mooning like a lovesick calf over the not-readily-apparent charms of naiad-like nursie, "Jane Foster." Much of the interior artwork done for the series at this juncture (many of said earliest issues weren't even drawn by Kirby, after the initial few had hit the stands. Apparently, the character of Thor was considered a "low priority" one by darned near everyone at Marvel, at that point; certainly not one worth Kirby's valuable attention and energies, at any rate), such as the "Cobra" sequence referenced above, was drawn by the seemingly bewildered Don Heck, whose own contributions here were a far cry from his previously established best.
Things could have continued
along this path pretty much indefinitely (or at least until low sales figures
had managed what eventhe
[*shudder*] Cobra could not, and lay the Thunder God low), but for two
fortuitous (and simultaneous) occurrences:
1.)
Jack Kirby returned to JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY, bringing both the medium's
finest draughtsman and the benefits of his nigh-limitless imagination
to the "Asgard Or Bust" party; and --
2.) The
strip's emphasis was quickly re-routed from "which spandexed meagschlub
can we bring back this month" to: "Outer Space. Asgard.
Other deities. This is s'posed to be a book about an actual,
no foolin' god, here."
As evidenced by the cover to the immediate right... this was not exactly
an instantaneous process (although X-MEN
arch-nemesis Magneto, certainly, was a notable step up from the ineffectual
likes of, say, the Porcupine).
Still: the
return of the man so rightly known throughout the comics readership
of the day as "the King" meant a concomitant heaping, as well, of high-potency
visuals... splashed about with gleeful abandon on a storytelling "canvas" (as
it were) large enough to actually contain such mind-blowing mythological
concepts as dimension-spanning rainbow bridges; living planets; and the twilight
of the gods. Just to name three, mind.
(Whether
the newly-minted imagination and intelligence suddenly and demonstrably
on display within the pages of the THOR comic, at this point, were under
the authorial aegis of credited scripter Stan Lee, or -- as has
recently been advanced -- the more "cosmic"-oriented Kirby, himself --
is neither here nor there, really.
[Having said that, however...: the numerous parallels between
the storytelling pivots in Kirby's THOR canon and his later magnum opus
-- the "Fourth World" titles crafted for DC Comics, Inc. in the 1970's -- certainly
are, ummm, striking ones. Warring factions of god-like beings;
a promised apocalypse, as the inevitable end result of such internecine strugglings;
the fact that the primary storytelling "engine" for all of this was interfamilial
in nature... I'm just saying, is all.]
Concepts and characters which seemed almost comical(if not downright ludicrous), in their hysterically overblown faux Wagnerian posturing and deadly, high-minded seriousness in the pages of other Marvel titles (such as the planet-devouring "Galactus," for instance, as detailed in the accompanying cover reproduction to the immediate right... or the "oh, pity me, do" Silver Surfer) slipped as seamlessly into the ongoing THOR pseudo-mythology as did tales of trolls and swordplay. (Indeed: at one point in the ongoing narrative, Thor was being accompanied by an alien robot known simply as "the Recorder," whose sole created purpose was to... well... record, really. A nice "twist" on the concept of the heraldic bards who would faithfully follow heroes into epic battle, that.)
The overall tenor of the THOR series, throughout this period, was one of an anxious, all but unbearable waiting: waiting for the oft-referenced "Ragnarok" (the fateful day when the very existence of Asgard -- and all of its inhabitants -- would come screeching to a bloody and terrible halt); waiting for that one, pivotal battle which would (finally) bring the dreaded and implacable "Hela" [the Asgardian deity of death] gliding silently to one's side [see cover, accompanying].
If later contributions to the canon, anent Kirby's emigration from Marvel Comics to more creator-friendly climes, never successfully broke any new ground, conceptually-speaking... they did, at least, manage to maintain the same high visual pedigree by annointing penciling stalwart John Buscema with the unenviable task of picking up where "the King" had so abruptly left off.
What Buscema lacked in Kirby's native power and immediacy, he made up for
(to great extent) with a considered and nuancedsense
of draftsmanship, and a cinematographer's keen eye for the dramatic. All
things being equal... it was a respectable "holding action," if nothing else.
Again and again, the storyline(s) in THOR would return to the dreaded notion
of "Ragnarok," and the reultant Ending of All Things. As comic book leit
motifs go: there have been any number of less compelling ones, to
be sure. (The incessant divvying up of the world entire, in the current
X-MEN comics, into two "camps" -- Poor, Persecuted and Put-Upon Mutant Waifs
and Everybody Else -- in particular, has proven itself a storytelling vein so
long since strip-mined and denuded that its writers are doubtless courting multiple
citations from the EPA.)
The tale was best told, I think, in the pages of THOR #200. A seeress hag lays bare for all of the series' "regulars" (including Thor's all-knowing pater, the "All-Father" Odin; his villainous half-brother, Loki; and -- of course -- the Thunder God, himself) the dire and awful events predestined to occur, as the Age of the Asgardians draws to its inevitable close. [See page, accompanying]
The weary resignation in Odin's response to this dread recital -- in which the certainty of his son Loki's involvement as ultimate provocateur is tolled with funeral finality -- was as close as the series ever came to anything like true grandeur, and is eminently worth experiencing in its entirety [see page, accompanying].
After such a well-crafted scene such as this... no need, certainly, to ever tramp the same storytelling trail.
I mean: how could anyone hope to top something as perfectly realized
as that...?
The Silver Age AVENGERS
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