Thor #365

TITLE: The Mighty Thor #365

PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics

COVER DATE: March 1986

COVER PRICE: $0.75

22 pages


WHAT I REMEMBER...

My first comic book collecting obsession was with The Avengers, so I have a lot of love for Thor. It took me a while, however, to begin reading his own title on a monthly basis. I started around issue #390, so I unfortunately just missed out on reading one of the best comic book runs of all time as it was coming out.

Or at least that's what I've always heard. I had every intention of picking up those back issues, but for some reason I never did. I blogged earlier about a collection from a friend of one of my in-laws that was given to me, and in that collection was about a dozen issues of Walt Simonson's run of Thor. I still haven't gotten around to reading any of them yet, but rest assured the Walter Simonson Thor Omnibus will be mine once it's released.

So long story short...The issue we're reading today is from that collection and I haven't read it yet, nor do I know what happens in it. I guess the only thing to do now is to read it!

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner or It's Not Easy Being Green!

• Art & Story by Walter Simonson
• Lettering by John Workman
• Colors by Max Scheele
• Editing by Ralph Macchio
• Editor in Chief Jim Shooter

So as it turns out, we have a bit of a special issue here and I didn't even realize it...it's the issue where Thor is a frog!

Throg!?

Did that name ever catch on? If the Clone Thor from Civil War got a cool nickname (Clor, obviously), I think it's only fair that Thor Frog should get one too.

Since it's a special occasion and all, let's break format and live a little. Download "Ain't Got No Home" by Clarence Brown and put it on your iPod and let's live blog this frog!

10:03 pm (page 1 panel 1) As the issue opens up, Thor is already a frog and is hopping through the sewers of New York being inexorably drawn to a pied piper and his soothing tunes.

10:06 pm (page 2 panel 2) Through the magic of thought balloons (take that, modern comics) we find out that Loki has transformed Thor into a frog, but he has nothing to do with the fellow playing flute.

Thor being Thor, he takes matters into his own hands and frog smacks the piper in the face and runs off with his flute!

10:09pm (page 3 panel 4) I think Walter Simonson is some sort of mad genius. I submit as proof this shot of a frog holding a magic flute in his mouth while kicking a dead rat into the gaping jaws of an alligator!


10:14pm (page 5 panel 1) So back in the surface world, it appears that we're in the middle of a battle between a pack of rats and a reservoir of frogs? And it appears to be played rather straight...seriously.

10:17pm (page 5 panel 3) The lead rats name is Ratso!

10:20pm (page 6 panel 1) Back up in Asgard, another altogether different battle wages as the citizens of Asgard gather to pick who will lead them during Odin's absence. To Loki's surprise, in walks Thor! After all, didn't he just turn him into a frog on Midgard?

10:22pm (page 6 panel 3) Loki manages to get the althing delayed for a week, enough time for him to investigate this fake Thor and to use his arrival to his advantage.

10:26pm (page 8 panel 1) Loki follows Thor and Heimdall to their private chambers, where he turns himself into a fly to better spy on them unseen.


10:27pm (page 8 panel 5) Am I the only one seeing a problem with Loki turning himself into a fly while Thor is currently in the body of a frog? Granted, they're on two different planes of reality, but I still question your judgement Loki.

10:31pm (page 9 panel 2) Back on Earth, the rats are on the offensive against the frogs for the control of Central Park.

And there's another rat named Rizzo...I should've seen that coming.

10:33pm (page 10 panel 2) They're in for a surprise however, as the alligators from the alley have followed Thor to the surface and have decided to feast on the rats.

10:36pm (page 11 panel 5) While currently trapped in the body of frog, Thor is still the hero and now he must find a way to alert the authorities that there are a bunch of alligators in Central Park before any innocents get hurt.

Unfortunately for him, the piper has found him and soon has his flute back and Thor on the run (or hop, so to speak).


10:42pm (page 13 panel 2) Back in Asgard, Loki has discovered the true identity of the impostor Thor. It is Harokin, working in concert with Heimdall, trying to stall the meeting until they can find the real Thor and bring him back to Asgard.

