What was your first Thor comic book?

I saw the Thor movie and highly recommend it. I saw it in 2-D and intend to see it again in 3-D. It has a lot of Silver Age sensibility and should appeal to members of this forum, if you're having any doubts.

 

I had read the Tales of Asgard collection prior to the movie to get warmed up, and now I'm reading the first Essential Thor collection, and it got me to thinking about the first Thor comic I read. It was Journey Into Mystery 109 and it came in a stack of used comics my mom had bought at a second-hand store for me when I was sick, probably sometime in 1965. It was one of several old Marvels in the pile. I had been a strictly DC fan until then, and these comics opened up a whole new world to me. I especially liked this story because Magneto was such a cool villain, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants was a weird bunch who hated each other, and they were being chased by this mysterious group of characters called The X-Men who stayed mostly off panel.

 

Unfortunately, I didn't much like Thor himself, although I liked the short Tales of Asgard story in the back.

 

I gravitated to Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Avengers, where I liked Thor well enough as part of the team, but didn't buy any more Thors for a while.

 

It wasn't until  months later that I tried Thor again in Journey Into Mystery 114, the first Absorbing Man story. The dynamic Kirby cover artwork and the odd appearance of the villain got me to look, but it was the cover blurbs that got me to buy it. "The Stronger I Am, The Sooner I Die!" High drama for a 12 year old!

 

After this I was hooked until soon after first Kirby, and then Lee left. I came back for the Roy Thomas run and the Simonson revival, but have pretty much ignored the character since.

 

Having said that, I have bought or borrowed some of the stories in the recent revival and I am finding them to be highly entertaining, so I may be a Thor comics fan again. I'm taking it on a month by month basis.

 

So, what was your first Thor comic book?

 

Hoy

 

 

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    (Not new; as a backissue.)

  • That's pretty easy: 

     

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    I never cared about Thor the character nor read Thor the title (and why doesn't anybody refer to it as The Mighty Thor?) before Walt Simonson's run. I might have read the occasional Thor story in a collection such as The Origins of Marvel Comics and certainly saw him in The Avengers, but beyond that, absolutely nothing about the character captured my interest. 

     

    However, I liked Walt Simonson enough, on the strength of his reputation from the Manhunter series in Detective Comics and other things here and there, to take a chance on his rendition of Thor. I loved it. I loved everything about it. I loved Beta Ray Bill and Sutur and that funky guy clattering "DOOM!" and that ex-Marine Thor hung out with and Thor the frog and all of it. I loved it even after Simonson stopped drawing it and just wrote it, leaving the art to Sal Buscema.

     

    But when I saw that first issue without Simonson or Buscema -- an aggressive throwback to the past, and a second-rate imitation of all the things I never liked or cared about the character and the title -- I held my nose and fled. And I haven't been back since.

  • I dunno about first THOR comic book, but the first time I ever read a THOR story was in Smiley's ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, circa 1975. The actual origin story didn't do much for me, but after reading the more recent story from THOR # 143, featuring "the stunning Sif," I could see how somebody might become a regular reader. Thanks to reprints, the ESSENTIALs collections and a pal loaning me a bunch of originals, I eventually read every Silver Age THOR story, and found them enjoyable but ultimately, kind of forgettable in the way they all sort of told the same story over and over again. The Kirby and Buscema art, though, was awesome.
  • My first Thor comic was the Lancer paperback collection that reprinted a few early Thor stories from 1964-65. Included was the first part of the Absorbing Man story which opened with Thor chasing a spy driving a rail dragster. The sequence had nothing to do with the story, and made no sense anyway, but it demonstrated the over the top nuttiness that only Lee and Kirby could make work.
  • My first comic with Thor in it was my first Marvel comic, Marvel Team-Up #7. What I remember most was negative images, invading Trolls and Thor actually seeing Peter Parker change into Spider-Man, though he didn't know his name!
  • Interesting, Doc.   I believe mine was the issue right before that one:


    thor-251.jpg?width=355 I'd read books with Thor in them before this one, but I'd never picked up a solo story.


    Doc Beechler said:

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  • The first appearance of Thor in my reading was one of the great entrances in all comics, as the Avengers got their collective keister handed to them by Count Nefaria in issue #165:

     

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    No wonder I was hooked for life!  It was many many years before I found out what happened next.  Brian Cronin gives a good overview here.  It's still the story I measure all superhero comics against!

     

    As for my first Thor comic proper, it may have been a reprint of this story.  The early-Marvel Kirby art was a bit jarring to me then, but looking at it now, it's just FAB!

     

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  • I gravitated to Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and Avengers, where I liked Thor well enough as part of the team, but didn't buy any more Thors for a while.

    That's pretty much my story, too, except I put Daredevil in there ahead of Avengers. Probably my first exposure to Thor was in Avengers #1, which I know I bought (and later sold for a nickel). I was never a big Thor fan, mostly because in Asgard, he was mostly just another high-falutin' guy, and on Earth he was way too powerful to be taking on the guys he did. Superman always had to puzzle things out, whereas Thor shouted a lot and swung that big hammer around. So I don't know what my first Thor comic was.

    I've heard good things about the movie, and I'll probably go to see it soon. I think the three big super-hero movies this summer are an interesting group. Thor is a super-hero in a dungeons-and-dragons movie, GL is a super-hero in a SF movie, and Captain America is a super-hero in a WWII movie. Of those, the combination of Thor and the D&D setting had the least appeal, so I'm glad it turned out well.

    I'm not sure where to put X-Men: First Class. Super-heroes in an adolescent coming-of-age movie? Harder to say. I'm hoping they all get good reviews and do well. And I REALLY have high hopes for the Avengers next year!

    -- MSA



  • Figserello said:

    The first appearance of Thor in my reading was one of the great entrances in all comics, as the Avengers got their collective keister handed to them by Count Nefaria in issue #165:

     

    1936044066?profile=RESIZE_480x480

    No wonder I was hooked for life!  It was many many years before I found out what happened next.  Brian Cronin gives a good overview here.  It's still the story I measure all superhero comics against!


    I put that story on my list of The 100 Most Memorable Moments. I loved the part (not included in those pages on Cronin's site, unfortunately) where Thor tells Nefaria off -- something about how petty men gain a bit of power and think they are kings and then think they are gods, gaining ever greater might "and no greater wisdom!" Whoa!
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