Classic Review: Marvel Masterworks- The Mighty Thor Vol. 5

Quick Summary

Pros: The adventures here are exciting and feel more diverse than before. The “Tales of Asgard” stories place a great spotlight on the Warriors Three. Everything about this comic feels creative, especially the artwork.

Cons: Jane Foster’s story isn’t handled very well. Women, in general, are written very poor.

Overall: This collection is sound from both a story and a visual perspective. The stories collected here are exciting, fun, and allow the characters to be even better than they were before, with female characters being the only unfortunate exception to this rule. Meanwhile, the artwork expands upon the story’s creativity and provides striking moments that still look fantastic to this day. Anyone who enjoyed the previous two volumes or who is looking for a great collection of Thor’s Silver Age adventures should consider reading this book.

Story

The Mighty Thor Vol. 5, by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, maintains the high-quality writing, with the same few flaws, that has been present over the past two volumes. The majority of the book focuses on telling stories that are simply fun to read. They have Thor and the other citizens of Asgard overcome problems that actually pose a threat and sometimes require unorthodox actions to defeat. The only bummer is that, once again, women are written terribly, which is particularly true for Jane Foster. Overall though, this is a solid collection of stories and another great example of Thor’s adventures in this era.

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Each of the storylines in The Mighty Thor Vol. 5 are entertaining on their own. They place a serious problem in front of Thor, show the impact it could have on the universe if it were not addressed, and then have Thor overcome the problem in either an exciting show of action or a clever display of intelligence. In addition, the “Tales of Asgard” stories continue to expand on the Warriors Three in a way that is really fun to see play out, especially as each of the three begin to truly develop their own personalities. All of these stories also manage to pit Thor against enemies or problems that actually present a challenge to the Thunder God, rather than being something he can punch a few times and be rid of.

However, the most attractive quality of these individual storylines ends up being the creativity expressed in each arc. One arc introduces a civilization of bureaucratic alien conquerors, one centers around a living planet, another is a sci-fi reinterpretation of The Island of Doctor Moreau, and the final one has an army of trolls rise in power after managing to capture a being from another dimension. It seems like removing Loki from the equation really forced the writing team to come up with even better concepts, even if Loki does make a brief appearance here. People often talk about Lee/Kirby’s creativity in creating the Fantastic Four series but this volume shows that they brought a similar level of creativity to Thor as well.

The only place where the narrative in The Mighty Thor Vol. 5 gets a bit contentious is regarding the fate of Jane Foster. Here, she is given permission to marry Thor but fails a test and is completely dismissed from the entire narrative. Though I agree with the two of them splitting up, since neither showed any emotion toward the other that went any deeper than the surface, I was upset with how quick it happened. It would have been nice to see them fall apart with a bit more grace or to see a more extended grieving period, rather than the curt dismissal that occurred here.

Besides this, the only significant negative is how ridiculously nearly every woman is written throughout this book. The volume starts out with a female space-conqueror presenting a serious threat to the entire planet Earth. However, over the course of her story, she is believed to be a joke by local law enforcement, fails to actually accomplish any conquering on a personal level, and ultimately is given a great reward by her people, which just ends up being the opportunity to marry someone. A similar story plays out with Jane Foster, who after striking out with Thor, is given a new, handsome doctor to pursue. Sif is the only female character who appears to inhabit some semblance of empowerment but her character is still too new to say for sure.

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Art

The artwork in The Mighty Thor Vol. 5 is notable because it really gives Jack Kirby a chance to get cosmic with his visuals. The events in the first half of this book take place across a variety of different landscapes, some of them on Earth, others on Asgard, but many somewhere out in the distant reaches of space. It is here that Kirby takes the opportunity to utilize his unique artistic approaches, like Kirby Krackle and Kirby Tech, to their full potential. He also structures the comic well and uses splash pages and larger spread to create moments that feel momentous, including one memorable example where a collage is used to further emphasize the impact of the moment. All in all, the artwork in this book is as impressive, if not more so, as the storytelling and makes this a better reading experience. 

Continuity

Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor Vol. 5 continues the story from Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor Vol. 4 (Review).

The story here continues in Marvel Masterworks: The Mighty Thor Vol. 6 (Review).

This volume also makes references to other comic books, detailed below:

• Galactus’s first visit to Earth is mentioned in some narration. This visit took place across Fantastic Four #48-50, collected in Marvel Masterworks: Fantastic Four Vol. 5 (Review). 
• A storyline about Wanda and Pietro Maximof’s fading powers is mentioned in one chapter. They went to regain their fading powers in Avengers #30, collected in Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Vol. 3 (Review). 
• Thor last saw Kang the Conqueror in Avengers #8, collected in Marvel Masterworks: Avengers Vol. 1 (Review).