10:45pm (page 14 panel 5) On Earth, Thor catches a break as the Piper recognizes in this wild frog a kindred spirit. Taking his flute, he begins to play and leads the alligators back into the sewers, leaving the frogs in control of Central Park.

Is it me, or does the Piper look a little like a certain writer/artist named Walter Simonson?

10:51pm (page 17 panel 1) The council of frogs soon gather and unanimously elect Thor to be their king after his successful guidance helped them defeat the rats.

Unfortunately for them, Thor is destined to lead a different species.

10:56pm (page 18 panel 3) Thor soon finds his way back to his two faithful goats, Toothgnasher and Toothgrinder, who have stood watch over might Mjolnir during his absence.

10:59pm (page 19 panel 7) Urged on by Toothgnasher, he hops over to his hammer, determined to lift it and reclaim his birthright.

At just the same time, two of the wayward rats return seeking revenge on the frog who bested them.

11:01pm (page 21 panel 2) And here's the money shot we were all waiting for...

The Mighty Throg in all his resplendent glory!

11:03pm (page 22 panel 2) Did I mention that Simonson was a mad genius? Who else could get away with a shot of a frog dressed in Thor's armor while driving a chariot pulled by two flying goats?

Glorious stuff.

SO, WHAT DID WE LEARN...

The big thing we learned from this issue is that I was fool for letting this run stay unread for so long. I've always loved Walter Simonson's work, and this issue was the work of a man at the top of his game.

His Thor, while trapped in the body of a frog, was both majestic and heroic while his Loki was conniving and deceitful. What more could you want in a Thor comic?

It took twenty-some pages to get the return of Thor, so to speak, and the visual payoff was worth the whole price of admission. I wonder how easy of a sell it was for him to convince the editors to let him turn Thor into a frog, much less do it in a straight-faced manner that is remembered fondly by the readers, not jokingly.

Like I said, the man's a mad genius as he was also the same creator that replaced the members of the Fantastic Four with the likes of Wolverine, Spider-Man, Hulk, and Ghost Rider...and it worked just as well.

Unfortunately, this is the last issue of his Thor run that I have. To say that reading this issue has increased my anticipation of the upcoming Walter Simonson Thor Omnibus is a bit of an understatement.

All characters and artwork reproduced are (c) Marvel Comics

Fantastic Four #347

TITLE: Fantastic Four #347

PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics

COVER DATE: December 1990

COVER PRICE: $1.00

23 pages


WHAT I REMEMBER...

There's two things that I remember about this issue. One of them, it turns out, I've remembered incorrectly.

I'd always assumed that this issue was the start of Walter Simonson's run on Fantastic Four. I'd read a little bit of the Fantastic Four here and there, but never followed it with any sort of regularity. This issue was the start of me buying this title on a monthly basis, and I guess I always attributed that fact to jumping on at the beginning of Simonson's run, but it turns out that he started his tenure on this title back on issue #334!

As much as I hate to admit it, I guess I jumped on with this issue because it had Wolverine and Ghost Rider in it. Don't judge me...it was the early 90's and I was a naive comic book reader.

Luckily for me this was an awesome issue in the middle of an awesome run. Which leads me to the second thing I remember about this issue, which was that it turned me into a Fantastic Four fan. To put it more correctly, I guess I should say it turned me into a frustrated fan as Simonson would be off the title only eight months later.

To me, Simonson set the bar incredibly high with his run. Yes, It was wacky, goofy, and tongue in cheek; but most of all it was intelligent and incredibly entertaining at the same time. Not many other creators have managed to achieve that balance, which is why my collecting history with the title is full of holes.

The closest we probably got was with Waid and Wieringo's tenure earlier in the decade, which unfortunately had it's consistency marred by some overactive editorialial influence. John Byrne had a highly entertaining run, but I don't know how intelligent it actually was, while Hickman's run currently is striving for intelligent, but leaving the fun behind. I've never read any of Stan and Jack's original run (I know, I know...I'll get around to it someday), but I can only assume that it hit the mark seeing as how they were the ones that defined the target.

