Thor #182-183Issue(s): Thor #182, Thor #183 Review/plot: His facial scarring has always to me been more of a character detail than a motivation. You can certainly point to other stories (Secret Wars) where fixing his face is still clearly an active interest. It's the histrionics along with the fact that it makes him susceptible to manipulation that really bugs me here. The story has Thor encountering a young woman who is protesting the Latverian embassy. It turns out that her father is a prisoner of Doom's, and she was as well, held hostage to force her father to build a nuclear arsenal for Doom until members of the Latverian underground helped her escape. Thor decides that he can't simply invade another country (Iron Man, take note), but he devises a scheme where as Donald Blake he advertises the development of a new form of plastic surgery (reported on by Harris Hobbs, who we've seen previously), and Doom jumps at the opportunity and kidnaps Blake. Back in Latveria, Doom shows Blake his face and Blake shouts out in horror that he couldn't possibly fix it. I suppose it could all be part of the act. Clearly Blake/Thor has seen Doom's face, though. The Doom/Thor battle isn't quite as epic as you might expect. Doom gets Thor's hammer trapped in a forcefield, very similar to Journey Into Mystery #88, so Blake spends most of issue #183 trying to get it back. Note that Doom's soldiers in this story are pretty clearly humans, not robots, although they're pretty clearly dressed like the robots from Fantastic Four #84-87. When Blake finally gets his hammer, Doom doesn't want to fight but instead threatens to launch his arsenal of missiles. Thor distracts him by letting him try to hold his hammer (which is kind of cool)... ...and then wrecks all his machines and leaves. The coolest twist is that the protestor's father turns out to not want to be rescued. He's either really just evil and greedy or he's got Stockholm Syndrome. Thor avoids telling the daughter the bad news by using the literal truth, another clever bit. Up in Asgard, Sif gets weepy over Thor's predicament... ...and Odin tells her to go ahead and cry because tears "have the power to heal a damsel's pain -- to sooth a damsel's sorrow!". Odin is impatiently waiting for Thor to wrap up his Earth business so he can send him to the World Beyond. Thor is pretty casual with his secret identity lately (in this story, he transforms right in front of a crowd at the Latverian embassy, and of course later he transforms while in Latveria after Blake has escaped from Doom's prison; similarly he didn't mind turning into Blake on the Stranger's world a few issues ago) but i guess at this point Donald Blake is really just a tool for him and he doesn't care that much if the secret gets out. It is sometimes useful (like how it helped him defeat Loki in the previous arc) but in my opinion it's not worth the annoyances like the one in this story. Quality Rating: C- Chronological Placement Considerations: At the beginning of this arc, Thor says that it has been "but a day ago" since Loki rampaged in his body last issue. However, the Marvel Index fits Thor #182-205 (exactly two years of Thor comics) in between Avengers #100-101. Note that this placement causes this arc to occur over a year forward in publication time, and Thor's "but a day ago" must be as Asgardians measure time. The reasons for this are that at the end of this arc, Thor leaves Earth for the "World Beyond" and that begins an interconnected set of stories beginning next issue that doesn't end until issue #205. This also affects Dr. Doom's appearance, placing it after Sub-Mariner #47-49. References: N/A Crossover: N/A Continuity Insert? N My Reprint: N/A Inbound References (1): showCharacters Appearing: Balder, Dr. Doom, Harris Hobbs, Odin, Sif, Thor 1972 / Box 6 / EiC: Roy Thomas CommentsThat scene wigh Blake seeing Doom's face always made me think Stan Lee played a bit with the idea that medical science cannot possibly fix an already handsome face. I know there are stories where the mask was blazing hot so he must be horribly scarred underneath, but there is something neat about the notion that it is all in Doom's head. Posted by: PeterA | July 28, 2015 2:37 PM How many times does Doom take off his mask, say that even he cannot stand to look at his face, and then break a mirror? Posted by: MikeCheyne | September 24, 2015 11:23 AM All in all, a pretty good two parter, though the father is a bit over the top in his proclaiming his love for money, and Mjolnir serves once again as a bit of a dues ex machina in getting Thor out of a jam with Doom's missile. There were some clever bits in the Thor-Doom battle, even if the battle itself was a bit of a letdown. Posted by: Dave B | March 23, 2016 10:54 AM Kirby very clearly confirmed and established his intention, which I find a lot more effective: it's just one tiny scar, but that small thing, which Doom sees as an imperfection, makes him cover it in a pathologically obsessive manner. That's so much more dramatic than some horrible deformed, phantom of the opera accident, which seems to be the implication here. I think this story is of lesser quality because, at this point, Stan's editorial guideline of the "illusion of change" had also affected his own devotion to writing a story. Stan is very much going through the motions, going through the beats, using heavy melodrama to the point of parody- unfortunately, it's this era of Stan Lee scripts that his critics often use as an example of his over-dramatic prose and it kind of disregards some very good dialogue and pacing he did much earlier. Because, really- Stan didn't have to work as hard now. He was heralded as the sophisticated, college-friendly writer and he likely didn't want to rock the boat. He had little to prove, more commitments beyond just doing the scripts, and Roy Thomas was picking up an increasing workload. None of Stan's stories ever really "matter" anymore- it's the same Stan tropes, the same use of repeated statements, the same grandiose descriptions of weapons- nothing really counts, there are no stakes, no new villains, and so forth. So this kind of comic has very nice art but a very shallow story- that's how I see a lot of Stan's stuff past 1968. Posted by: Wis | January 13, 2018 3:41 AM Kirby very clearly confirmed and established his intention, which I find a lot more effective: it's just one tiny scar, but that small thing, which Doom sees as an imperfection, makes him cover it in a pathologically obsessive manner. That's so much more dramatic than some horrible deformed, phantom of the opera accident, which seems to be the implication here. By all accounts, this is something Kirby decided some years in, not from the start, and possibly after he left Marvel entirely., The first real mention of this idea by anyone comes from the period when he'd left Marvel for DC, and it's evident from early stories such as Fantastic Four #10 that Doom was originally conceived of as hideously scarred. Kirby draws himself and Stan Lee recoiling from Doom's face in that story, for example, and part of John Byrne's "red-hot mask" retcon is straight from Kirby showing Doom burning his face when donning the mask for the first time in FF Annual #2. Brian Cronin's "Comics Legends Revealed" column goes into it at some length. Posted by: Omar Karindu | January 13, 2018 8:54 PM I appreciate that, and those are valid points- the Lee & Kirby reaction in #10, especially- but there exists an interview with Kirby from the 70s' where he says this as well, so it's entirely possible and highly plausible that aspect is coming from Lee's dialogue. I see no reason why Kirby would decide that after the fact. I also have much interest in Cronin's column, since very little of what he has covered is really "revealed"- his good work is maybe summing up and articulating things that were already known and documented but that general fans might not have shown an interest in researching. For example, I enjoyed "Marvel Comics: The Untold Story" but it wasn't "untold". Posted by: Wis | January 14, 2018 1:46 AM Comments are now closed. |
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