The first Thor comic has a great cover. Iconic. But the story is actually quite confusing.
As the story goes, Don Blake is spelunking in Norway and finds a walking stick, which he bangs on the ground, and then there’s the neat little transformation scene…
Jack did love drawing transformations. In these early Marvel comics, in addition to Thor, Thing would go back and forth from rock to flesh pretty regularly. And then of course there was Hulk.
The hammer says that whoever holds it has the “power” of Thor. But in later issues, the transformation sends Don Blake somewhere else (to “nowhere” really), and Thor actually occupies space in the 616 dimension. It’s unclear in the first appearance whether Thor is “real” and manifesting in the space where Don Blake had stood, or if Don Blake just has the power of Thor.
The rest of the issue is basically just Thor fighting some weird Thing-like aliens.
And the final panel has our first entry in the “Typographical error” category, see the tag below, as the hero is referred to as “Thorr.”
Solid origin story, even if modern Thor has separated the God from Don Blake and made most of these early adventures irrelevant.
ADDENDUM: And speaking of typos…In 1995, in a Bullpen Bulletins column, Marvel fixes the credits to indicate that Joe Sinnot was the inker.
I wonder if there’s a lawsuit or some other kind of intriguing story behind such a late correction?
I see that you’re calling the double-R “Thorr” the first typographical error, but you also said that the Spider-Man pupils panel in Amazing Fantasy #15 were “Marvel’s first official typo! ” I’d actually argue that the pupils weren’t a typo so much as an attempt by Steve Ditko to emphasize Spider-Man’s shock at the realization that his actions led to Uncle Ben’s death. The blank white eyes couldn’t portray that emotion strongly enough, so he put in the pupils to give the appearance of wide-eyed amazement, surprise, or horror.
Do I get a no-prize, or what? ; )
Yes.
