Belt of power?  I rather have the blonde Valkyries . 

You'll need the belt of power...

Journey into Mystery #92
May 1963
"The Day Loki Stole Thor's Magic Hammer"

A bunch of stuff happens and then eventually we get a plot.

Neri, Fricka's handmaiden, is out for a stroll and she wander by Bifrost, the Rainbow Bridge, and starts chatting with Heimdall. He says he must be careful because she might be Loki in disguise. He tells her of the time that Loki turned into a snake and wriggled away between his feet. "But I couldn't be Loki!" she says. She points to a nearby cliff where Loki is chained to the rocks. "You can see him right there!" Heimdall acts like he has never noticed that before. He feels certain that he LLoki is still securely chained and lets Neri go on her way.

You think it's going to turn out that Neri really is Loki and Heimdall has been fooled again. But no. It's really Neri, and she continues her stroll along the Rainbow Bridge and whatever adventures she may have had are unchronicled in this reality.

Meanwhile, Loki is about to barf at the scene he has just witnessed. "Sweet Neri!," he sneers sarcastically, as if he knows something we don't. He vows that he will eventually break these chains and return to Earth and resume his evil plan to turn all the bicycles into candy and make all the dogs sick. THE FIEND!

On Earth, Jane is leaving the office and some crooks hiding in a car watch her leave. They are jewel thieves, and one of them was shot during a robbery. They are going to force Blake to remove the bullet and then they are going to kill him so he can't be a witness. It doesn't work out that way. After the surgery, he turns to Thor, disarms them, sttraps them all to the operating table with adhesive tape and uses the Mjolnir Delivery Service tp deposit them at the police station.

Next, it's weeks later, and Thor is in Norway, making a movie about a sea serpent attacking some good Vikings that Thor has vowed to protect. The production is going to make substantial donation to charity in exchange for Thor's participation. Thor is going to fight a mechanical sea serpent for his thrilling cinematic debut. (I wonder if one of his co-stars is Rita Farr.)

Thor throws his hammer at a mountain to cause an avalanche to destroy the village where the bad Vikings live. And Loki sees his chance! His chains are made from the unbreakable metal known as Uru, the same as Thor's hammer. These chains aren't unbreakable ... they can be broken by another item made of Uru! Loki - through his sorcery - is somehow able to control the hammer, so he directs it away from Thor and towards Asgard. (And there's a great panel where Thor - who was flying when he threw the hammer - doesn't get his hammer back before he falls to the ground. SPLAT!)

The hammer breaks the chains and Loki is free! He figures he can beat Thor more easily on Asgard than on Earth, so he uses his magical persuasion powers to get Thor to ask Odin to transport him to Agard. But Thor has to act quickly because the sixty seconds is almost up! So gigantic Odin fills the sky and reaches down and grabs Thor and reaches up and lets him go on Asgard. (And because he's now on Asgard, he doesn't have to worry about turning back to Don Blake.)

We've only got four pages left! Thor is attacked by magic trees and then by a cloud changed into a dragon, and it's all Loki's doing, of course. Thor fashions a hammer out of the rock on a cliffside (with his very strong fingers, of course!) and scares the dragon away. He then realizes the cliff he was poking into is made of Uru! So he figures that - somehow - this Uru hammer he has made will be magnetically attracted to Mjolnir! So he throws the hammer and it flies straight to Mjolnir! He has found his hammer!

And it's a good thing because we're on the last page!

Meanwhile, Odin, Fricka and Heimdall confront Loki and promise Thor that they will try to find a more effective way to keep Loki imprisoned.

Thor goes back to New York and resumes his practice. This time, without any of that "Oh Jane! If only I could tell you how much I love you!" jazz.

Commentary: It's probably the best of the early Thor stories not drawn by Kirby.

Sinnott is actually doing a pretty good job on the art. I suspect he would have been a fine penciller on Thor if he had been given a chance to grow into it.

I think this is the first Thor story where a substantial part of the action takes place in Asgard.

My comments:

The scene at the beginning is to establish Loki's power and that everyone is to be on high alert. Next time maybe Heimdal can wear full pants instead of Robin shorts. Yikes !

It was a fail to use the Thug Thatcher plot again because it shows that it wasn't a real challenge to Thor in the first place. He dispatched Thatcher 2.0 in two pages. His duct taping all the criminals to a gurney and throwing them the way he did, couldn't possible have ended with them landing safely at police quarters. Silver age silliness once again. 

Thor filming a movie for charity is a Superman plot. Why do people keep using Thor as their errand boy?

Loki sure can do a lot while imprisoned including violating one of the properties of the Hammer. Hey, it's always supposed to return to Thors hand , no matter what. But to add insult to injury , it travels all the way to Asgard. Once again Loki has the power of the Beyonder. 

