Journey into Mystery #117
June 1965
"Into the Blaze of Battle!"
This issue is a bit of a misstep. Thor goes to Vietnam and meets commies! Comic book commies! It simplifies the Vietnamese conflict into a "commies bad" formula that is misleading and embarrassing and dishonest. As if the French had never colonized the region. As if the French colonial government had never cooperated with the Japanese in World War II. As if the victorious Allies hadn't ignored the native forces in Vietnam who had fought the Japanese, and then let the French retain control. As if the postwar Allied governments hadn't ignored calls for an election because they feared Ho Chi Minh would win. As if American involvement wasn't based entirely on ridiculous assessments and a lot of wishful thinking on the part of hardline anti-Communists who didn't seem to be able to admit that the West had already done ENOUGH to Vietnam.
I'm sure it was a difficult subject for comic books in 1965. But there is no subtlety here at all. Comic book commies are so boring because of bad scripting in scenes like this. It didn't have to be this bad.
But let's get to the story. The Trial of the Gods is over. Loki has stepped over the threshold into Asgard just a few steps ahead of Thor. So Loki wins the Trial of the Gods.
But But But LOKI IS A DIRTY CHEATER! says Thor. He tells Odin about the Norn stones. Loki opens his hands. "I have no Norn stones, Lord Odin. Thor is just being a whiny little baby." (Loki had been carrying them in a little bag. It looked like a bag of candy. Cherry sours, maybe. But he had scattered the stones to the Four Winds (or something) and sent them to Midgard.)
(Mmm. Cherry sours.)
Odin may be pretty dense a lot of the time when it comes to Loki. But for once, he seems to realize that Thor may well be telling the truth. So he says he will postpone the verdict for 24 hours to give Thor time to find some Norn stones to prove his accusations.
So Thor goes to Midgard. Before he can go look for the Norn stones, he has to check in on the big game of GET JANE FOSTER. With so many contestants, it was more of a tournament. And Jane is exhausted. Balder is protecting Jane, and the Enchantress and the Executioner are in offensive mode, with Jane Foster on Balder's 40-yard line.
The appearance of Thor upsets the game. The Enchantress and the Executioner, seeing that Balder's hand is vastly improved by his Thor card, decide to fold, giving up the game to Balder.
Balder casts a spell of forgetfulness on Jane. He offers to take her home so she can rest. And it's good for Jane to get some rest! She has been dragged through the poop. AGAIN! And she's had another spell of forgetfulness cast on her. Another blank space in her memories. I hope she doesn't start wondering if Dr. Blake is giving her roofies.
With Balder tending to Jane, Thor can begin his search for the Norn stones. Mjolnir has Uru energies and thus can trace the mystic energies of the Norn stones. And they lead him to Vietnam where the evil Viet Cong are ravaging the countryside and killing the peasants and burning the fields, because the Chinese told them to. Thor suffers a direct hit from a Viet Cong mortar shell and is knocked unconscious.
When he awakens, he is in the hut of some simple Vietnamese peasants. They are hiding him from the Viet Cong because if they catch him, they will commie him to death or something. It's a young woman, the mom, and a teenage boy.
He leaves because he has to find the Norn stones. But when he finds them, he's going to come back and help the villagers against the Viet Cong. But the stones seem to be hidden in a large clump of dense jungle. So he turns to Don Blake so that he can more easily search for the stones without getting his wings or his shoulder pads stuck in the vines and leaves. He is very quickly apprehended by the guerillas, who surprise him and use his magic stick to bind him, securing his arms behind his back.
Meanwhile, Loki is gloating and plotting and crouching in one of his weird Loki-chairs, pouring himself some root beer or something. And here comes the Norn Queen. She wants her Norn stones back. Loki is very dismissive. He blows her off. He's still using the stones ... as bait. The Norn Queen, well, she's kind of pissed! She has no love for Thor or Asgard, but Loki is such a jerk that she seems to be re-thinking this alliance.
Blake tells the comrade commander that he in Vietnam on a mission of mercy, hoping to offer his medical expertise to help the villagers. The comrade commander thinks he's a spy, and starts roughing him up and asking him what he knows about Thor. Blake resists (he has dealt with COMMIES before), but before the comrade commander can beat him up some more, some villagers are brought to the interrogation room. It's the villagers from earlier in the story! They are suspected of helping Thor!
Well, it turns out that the comrade commander is Hu Sak! He is the son of the old woman and the brother of the young woman and the teen boy! Hu Sak yells at them for defying the communists, and the teenage boy expresses how upsetting it is that his brother is serving the red tyrant. The mother laments that at least Hu Sak's father is not alive to see this disgrace on the family!
Dr. Blake manages to get into the hallway for a second, and he throws himself on the ground and manages to strike the end of the stick so that he turns to Thor! He tussles with the commies a bit, and then he realizes that Mjolnir is acting up. The Norn stones are very near! He sees them on top of a pile of artillery shells. While Thor's getting the Norn stones, Hu Sak and his family start quarreling, and Hu Sak loses his temper and pulls out his pistol and kills his mother and his brother.
He immediately feels bad about it. Like, maybe he made a few bad decisions in his life. The sister, her name is Kim, runs into the hallway and finds Thor, carrying the Norn stones. She tells Thor what has happened, and Hu Sak stumbles up. Thor tells him that he will come and get Hu Sak after he has taken Kim to safety. Hu Sak is re-revaluating his obedience to the Red Tyrants, and he sets off the cache of artillery shells, causing a huge explosion and killing dozens of guerillas.
Thor sees the explosion and realizes what it means and tells Kim that her older brother died like a man.
THE END Commentary: I don't have a lot to say about this issue aside from what I already said in the introduction. I don't think this story is a total disaster. Better dialogue would help a lot. All the Vietnamese are so one-dimensional. It probably didn't look so bad in 1965 but it's a bit of a chore to read in 2024.
The Asgard scenes are cool! The scene with Loki and the Norn Queen is hinting at the relationships of the evil forces in Asgard. (I don't think they are calling her Karnilla yet.) And we get to see what Loki does when he's hanging out for a few panels. It's mostly just whingeing about Thor and gloating about how he's using the COMMIES in him plot against Thor. (I like the panel where he throws the drinking horn at the Norn Queen. Loki! You spilled your root beer!)
Tales of Asgard: "The Sword in the Scabbard!"
Asgard has been at peace so long that the warriors have gotten restless and are frequently fighting each other. Odin finds a bunch of Asgardians brawling and tells them to stop! Stop it right now! You make me so angry I could pinch each and every one of you!
He goes off to find Loki and Thor ... and he finds them fighting as well. He tells them to stop. And then he says that he's decided to impose the death penalty on them the next time they fight. They decide to stop and listen to Odin.
The All-Father takes them to the special room where he keeps the Oversword. It is sometimes called the Odinsword. It's a giant sword in a scabbard, and if anybody tries to remove it from the scabbard, it kickstarts Ragnorak.
We don't want that!
Odin draws the sword just a little bit to show Loki and Thor that the Odinsword has some cracks in it. How did this happen!? This is bad, isn't it?
Odin suspects that there is a secret enemy of Asgard, somebody who has the power to corrupt the Odinsword within Odin's very chambers! So he is going to send Thor and Loki and an elite group of warriors on a quest to find this evil entity who is plotting against Asgard!
Details to come later! We've only got five pages here! And next issue is the start of the quest!
This is the first appearance of the Odinsword! And it's also the prologue to the first serialized story in Tales of Asgard!