To me, Walter Simonson's short run is the apex of greatness, and the fact that there are twelve more issues that I never knew existed before today have me chomping at the bit to go do some longbox shopping tomorrow. In the meantime, however, we'll tide ourselves over rereading this issue.

Big Trouble On Little Earth!

• Writing: Walter Simonson
• Penciling: Arthur Adams
• Inking: Art Thibert
• Lettering: Bill Oakley
• Coloring: Steve Buccellato
• Editing: Ralph Macchio
• Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco

This issue begins in space, as the silence between the Earth and the Moon is broken by the arrival of a damaged ship that emerges from lightspeed, only to crash land on Earth.

The attractive female pilot (hey, she's drawn by Art Adams...she's gonna be pretty) escapes with her life, swearing vengeance on those that betrayed her and marooned her on Earth.

We'll find out exactly who (and what) she is in a bit, but first let's check in with the Fantastic Four at Four Freedoms Plaza who are enjoying some down time after being away for the last couple of weeks. Like any typical family, however, there's some dysfunction hiding in the background.

Johnny seems to be infatuated with an alien woman that they met a few issues back, even though he's married to Alicia Masters. Johnny Storm married...I had forgotten all about that.

A human Ben Grimm seeks to console his girlfriend, Sharon Ventura, who is currently She-Thing and trapped in her rocky form. She-Thing...I had forgotten all about that.

That right there is the sign of a good writer. You got two things that by all rights should hamper your ability to tell a good Fantastic Four story, and he makes 'em work. So much so, that I had completely forgotten that they were even an issue.

Seeking to take advantage of everyone's distracted attentionzs, our mysterious crash survivor arrives at Four Freedoms Plaza. Using her ability to change shape and her telepathy, she easily slips inside and begins to take the FF down one by one.

Changing her from into Nebula, Johnny's blue-skinned alien infatuation from earlier, she appears before him and gets close enough to shock him into unconsciousness with a hand held taser device.

Similarly, she does the same thing to Ben. Only this time appearing as Johnny's wife, Alicia Masters, his old flame who fell in love with Johnny when Ben was off-world. He obviously still has feelings for her, as the shapechanger is able to take advantage of that to get close enough to use the same device on Ben.

...and we all know the conflicted feelings that Sue has always had for Namor.

Second verse, same as the first...and down goes Sue to the shapechanger.

After drugging She-Thing with a knock-out brew of tea, the mysterious alien sets her sights on Reed. It turns out that the alien actually has a little crush on Reed, and takes the form of his wife to seduce him into unconsciousness.

Unfortunately for her, Reed is too quick and notices her deception and manages to bend his body away from her taser at the last second. As perceptive as he is, however, he's never been that good of a hand-to-hand fighter and he soon finds himself unconscious with the rest of the Fantastic Four before he can alert the Avengers.

Meanwhile, we find out exactly who the mysterious alien attacker was running from as a Skrull warship enters Earth orbit, hot on her trail.

Scanning the planet for De'Lila, they soon find a plethora of Skrull-like lifeforms centered on a small island in the pacific. Cloaking their ship, they head to the island to investigate. Unfortunately for them, that small island is none other than Monster Island, which they find out the hard way.

It turns out that the monsters of Monster Island all have a primitive Skrull like brain, which was the source of the Skrull life readings. The Skrull in charge seems less concerned about why that is, than with using that fact to his advantage to smoke out De'Lila from hiding. Using neural disruptor darts, they tag each monster and teleport it to various cities around the globe. Using the disruptors to increase the ferocity of the monsters, they hope to drive up the mental stress planet-wide and flush her out.

Little do they know, there's a monarch of Monster Isle...and he's none to happy about the current turn of events.

Still in the form of Sue, De'Lila uses the FF's computers to familiarize herself with Earth's superheroes. Reed's files are complete enough that they allow her to pick and choose among them a group of recruits with which she hopes to achieve her destiny. Using her telepathy she sends a mental summoning out to the four heroes who soon arrive at the door of Four Freedoms Plaza.

