Journey into Mystery #84

The Mighty Thor versus the Executioner

By Stan Lee with Larry Leiber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Villains: The Executioner, The Stone Men of Saturn

Guest Appearances: none

So, What Happens?

Fresh from his Norwegian holiday Doctor Blake is back in the US. The US media is full of stories about the communist revolution in San Diablo, led by the blood thirsty war-lord called the Executioner.

Blake, his nurse Jane Foster and a bunch of other members of Blake’s medical club sign up to join a mercy mission to the war-torn country.

The ship carrying the medics is attacked by communist jet fighters intent on stopping them reaching San Diablo but Blake transforms into Thor and easily destroys the fighters.

Transforming back into Don Blake he is fished from the sea, claiming to have accidentally fallen overboard in the commotion.

On arrival in San Diablo the medical mission is attacked by tanks only for Thor to again intervene and save the day. Unfortunately Jane Foster is taken prisoner and Thor has to stand down and let the reds take her to the Executioner.

Blake stands up to the dictator and is put before a firing squad before he manages to grab his cane and turn into Thor. Thor causes mayhem in the commie ranks and even ignites a nearby volcano to create more devastation. The Executioner sees the game is up and tries to escape with sacks full of pillaged money. Unfortunately for him his men turn on him and shoot him in front of the same wall here he killed countless others.

As Blake and Foster get to help San Diablo’s peasants Nurse Foster wishes that Blake was a bit more like the heroic Thor.

So is it any good?:

It’s a crude propaganda story with some very heavy handed secret identity soap opera elements thrown in. It’s as if Stan and Jack sat down and read the most formulaic Superman story to get pointers on how to write super hero comics.

While Blake showed signs of heroism in his first appearance, and indeed has a lot to recommend him here, he is reduced immediately to pulling incredibly stupid and self deprecating stunts in order to have Thor appear and disappear without raising suspicion. While we are presumably supposed to sympathise with him in the romantic triangle being created with Jane Foster and his alter ego he is left as this pathetic damp squib and Jane’s original thoughts about how she could actually love Don Blake are soon replaced with understandable wishes that he was more like Thor.

The irony that Blake is Thor isn’t really enough to overcome the fact that Blake, like the Clark Kent appearances he is so clearly modelled on, is played as such a wimp that he doesn’t only come off badly when compared to Thor but to most regular folks.

This is a shame because there is something unusual and nice about the fact that plot-wise Blake is actually trying to do good as a doctor as well as when he is Thor, he is ready to put himself in harm’s way to help others and he is also ready to stand up to the executioner as Blake to get his cane back.

It just comes accompanied with claims to have accidentally fallen off an ocean going ship or hidden throughout the action, that might have qualified as dramatic irony to a young audience in 1962 but come across as something worse now.

Some of the art is great, the whole Thor concept was still new and Kirby really goes to town on the idea that Thor throws the hammer and is pulled along by it, showing him winding up to throw it and clearly being tugged along. He visibly isn’t flying in this story in the way he will once things become more established, he at times seems to have to fall in mid air and re-swing his hammer to change direction.

The scenes of Blake being pulled from the sea onto the ship deck are really well done as is the shot of Blake standing up to the Executioner in front of a bullet marked wall. While the Executioner is a stereotypical commie, clearly based on Castro, the scene of him surrounded by the shadows of his men as he attempts to escape with the cash are very dramatic.

So it has it’s good side, but it feels quite clumsy, as if they are a long way from realising what they had. It reads like the sub-plots of a 1960s Superman issue have been grafted onto a 1950s or even 1940s tale where the hero can cause all sorts of devastation in a far off land against an irredeemable foe. The silver age Thor run is one of my favourites but the truth is that it took quite a while to get going.

Are there any goofy moments?

The name San Diablo has to be the result of Stan throwing together the first two Spanish words he could remember

There is obviously a lot of competition but this one is possibly the most red-baiting story of the period and it has really really dated. Latin American Communist rebels were obviously topical in the early 60s but I’m not sure any of them actually sent jet fighters to sink American medical ships simply because they wanted their own peasants to stay ill. The Executioner’s demise as he tries to flee with bags of swag is very heavy handed as well.

Even in the era of the peace corps I’m not sure how many times large groups of affluent middle aged American doctors got together in their club and decided to drop it all and head off to war torn South America to help battle the commies.

Thor has dealt with the commie jets and needs to turn back to lame Don Blake without alerting suspicion. Is diving into the sea and undergoing the identity change underneath the keel of the medical ship the best idea? (The fact that Blake is clearly dragged from the water without his cane I’ll put down to an art error)

Trivia:

Jane Foster is referred to as Jane Nelson here.

The Executioner obviously wouldn’t reappear. He was dead and the name was soon given to a much more prominent Thor foe in issue 103.

The country of San Diablo was also the home of various incarnations of the Captain America foe Machette, a member of Batroc’s brigade.

The Marvel Atlas published in 2008 established that San Diablo was landlocked. Probably because the coast of central America in the Marvel Universe was taken up by all the fake countries beginning with ‘Costa’. It does rather ignore make the medical ship elements of this story, it’s only real appearance.

Is it a landmark?:

Not really, unless you are a real fan of Marvel’s fictional countries as San Diablo is the first (if you ignore Monster Island).

Where can I read it?:

The first Thor Essentials and Masterworks and Omnibus volumes.