Well, this is a surprise. From Charlton's OUT OF THIS WORLD# 11 back in 1959, we find a weakly blond man entering a cave in Scandanavia and emerging with impressive muscles and the Hammer of Thor. He uses this new power to repel invaders. Huh. There are more differences than similarities here to the Marvel Thor origin in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY# 82 three years later, to be sure, but it's interesting. Comics were a small world in that era, creators chatted and gossiped and swapped ideas cheerfully. Maybe Stan Lee or Jack Kirby read this story, maybe Steve Ditko was in the office one day and said, "You know, I did a Thor story a few years ago" and told them about it.
What we have here is a good example of "Euhemerism," the idea that gods and devils of old times were based on real life, with their exploits exaggerated. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euhemerism In the PROSE EDDA, Snorru Sturlusson claimed that Odin and the other Aesir had been flesh and blood people, remembered now with their deeds blown all out of proportion. (Sort of like our own culture heroes, where the legend has overshadowed the facts.) He might not have believed this actually, but it was a good way to discuss the old pagan beliefs without getting the Church all bent out of shape.
So anyway. We find "Thor" is a puny weakling being pushed around by bullies. Bruce Banner errr Peter Parker errr Thor just doesn't like to fight. His father has no patience with a gentle Viking and calls him a spineless jellyfish ("I do not want a weakling for a son,"), the gender roles are just too oppressive for little Viking boys. So Thor starts spending most of his time in the woods, being all thoughtful and sniffling, 'someday they'll be sorry.' ("He was content to live his hermit life of happeness with forest creatures." Saint Francis of Norway.)
After he starts hanging out most of the time in a mysterious cave, he finds out the strange radiation in there has made him big and muscular. That Silver Age radiation again. If only radiation had effects like that instead of just cancer and leukemia. Thor also finds an inexplicable rock shaped like a hammer which wrecks the joint when he throws it. The first thing he does with it split a tree in half (sound familiar?) Not bad. This is when the vile non-Aryan Huns invade peaceful Scandanavia. Just Attila, at it again. Thor wipes them out, apparently leaving no trace behind, then goes back to his Nature Boy life. Never mind that the Huns actually stuck around, allying themselves with the Scandanavians once an agreement had been "hammered" out (sorry). But, we are told, the legend of Thor has been started and is still told today.
The art is very nice and clean, Ditko leaving behind his darker claustrophic style he used for early horror stories (and which would return with the paranoid Cold War scene of Captain Atom). Script was probably by Joe Gill, who wrote nearly everything for Charlton year after year.
Ah, the esoteric history of the funny papers. There were many other appearances of Thor characters before the Lee-Kirby superheroic one in 1962. Stay tuned.
I see a strong Joe Kubert influence in early Ditko. The bearded father on page two has a Kubert look to him.
Jaxson Baker
>Radiation suddenly gives me a rocking body >Oh hey a lump of metal that’s shaped like a hammer and randomly has magic power
Some guys just have all the luck. When I get git with radiation I just get bone cancer and all lumps of metal I find are just trash dumped on the yard.
Carson Gonzalez
If only radiation worked the way it did in old drive-in movies and Silver Age comics. We'd have Neil Armstrong and Gus Grissom throwing trucks at each other, giant ants and spiders scuttling around the Southwest. People would be sneaking into nuclear power plants in the middle of the night and diving into the cooling tanks,
No such luck.
Nolan Gutierrez
Three years before Don Blake, a limping blond man finds a cane with the power of Thor's hammer.
This was a surprise. Before Steve Ditko started working for them and before Dick Giordano revitalized the entire company, Charlton Comics were always bottom of the barrel. I read them because I was a little comics fiend and I read anything I could pin down in front of me. Sometimes there were a few gems in the gravel, to be fair and I still skim through some now and then. This six pager is from UNUSUAL TALES# 18, September 1959. To be honest, just as a story it's as drab and dull as most Charlton comics were but it has some historical interest because of what it foreshadowed.
Yeah. I go into Salvation Army stores and slam every cane down on the floor. All I get is thrown out.
Xavier Rodriguez
So we find Alvin Johnson grumpy because he sprained his ankle. He limps into town and sees a new tent where antiques are being sold. Hey, a lightweight metal cane! Three dollars, what a steal. To his surprise, Alvin finds he can walk better than ever with the cane. To his REAL surprise, he finds a gentle swipe of the walking stick can sever tree branches neatly and even knock his barn down. He starts to suspect some out of the ordinary is going on. But he is not destined to turn into a facsimile of Thor as Don Blake would, nor to go on a wild crime rampage or even get to clear away his barn. The owner of the tent sneaks into his yard and replaces the magic cane with a mundane similar one. And poor Alvin is left never knowing what the heck was going on.