The Grey Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider are soon brought in to see "Sue", who tells them the tragic (and altogether false) tale of how she returned home to find her home in ruins and the rest of the Fantasic Four dead or dying. Using one of her husband's inventions, she called to each of them to come to her aid to help avenge the recently deceased members of the Fantastic Four.

By now, the "new" members of the Fantastic Four have fallen for De'Lila's story and agree to help her find the monsters that did this. Playing right into her hand, she arms them with another of Reed's gadgets that will allow them to track down the energy signature of the attackers. Little do they know, the attackers they're being sent to hunt down are the Skrulls that are hunting De'Lila.

SO, WHAT DID WE LEARN...

This comic was as fun, if not more, than I remember. Maybe it's the fact that there is so little new Marvel that I find readable for three bucks anymore, that I'm starting to get nostalgic for the characters that I grew up with.

Or maybe it's the fact that it's been so long since I enjoyed a good Fantastic Four book, that this issue seems to shine a little brighter. Hell, it's been even longer since I've enjoyed a Wolverine book, that his brief appearance here actually made me miss the old canuck.

Whether it was any of those reasons, or an amalgam of others, this book just pleased me to no end. Even though the Fantastic Four get punked out relatively early in the book, it's got alot of the earmarks that make a great story...Skrulls, Monster Isle, crazy inventions, family drama, space travel, etc...

And speaking of the Skrulls...they're an antagonist I like best when they are played for laughs. They've never been the most dangerous of foes in the FF rogue's gallery, but they are entertaining none the less. The over-the-top inclusion of some of the 90's most overused guest stars let you know right away that this is going to be a fun issue. So with the Skrulls and Mole Man as the villains, we have the perfect blend of absurdity and comedy with which to have a little fun at their own expense.

This is the first part of a three parter, so unfortunately we have to spend most of our time setting things up. Luckily for us, we have Art Adams supplying the pencils for this issue, so even the dialogue heavy pages are fun to look at.

One thing that is distracting about the art, is that the combination of the paper quality and the coloring tended to give this book an over-saturated look on the page. I'd love to see this book recolored using today's technology, as I'm sure it would give Art Adams' beautiful pencils even more attention.

Now we just have to wait for the Randomizer to pick another book from this run, so that we can continue on with one of the best runs from the 90's. In the meantime, I'll be happily looking through some back-issue bins for the issues that I missed.

Holy crap! Simonson had Kang show up during his run?! How the heck did I miss that? Now I'm definitely hitting the comic book store tomorrow.

All characters and artwork reproduced are (c) Marvel Comics

Super-fillers

So just because I'm stuck at a trade show in Fort Wayne, Indiana for a couple of days doesn't mean that you should be denied your random blogging entertainment.

I'm therefore going to take the liberty of throwing up a filler post that's filled with filler pin-ups from Action Comics #600, which we're in the midst of reviewing.

First one up is courtesy of Linda Medley and Art Adams. I don't know that I'm familiar with Linda Medley at all, but you can definitely see the Adams influence in the inks.

Should we be worried that Batman looks creepier than The Creeper? You might wanna dial the happines back a notch, Bruce.

Showing his reverence for Superman, Jon Bogdanove gives us a nice looking pin-up three years before he would help launch the fourth ongoing Superman title.

I think that one is my favorite of the bunch.

I'm about to commit a bit of heresy here, but I'm just not a fan of Kevin Maguire's work.

People always rave about his ability to portray expressions and emotions in his faces, but they just strike me as overly posed.

Up next is a creator that, for me, is associated with just one character. Mike Zeck has done a ton of work over the years, but his Punisher mini-series captured the zeitgeist when it came out and really left an impression.

His Superman ain't nothing to sneeze at either, but even this shot instantly reminds me of that first Punisher cover.

Finally, we to get a creator who has never put in much time with Superman...Walter Simonson.

That's some good stuff, right there, and it makes me sad that we never got any sort of extended run on a Superman title from him.