Thor returns from his big, multi-issue adventure to find a whole new Avengers lineup.

Like most Marvel readers, he’s dumbfounded to see how lame it is.

Look how Quicksilver says that the only “original” Avenger left is Captain America.  Uh, no dude.  Learn your history.  Cap didn’t arrive until after Wasp named the team and they’d already fought Loki and a couple other, less-memorable villains.

Next, Absorbing Man!  He’s one of my favorite villains, and he’s back for basically a three-issue battle, starting with transforming his wrecking ball into a disco ball of brick.

Truly, these are three issues of almost constant action.

Of course, Creel lifting Thor’s hammer is a big problem. Completely unexplained.

It all does tie-in to the previous arc, with Thor still finding Norn stones and eventually proving to daddy Odin (again) that Loki was the real dick (again) and Thor was innocent (again). Despite that we keep relitigating this issue, these are great comics.

If you would have told me there was a year when Thor was the best Marvel comic on the stands, I would have scoffed.  And while it probably isn’t the “best,” it’s certainly up there.  Around this time, the Lee-Ditko fights about Spider-Man were showing in the pages of the book, The Avengers was borderline awful, and Stan Lee was simply writing too damn much so there was no quality control.