I've said several times that, for me, the turning point for the Thor series is Journey into Mystery #97. Before I write a review of that watershed issue, I wanted to say a few words about why I think it's transformational. It's not just Tales of Asgard (though that's certainly part of it). It just seems to me like #97 is a great leap away from what we had seen before, and the first stepping stone to what the Thor series would be in just a few years.

From the beginning of the series to Journey into Mystery #96, Thor has been like a building with a very unreliable elevator. Sometimes, it takes you high enough in the building that it's almost quite a good series, with good art and good concepts and nothing too cringey among the story elements. And at other times, it doesn't rise quite so high, with a really bad villain or too much time in the doctor's office. And sometimes, it can't even get up that high, with poor stories and dumb endings and Don Blake making androids and Loki manipulating chromosomatic glands. AND COMMIES! And sometimes, the elevator isn't even available and you fall down the shaft and into the basement! (I would nominate #90, the Carbon-Copy Man issue. Others may pick a different story.)

But with #97, the Thor series becomes more like a grand staircase. It starts rather modestly. The Lava Man story is hardly anybody's idea of a Silver Age Marvel classic, but it's pretty solid, with Jack Kirby art inked by Don Heck. The Lava Man is a representative of one of Marvel's underground races, the Lava Men, so he's part of the Marvel Universe world-building. The story is kind of silly, but it's not mind-bendingly dumb like some of the earlier tales. He's followed by a couple of new characters who will become familiar faces in the Marvel Universe - The Cobra and Mr. Hyde. And then Zarrko returns in a two-part story in #101 and #102, and this is quite an improvement over his first appearance.

Then we take another step up on the grand staircase. #103 introduces the Executioner and the Enchantress. In the next issue, Earth is visited by Skagg the storm giant and Surtur the fire demon. Then the Cobra and Mr. Hyde team up. The next few issues give us the Gray Gargoyle (twice!) Loki (again!), Dr. Strange, Magneto, Hyde and Cobra (again!) and the Hulk! 

(I love this era! The Chic Stone inking! With Stone's thick lines, every panel looks like a stained-glass window! When I was a kid, these comics were cheap. $5 or $6 for a F - VF copy. I had most of the issues from #103 to #111 (and I had #112 as a reprint in a Marvel Treasury Editon). It would be decades before I read more than a handful of the Thor comics from the following three or four years. In a way, the run from #103 to #111 IS Thor to me. I think these issues are great!) 

And then, we take another step up the staircase, and Loki changes Crusher Creel to the Absorbing Man and sends him after Thor! And then there's a Trial of the Gods! And then there's Hercules! And then Thor has to go to HELL to fight for the life of the Prince of Power!

Next, we meet Tana Nile ... and the Colonizers ... and Ego the Living Planet! 

And then, the High Evolutionary and the Knights of Wundagore!

And then Ulik. Mangog. The Wrecker.

The Thor series is a passable adventure comic-book series that slowly becomes a pretty good comic, then a great comic and, eventually, one of the top five super-hero comic-book runs ever. (Arguably, I guess. I don't know how many people rate it as highly as I do.) 

And it all starts with the Lava Man in Journey into Mystery #97!

you could say the same about Fantastic Four too... it just took a bit for them to figure it all out.

Journey into Mystery #97
October 1963
"The Mighty Thor Battles the Lava Man"

So Thor saves a pilot who has passed out because his oxygen has run out, and then he keeps the plane from crashing into the city. He lands on the street and everybody is talking about a volcano that suddenly appeared and a mysterious "lava man" has emerged from the volcano and is walking in the direction of New York City.

Thor isn't at all concerned about a lava man menacing the city because he has girl problems! Jane Foster has gotten fed up with Dr. Blake's bizarre behavior and his long naps in the locked lab and his wishy-washy attempts at romance. He should be more like Thor! So she resigns from Blake's office and is going to get a job with Dr. Andrews, a well-known WOLF! (He's probably just a womanizer and not actually a wolf. But this is the Marvel Universe, so it's not impossible that he's actually a wolf. I mean, his first name is Basil! That just screams "werewolf from somewhere in Great Britain" in the Marvel Universe.) 

So Thor tries to contact Odin for a heart-to-heart talk father-to-son talk about dating mortals. But Odin is rather adamant with his all-powerful god-like adamance that this is not going to happen! So Thor is kind of sulky, and Dr. Blake is walking around in a daze, and he doesn't notices the prominent newspaper headline on every page or all the New Yorkers yelling at each other about the Lava Man, and I guess he hasn't been paying attention to the radio during his time of bereavement because he just has no clue that there's a new volcano and the Lava Man is hitching to New York City for a showdown!  

