Journey into Mystery #120
September 1965
"With My Hammer in Hand!"
The Destroyer is defeated!
But we still have a few subplots to resolve from the last few issues.
First things first! Thor has to fix Mjolnir, so he goes to Pittsburgh to find a giant blast furnace with a forge great enough to repair Mjolnir. The steel workers cheer him on and Thor manages to put Mjolnir back together again somehow. He thanks the workers, pulls out his to-do list, marks off "fix hammer," and looks at the next item. "Show Norn stones to Odin."
While looking at the Norn stones, he accidentally drops one. So that's one more subplot to keep track of.
Thor then goes to Asgard and presents the stones to Odin, proving that Loki cheated and thus Thor won the Trial of the Gods. (Remember the Trial of the Gods? It was a while ago.)
But Loki has already been punished for other transgressions. Odin is forcing him to to be apprenticed to Ularic the Warlock, which is looking to be another one of Odin's bad decisions. Loki puts Ularic in suspended animation with a magical mist and then hides the warlock in a glass sphere that Loki lowers into a pit. Loki is now master of all of Ularic's enchantments as well as his own. He chortles at his villainy and starts scheming again.
With Odin's permission, Thor goes back to Midgard to work on his to-do list again. Next up is "Re-establish Don Blake identity."
The doctor's office is boarded up and locked because he's been gone for weeks or months. He turns to Blake and confronts the landlord. The rent hasn't been paid for a long time. Dr. Blake is worried! Jane should have been paying the rent. He tells the landlord to keep his cool. He'll get his money. But first Blake has to make sure Nurse Foster is OK.
Thor goes to Avengers Mansion to get some help looking for Jane. He enters the mansion to find Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver! (Cap is on an errand.) Thor doesn't know that there was an issue (Avengers #16) when new Avengers were recruited so the Wasp, Giant-Man and Iron Man could take a break from the Avengers.
Well, he knows now!
Thor is a bit put off by Hawkeye's disrespectful and flippant attitude, so he storms off in a huff and ponders his next move.
Then we get a little teaser for the upcoming season of GET JANE FOSTER!
Two panels of Jane Foster, in an undisclosed location, wondering about what happened to Thor. Then some guy (mostly in shadow, but you can see his arm and he's wearing a blue striped suit, maybe corduroy) grabs Jane's shoulder and tells her to forget about Thor. She has no choice, he says.
Stay tuned for more GET JANE FOSTER!
Back in Asgard, Loki uses Ularic's alchemy den to search space to find the one creature that can defeat Thor. (It's Crusher Creel, but they don't reveal that until the last page.)
And down on Earth, Thor is still trying to find Jane when he sees a golden sphere streaking through the sky over Manhattan. He follows it and it lands gently on the street.
And who should bust out of it but Crusher Creel, the Absorbing Man!
There's going to be another great fight between Creel and Thor! But you'll have to wait until next month to see it.
TO BE CONTINUED!
Commentary: Just another great chapter in the Thor series. They resolved one subplot and gave us about three new ones!
Tales of Asgard: "Set Sail!": The quest ship is ready to go. So Odin is there to see them off! So Thor gives the order to set sail and the ship flies off through the air.
The lovely goddesses of Asgard wave goodbye! And Volstagg is there on the deck, front and center, waving and throwing kisses at the beautiful Asgardian maidens. But then he throws himself back, flattening several memebers of the crew. You see, he saw his wife in the crowd and he thought it best not to be seen flirting with the goddesses. You can see her in the background, scowling at the spectacle. It's great!
Magrat the Schemer and Kroda the Duelist are already plotting villainy. Magrat tells Kroda that it's the perfect time to kill Thor while his back is turned. But Hogun suspects rascality is afoot. So he steps in and warns Magrat and Kroda that he is keeping an eye on them.
Back in Asgard, Odin is soaking his feet and asking the vizier if he has made the right decision. The vizier says it was the only decision.
TO BE CONTINUED
