THOR #131August 1966
"They Strike from Space!"
Co-written and penciled by Jack Kirby
Co-written by Stan Lee
Inked by Vince Colletta
Lettered by Artie Simek
Edited by Stan Lee
Celestial Guided Tours by Honest Irving Forbush
Their adventures in Hell concluded, Thor and Hercules are mystically transported back to Olympus and BOY WOW HOWDY is Hercules happy to be done with that exploit! In the second panel, he gets into an argument with Ares over something dumb. It seems Hercules has NOT learned his lesson and will continue to be the PRINCE OF MEAT-HEADS.
Thor hangs around in Olympus long enough to walk in front of a gorgeous terraced Olympian palace and decides to proceed immediately to Asgard to try ONE MORE TIME to persuade Odin to let him marry the mortal woman Jane Foster.
Meanwhile, Jane is on a bus, going far away. Why she's already gotten as far as New Jersey! You can see the western end of the Holland Tunnel in the background.
Jane is now heading off on her own adventures. You'll see where she's going very soon. She's no longer the lovesick pawn of her feelings for Thor. No, Jane is now the pawn of the MYSTERIOUS TANA NILE!
For me, Jane has become an interesting character in her own right in the last few issues. She's no longer fainting and being abducted and being subject to Asgardian amnesia spells all the time. She told Thor where to go when he abandoned her again without a word and he showed up while she was introducing Hercules to ice cream sodas. Then she put and ad in the personals and got an exotic roommate. Which wasn't such a great choice, but it's not really her fault! She's a character in a comics book! Something like this was bound to happen, even if she was in Patsy Walker or Sgt. Fury or The Two-Gun Kid.
And thus she was HYPMOTIZED by her mysterious new roommate and sent away in the most vague manner possible and now Jane is on a bus, seeking her destiny and about to pass through Parsippany.
And what of Tana Nile? What's HER deal? Will we find out soon?
Well, yeah, we find out on the very next page.
Tana Nile reveals her true form. She is Tana Nile, one of the Colonizers of Rigel, and she's built like Betty Boop with a big head and a skinny body, with a space suit that's two shades of purple and she has pale yellow skin the color of lemonade.
She's on Earth to claim it for the Colonizers as Empress Tana the First. She contacts the home planet to stake her claim and the next panels are REALLY BIG as we get the grand tour of the Rigel homeworld, which is some beautiful Kirby spaceports and control rooms and a horde of Rigellian bureaucrats as they go up the chain of command to facilitate Tana the First's request to colonize and rule Earth.
You can't say Colletta cut corners on these pages. (He probably made up for lost time by erasing backgrounds all over the Marvel Universe for this month!) These snapshots of Rigel provide some pure, unfiltered Kirby magic.
The Rigellians find there are no competing or overlapping claims to Earth in the Sol system, so some inspectors are assigned to travel to Earth and examine the planet.
Meanwhile Thor finds Odin playing a board game called Celestial Chess. The All-Father is quite a skilled enthusiast of the game, which is never mentioned again. He beckons Thor to his side and tells Thor that he has changed his mind about the mortal woman Jane Foster. He has given permission to Thor to court Jane and marry her if he wants!
But there are conditions that must be met, says Odin ... but don't worry about that NOW! Fly thee back to Earth and find thine Jane.
So Thor returns to Earth to Jane's apartment and finds it's full of scheming, colonizing Rigellians!
Instead of rejoicing with Jane about the good news, Thor spends the next eight pages getting roughed up by Empress Tana the First and the Rigellian inspectors, immobilized by a Proton Coagulant Ray (at Maximum Intensity), encased in a transparent rectangular crate and flown partway to Rigel. He escapes the crate en route, beats up the Rigellians on the ship and looks out the window at interstellar space whizzing by. Thor has to stay on the ship and go to Rigel because he knows the only way to beat the Rigellians and save Earth is there. He can only save Earth by facing the Rigellians on their home ground.
And when he's polished off that little task, he can go find Jane! She's probably all the way to Harrisburg by now!
TO BE CONTINUED
COMMENTARY: Yeah. Another great issue!
I forgot to talk about the lady with her little dog. It's in the scene where the Rigellians are removing Thor from Jane's apartment. There's an old lady in a coat coming out of her apartment to take her little black and white Boston terrier for a walk. She sees the Rigellians marching down the hall with Thor floating along in the transparent crate they've trapped him in. The Rigellian is rather abrupt with her.
"Oh, dear!" she says. "Can this be one of those avant-garde New York happenings that I sometimes read about."
The Rigellian retorts: "Words! Words! Words! Do Earthlings never tire of them?"
As if any Rigellian has any room to talk about somebody being chatty! They've been filling the air with word balloons for the last three pages!
Also ... I think that counts as a Shakespeare reference.
TALES OF ASGARD: The Warlock's Eye: Thor is masquerading as Harokin BECAUSE REASONS! He tells Harokin's horde that Fandral, Hogun and Volstagg must be taken alive.
Thor tells Harokin's personal guards to go get the Warlock's Eye because they will need it for their coming battle with Asgard. (But it's a trick! Thor doesn't know where the Eye is, and the guards don't know that he isn't Harokin because they are dumb or have bad eyesight, or maybe Thor really does look EXACTLY LIKE HAROKIN BECAUSE REASONS!)
Volstagg has been hiding in a barrell. But he's squeezed in pretty tight and the barrel busts open from the pressure of Volstagg's husky frame. He comes across the guards removing the Warlock's Eye from its hiding place. Volstagg manages to knock over the guards with his tummy and he steals the Eye.
And then ... Volstagg turns the power of the Warlock's Eye on the hordes of Harokin! (And for an extra added bit of peril (for about one panel), he doesn't know that Thor is masquerading as Harokin!)
Thor reveals himself, grabs the Eye and holds the hordes at bay.
How will they get out of this one? And what will happen to Harokin? Thor seems very worried about him. But he will have to wait until next month like the rest of us!
TO BE CONTINUED
