Journey into Mystery #86

On the trail of the tomorrow man!

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

Villains: Zarrko the Tomorrow Man

Guest Appearances: none

So, What Happens?

In the peaceful 23rd century Artur Zarrko sees his fellow citizens as tender hearted fools who would be easily conquered if only he had any weapons.

Designing a time machine he heads back to the warlike 20th Century and steals a cobalt bomb from under the nose of Thor who had volunteered to stand there as it was exploding to measure it’s capabilities.

Thor is personally offended at the theft and asks Odin for the ability to follow the thief forward in time.

Arriving in Zarrko’s time he learns that the scientist has already used the threat of the nuclear weapon to seize control of the world and Thor is soon on the back foot having to escape from Zarrko’s police force and ends up falling into Zarrko’s prepared magnetic mirror room trap.

Luckily that wasn’t actually Thor but was a decoy dressed in a Thor costume and the real Thor confronts Zarrko to get the bomb back. Zarrko attempts to send Thor to another dimension but is stopped by Thor’s hurricane breath.

Zarrko then turns to robots who manage to steal Thor’s hammer before he short circuits them by flooding the room before the 60 seconds have passed that will change him back to Dr Blake.

Zarrko takes off in an aircraft determined to drop the Cobalt bomb on the unsuspecting city. Thor buffets his craft with a thunder storm and catches the bomb before it hits the ground and detonates. Zarrko crashes to the ground, amnesiac from the damage, and Thor takes the bomb back to the 20th century.

So is it any good?:

Not really. It’s incredibly silly without really having the level of charm or internal consistency needed to rescue it. The art isn’t even particularly good.

The idea of someone coming from a peaceful future to the dangerous 20th century is fairly good but is handled far more effectively with Kang. Zarrko’s visit to the 20th century is hamstrung by the silliness of thor’s nuclear test dummy role.

Yes Thor is powerful but if he can stand next to an exploding nuke just to see how powerful it is you can’t really get that bothered by any predicament he finds himself in, I guess that explains why so many of his adventures have to revolve around turning back to Dr Blake and the 60 second rule.

Once Thor heads to the 23rd century it all goes downhill, the death traps Zarrko throws at Thor come out of nowhere and the means of escape Thor uses don’t really play fair with the reader.

How does he come up with a willing Thor decoy in perfect costume and hammer? Since when has he had hurricane breath? Why would 20 second exposure to knee deep water destroy a bunch of killer robots?

So no there’s nothing really great about this one, even the art doesn’t really do a lot for it, like a lot of the poorer early issues it reads like a story where you could swap Thor for Superman without any real changes.

It is only really the scene where he asks Odin for the ability to time travel that would need to be changed for this to be a Weisinger-era Superman story, it even ends on Jane Foster wishing she was working with Thor rather than Dr Blake.

Are there any goofy moments?

The whole section featuring Thor volunteering to stand next to a new nuclear bomb followed by Zarrko physically running off with the bomb is pretty goofy. The final section features Thor stopping the launched bomb exploding by catching it.

The magnetic mirror room is quite comical although you would have to read it to get the full effect.

The Thor decoy makes absolutely no sense at all really. There is at least an earlier panel of Thor telling a crowd he has a plan which I suppose was the 1962 version of dramatic foreshadowing.

The terrifying robots who short circuit within 20 seconds of getting wet could probably have been dealt with by someone less powerful than Thor. That said they are able to pull Thor’s hammer away from him against his will.

Thor’s hurricane force breath hasn’t appeared all that often but it makes a change from Mjolnir always having a new power to save the day.

Trivia:

Zarrko possibly appeared more than any other non-asgardian Thor villain during the title’s early days although his appearances tailed off quite quickly once Lee and Kirby started on their classic run, with no appearances after 102. He reappeared in the 70s in an early Marvel Team Up storyline and a Thor tale in the 240s.

He went on to appear far more frequently in the 90s and 2000s although a lot of his recognised appearances were down to a retroactive decision that Kristoff’s servant Boris was actually Zarrko in dozens of Fantastic Four stories.

Is it a landmark?:

I suppose so, Zarrko has reappeared fairly frequently until at least Dan Jurgens volume of Thor even if he isn’t really a major character.

Where can I read it?:

The first Thor Essentials and Masterworks and Omnibus volumes.