We go to Asgard for a couple of panels. Loki is standing on a balcony, gazing down on Midgard. He sees the Lava Man lumbering toward the East River and remembers that Lava Man is on the surface because it was ... Loki who activated the volcano and enabled the Lava Man to come to Earth. Loki had forgotten all about it! He is up to so much mischief at any given time that he had forgotten all about it. He sets aside his current scheming to keep an eye on the Lava Man and see how it plays out. (That's not quite it for Loki in this story. He only appears in these two panels, but Thor can hear him laughing up in Asgard and Loki gets a jagged word balloon as he gloats at Thor's misfortunes.)

So Dr. Blake is heartsick and anguished, and he wanders around the city. And FINALLY he notices that something is going on. The US military is swarming the city because of the Lava Man! Everyone is panicking and running around. There's an evacuation going on! Blake is like, "Huh? Troops? Emergency evacuation? Lava Man? WHAT IS GOING ON?!" He turns to Thor to investigate and quickly finds himself confronting the Lava Man. 

The Bazooka Corps is trying to take out the Lava Man, but he appears to be evaporating the shell without much effort by melting it with his body heat. He tells whoever is listening that mankind must evacuate the cities and take to the sea. The Lava People are weary of living in their subterranean haunts and it is time for the surface people to just hand it over.

So Thor and the Lava Man mix it up for about six pages. The Lava Man dodges Mjolnir by melting the ground under his own feet and disappearing into the earth. The Lava Man wraps Thor with a cocoon of lava but he doesn't have that much trouble getting out of it.

Thor finally wooshes the Lava Man away with a whirlwind and drops him in the volcano. The Thunder God then uses Mjolnir's magical delivery system to tear off the top of a nearby mountain and drop it on the volcano, thus imprisoning the Lava Man and the Lava People inside their subterranean lands forever ... or at least until The Avengers #5. 

Commentary: OK. It's no great comic book classic for the ages. But it's better than most of what we've seen in the Thor series up to this point. I admit ... I'm wondering what's up with the Lava People. They only sent one guy to the surface to drive the surface people into the ocean? They must really be full of themselves! I feel like maybe I should read The Avengers #5 again to give this story a little more context.

I think the Jane Foster subplot works a lot better here than it has in the past. (But don't get used to that!) Blake's weird behavior and indecisiveness have consequences this time! She finds Blake's office to be a major dead end and she's moving on! And then that whole little drama continues into the next issue.

And we also get the first installment in the Tales of Asgard series! It's a great introduction to the Norse myths, with art by Jack Kirby and a great inking job by George Roussous. There's Ymir and Surtur at two ends of the universe. And then a magic cosmic cow who kicks at the ice until the gods emerge! Eventually Odin is born. He grows up and comes to love Midgard and the mortal men who live there, so he plants the World Tree - Yggdrasil - to nurture and protect it. You'll have to read the next issue to see what happens next! 

Commentary :

It was a weird look to see Don Hecks inks over the Kirby pencils. I'm not sure I like it. JIM #97 is important for another reason besides the Tales of Asgard intro, Thor finally begins to talk in the third person and even throws a few " thy and thees" into his language. 






Although , it's interesting to note that he started to talk that way in Avengers #1 , which came out a month earlier. 





Of Course Stan Lee wrote and dialogued both , so he probably had in it his plans to introduce the difference in language. It's my opinion that that change into elizabethan English set Thor apart from the rest of the heroes and gave him a sense of grandeur. 

Sorry Hoosier X, I have to disagree about the Jane scenes. It's bizarre for her to comment on Blakes manliness as a reason for leaving to go to another doctor who is more " Manly". Okay, it was the 60's and comics were being written by men , but it's not a dating service.  It kind of implies that she is going to the other workplace to hook up with the boss. Awkward , man. 

All in all, I enjoyed the issue. This is the first time that Thor that he will take out his anger on his opponents. It gives him a bit of an edge. 

As I've mentioned in other places, I believe that once he and Jack decided to launch the Tales of Asgard back-up series Stan turned to Bulfinch's Mythology, a reference book much more widely known in those days, for research and that it was from there that he cribbed the idea of having the Asgardians speak in a psuedo-Elizabethan dialect.

Cei-U!
Yea, verily!

I love the different speech patterns. There was a time in the 90’s where Warren Ellis wrote Thor and had him speaking like a guy from Brooklyn. Yikes. These days, I think it’s somewhere in the middle.

I wonder if they were getting some feedback about the sales of non-Kirby/Lee issues.