Since he magically changes from one form and personality to another, Thor is more Captain Marvel than Superman.

Cei-U!
I summon the enchanted Shazhammer!

I want to see more analogies, please. 

I wanted to call this thread "When Titans Crash!"

icctrombone seems to have had his fill of early Thor for the moment, so I offered to write the next one. I kind of like this one. It's a step in the right direction.



Journey into Mystery #86
November 1962
"On the Trail of the Tomorrow Man!"

It's far in the future! The year 2262! Humankind is very advanced and peaceful. "Peace and contentment prevail throughout the globe ..."

Except for a scientist named Zarrko. He is not at peace. Nor he is content. He is rather disgusted by all the peace and all the non-violence and all the not hitting and yelling at each other. I think he needs to get more exercise. He is bald and dresses in green and purple and he's very crabby. He looks like Lex Luthor after he's put on a few pounds while obsessing over a scientific problem and eating too much pizza and milk shakes.

Zarrko thinks it might be a good idea to go back in time and get some weapons form the past and subjugate his timeline.

So he invents a time machine and travels to 1962 and steals a cobalt bomb right out from under Thor's nose and escapes to 2262.

This is kind of embarrassing for Thor, so he whips up a massive thunderstorm and asks Odin to give him time-travel powers. Which is as easy for the All-Father as making himself so ginormous that his face fills the sky.

So Thor gpes to the future and finds that Zarrko has enslaved the populace by threatening to kill them all with the cobalt bomb if they don't submit.

The guards chase Thor around for a while and then Zarrko tries to stop Thor with some traps and then Zarrko has some robots and they try to grab Thor and so on and so on for several pages.

Zarrko ends up with amnesia and Thor returns to 1962 with the cobalt bomb.

Jane Foster is only in two panels. And guess what she's doing. She's musing about how Don Blake is a major weenie compared to Thor.

Next: COMMIES!!

Commentary: That wasn't so bad. It has a sci-fi set-up like a lot of the stories you would see in Journey into Mystery and Tales of Suspense and the other mystery anthology comics. And then you put a super-hero in it! And it has lovely Kirby/Ayers art.

What strikes me is how Zarrko's origin is a lot like Kang's origin. (Also they have the same color scheme). Or maybe I should say that Zarrko's origin is like Rama-Tut's origin before he became Kang.

This must be a very common problem in the various future timelines of Marvel-Earth. They should start warning the people of the future that they may not be able to enjoy their peace and contentment forever if they don't keep an eye on sociopathic scientists who don't know any other way to deal with their boredom than to go back in time and conquer the past or steal cobalt bombs and turidium rays.

Or maybe Zarrko is another incarnation of Rama-Tut/Kang/Immortus and ... what was the other one? Marco Xavier! (Or something.)

Until they figure out this whole Zarrko thing, the Marvel Universe is in grave danger of a cosmic cross-over crisis event with a name like the Zarrko Zenith. All the multiverses may be at risk!

He returns in a two-part story in Journey into Mystery #101 and #102. And then he disappears for 10 or 12 years and returns in a storyline in 1975 and 1976. Thor #242 to #245. #243 and #245 were my first two issues of Thor, and I didn’t read the other two issues in that storyline until just a few years ago.

It’s true! Zarrko was my first Thor villain!

I read that Team-up story a few days ago. It seems Zarrko upped his game. In his first appearance he didn’t have any weapons. Maybe they will cover how he got tech in the following stories. 

Bad as these early issues scripted by Larry Lieber are, things are about to get infinitely worse when Robert Bernstein aka "R. Berns" takes over. I'm not one to casually throw the term "hack" around but Bernstein is the very definition of the term whether writing for Marvel, DC, or Archie.

Cei-U!
I summon the irredeemable dreck!

I did not know about this one. My first issue of Marvel Team-Up was #39. I’ve read a few of the earlier issues but I’ve never gotten around to trying to read all of them.

A showdown between Zarrko and Kang sounds very interesting! I’ll have to see if I can find this story somewhere.