It's not a satisfying story at all, to be honest. The scripting is slack, the art is pedestrian (you can follow what's going on, but there's no atmosphere or drama or even sense of impact when the barn gets knocked over. Add an inconclusive ending where nothing is really explained and you've got a thorough dud.
Now, three years later in 1962 came JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY# 83, where Stan Lee and Jack Kirby started Marvel's version of Thor. A limping blond man finds a mysterious walking stick as well, but what a difference. When he strikes it on the ground, he finds himself in the body of the Norse thunder god himself and epic adventures begin that are still going on fifty years later. Yikes.
Jack Kirby had used Thor characters before, in a Sandman strip in 1942 (where the thunder god turned out to be a common crook with a gadget-filled electrified helmet) and in a 1950s TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED tale where a drifter finds Thor's hammer and starts thunderstorms and splitting trees in half and stuff. But then Thor himself shows up to reclaim his headcracker. Did Kirby read this Charlton story, or did someone mention it to him? Or did he just want to start a new Thor-as-superhero series and it was Stan Lee who decided to make the thunder god an avatar of a mortal man to provide a secret identity and the usual headaches for a Silver Age hero? Unfortunately, both men had a normal human tendency to claim credit for themselves (especially after the first few years when the working relationship soured). So, unless we find memos and documentation from 1962 with all the details, we're not likely to know if this Charlton story even had any bearing on the creation of Marvel's Thor.
That "Walking Story" art had been credited to Bill Molno and Sal Trapani, not the first names that pop into your head when you think about comics.
I'm going to mention Joe Gill here, who batted out hundreds of stories for Charlton, month after month, year after year. Not too many of them were any good but hey, you got a complete issue with four stories twice a week from the guy. I always pictured this worn-out old guy with a white beard, chained by his ankle to the desk, banging away at the typewriter all day every day...
Blake Lee
All the way back to June 1942 we go. ADVENTURE COMICS# 75 is on the stands (we actually it was published a few months earlier than the cover date, buy that's a whole topic in itself. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby give the Sandman and Sandy a rough time with "The Villain From Valhalla."
Also, I wish Simon and Kirby had remembered to add the outline of the mantle across Sandman's shoulder that was purple. The costume doesn't look as good without it.
Asher Hernandez
ah-HA! Notice in the last panel that "Mjolanar" (sic) is in quotation marks. Kind of a clue that not all here is what it seems.
I know it's comics (and Golden Age comics as well) where taking a punch is like a friendly wave,. But honestly, getting knocked out by a guy that big with a stone hammer. Assuming the victim lived (not at all certain) he might spend the rest of his life with brain damage, slurred speech, blurred vision, difficulty walking or using his hands, all kinds of permanent damage.
it's not only comic books that pull this stuff either. Movies and TV show someone getting slugged and, minutes later, getting up as if nothing had happened,. Maybe they lean against a chair for a minute and rub the back of their head. Ask a doctor or EMT how plausible.
But as long as we know it's fantasy, we can watch Donnie Yen take one concussion after another and ignore them.
There's that Simon and Kirby action that made CAPTAIN AMERICA, THE BOY COMMANDOS and their other Golden Age strips so popular. Mostly Joe Simon wrote the stories and Jack Kirby did the pencils, but Simon often made corrections and polished the art a little. And of course others artists pitched in to meet deadlines, doing backgrounds or minor characters,.
Yikes. I was just mentioning the effects of getting hit in the head., I can't remember a Golden Age strip where the boy sidekick was killed. The closest was probably being shot in a late 1940s Captain America. He survived, it was only a way to write him out of the comic and replace him with Golden Girl.
Hmmm. This Thor is a phony. What nerve. It'd serve him right the real Thor showed up and gave him a stern look. (The "real" Thor? Well, you know what I mean.)
Lucite is better known as Plexiglass. Yes, it's transparent and is used in bullet-resistant windows among other things, I have grave doubts you could make a suit like the ones these mugs are wearing,
Even if the material was flexible enough and did stop bullets, you'd still get your bones broken, internal damage and so forth. It's not like wearing Camelot plate armor.
Right hand side of the panel, check out the Viking's helmet flying straight up from the punch. That cop must be Jim Harper, getting away from the Newsboy Legion for a few minutes.
Aiden Howard
I didn't think anyone noticed this thread. If only someone like Roy Thomas had doggedly interviewed Lee, Kirby and Ditko back in 1961.. when their memories were fresh and their egos had not blown up to their detriment.
Like that low-tech hospital bed. No monitors or push bell for the nurse or oxygen tubes or anything like that. I bet the bedpan was ceramic and not exactly gleaming, too.
It's only mentioned in passing on thid page, but Simon and Kirby's Sandman stories used a lot of dreaming themes. Prophertic dreams, nightmares about the Sandman, that sort of thing. There was nothing overtly supernatural going on. Wesley Dodds didn't have the power to actually invade someone's dreams but it did give the strip a nice running motif.