Is Thor praying to Odin going to be an every issue thing? Change the name of the book to Thor and Odin already. Odin holds a council among the gods and tells Thor to search Asgard for the hammer , but it turns out to be Loki's doing as he planted this suggestion in his mind. These plot devices are really terrible. The only out is that Odin hasn't been established as the all powerful All father yet, but it's going to take a lot of hand waving to ignore all this stuff. 
The worst part of the issue is that Thor doesn't even defeat Loki once he recovers his real Hammer, he has to call Odin to capture him off panel. 

One last thing, I didn't know Uru was all over the place in Asgard. I thought it was a rare element only available to Trolls. 

Hey Hoosier X , I think this issue just told JIM # 90, hold my beer. Someone owes ME an apology. 

Cool Moments:

yeah the geek in me found a few 

Thor makes a hammer out of a tree to take on the tree monsters, and it looks cool.




Thor carves out a stone Hammer to take on the cloud/Dragon. Turns out Thor IS  the god of hammers. 

Apologize, Mr. Trombone? I had to write the reviews for both #90 and #92!

About Loki and his frequent appearances …

Loki is not just a villain. He is also a supporting character, like Alfred or Lois Lane or Flash Thompson or Alicia Masters.

And it makes sense because he is part of the Asgard family. He is the adopted son of Odin, thus he’s Thor’s brother. He would be around a lot, except when he’s chained to a rock with a serpent dripping acid in his face.

It’s a comic-book tradition. Some villains go through phases where they appear A LOT and, though they remain villains, they are also part of the supporting cast. Like Lex Luthor. Like Dr. Doom. Like Dr. Sivana and his extended family in the Fawcett Captain Marvel comics. Like the Joker and the Penguin in the Golden Age Batman comics.

The first few years of 1960s Marvel saw a number of villains make a large number of appearances in a very short time. Like the Red Skull and the Mandarin. And Magneto in The X-Men. The Leader was the main villain (behind the scenes some of the time) in 15 consecutive of Tales to Astonish. In Spider-Man, there was the Green Goblin and, a few years later, the Kingpin.

It pretty much never ended for Loki. I guess he goes through periods where he doesn’t appear as much. But he’s family, he hates Thor, he is immortal and he’s one of the most powerful villains in the Marvel Universe.

He has good appearances and bad appearances. But he’s shown himself to be a very durable and very flexible character.

You’d better get used to him. We’re going to be running into him A LOT in this thread.

Journey into Mystery #93




“ Thor vs the Mysterious Radio-Active man “

Writer Stan Lee
Scripter: R Berns
Artist: Jack Kirby
Artist Inks: Dick Ayers



Plot summary: Don Blake while on a mission to help sick people in India, witnesses some of the conflict between that nation and China. He turns into Thor and dispatches the hostile red army. The Red leaders, angry at the advantage that India had with a super powered being, commands their scientists to create something that will rival that. All the scientists don’t have a clue on how to create such a being except Chen LU. He has found a way to harness radioactivity in such a way as to grant powers to a human. He experiments on himself and gains power and destroys the apparatus, so no one can duplicate the process.

The leaders send him to America to kill Thor. He arrives in New York and terrorizes the city and demands that Thor meet him or he will continue to cause destruction. Thor meets him and is hypnotized by him. Chen Lu commands him to throw away his hammer , which he does but it’s thrown far away forcing Lu to search for it. Thor turns back to Blake and goes back to his office and creates a device that will find the hammer. He sees that it’s in the river and is forced to dive in to retrieve it. When he becomes Thor once again, he finds Lu and creates a vortex to send him back to China, where he explodes on impact.


Comments
This issue marks a move towards more conventional super heroics that will become a staple of Marvel comics. He is given one of the first opponents that will become his rogues gallery. Indeed ,the Radio active man makes short work of Thor by repelling his hammer, withstanding a lightning attack and is protected from  physical attack because it will cause an H bomb type explosion. 

 There is a real sense of tension when Blake dives into the river not knowing if he will grasp the weapon before drowning. Thor's powers are on display when he defeats Lu with a vortex powerful enough to send him from New York to China. It’s quite impressive , although implausible. A fun issue, even with some goofy aspects in the story. Also, this issue is the first mention of Thor being based in New York City.




Cool Moment

During the opening battle with the red army Thor strings several tanks together and throws them at China. Goofy , but a nice visual.


Thor becomes more arrogant in the way he talks


Countdown in the river when he's trying to retrieve the hammer is exciting 


Although I commented that it was implausible, I like the display of the incredible power of the Hammer.



Silly moments

Lu enters the USA and is challenged , Ha, just walk through the border states , you'll have no problem


Lu trying to run after the hammer reminded me of something out of an Archie comic 


Since when is  radioactivity used to hypnotize people ?



Another of Blakes skills, he can create tracking devices on par with Tony Stark, I guess smoking a pipe helps your scientific prowess .