Issue(s): Thor #172
Cover Date: Jan 70
Title: "The immortal and the mind-slave!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Jack Kirby - Penciler
Bill Everett - Inker

Review/plot:
This issue has one of those cool endings where someone tries to do something to Thor and he's just like "Dude! That stuff doesn't work on me. I'm a god!"

In this case it's a crazy billionaire named Kronin Krask...

...who wants his brain transferred into Thor's body.

To do so, he's kidnapped Jane Foster, calculating that Foster's current employer and love interest, Dr. Jim North, will go to Donald Blake to ask him to send Thor to help. If you ask me, that's a lot of people who seem like they could probably figure out Thor's secret identity (although i guess no one would assume that Thor had one).

Kirby seems to be going for a little sex appeal in this issue, as shown in this weird random-ish panel...

...as well as that get-up he's got Jane Foster wearing.

Prior to Thor's encounter with Krask, Odin gets a sense of foreboding about it, and he does a mental sweep of various people before seeing Krask as this amorphous cloud.

As we saw, Odin needn't have worried.

But Odin might have wanted to pay a little more attention to Loki when he was scrying. Loki is seen here scheming what will turn out to be a massive invasion on Asgard.

Quality Rating: C

Historical Significance Rating: 1

Chronological Placement Considerations: The Official Marvel Avengers Index places Thor's appearance in Avengers #76 before this issue.

References:

• Dr. North is said to be the doctor that Odin sent Jane to after he wiped her memory in Thor #136 (no footnote), although as Michael notes in the Comments, that was actually Dr. Keith Kincaid.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

"Dr. North is the doctor that Odin sent Jane to after he wiped her memory in Thor #136." No he isn't- that's Keith Kincaid, although Stan seems to have intended him to be Kincaid but forgotten Kincaid's name.

Thanks Michael. Seems Kirby similarly forgot or wasn't intending him to be Kincaid, since he looks different too.

Perhaps Kirby didn't mean the kidnapped woman to be Jane, and Lee added that element when he dialogued. But it's hard to reconcile this suggestion with her appearance in an inset (in Kirby's style) on the cover. (I believe by this point Kirby had moved to California. I assume he did the covers when he did the issues and mailed them together, but perhaps that's wrong.)

People would not know it today, but this story was spun off of the hit television pilot The Immortal with Christopher George which aired on ABC on September 30, 1969. This comic hit the newsstands the following month. Almost too soon after, it makes me wonder if Stan or Jack had some insight as to the release of the movie. Maybe the timing of the movie and comic was co-incidental, but somehow I think not. Perhaps Stan or Jack read an advance announcement/review of the movie
pilot before it came out.

Cool. I've never seen the Immortal but now I wanna.

Regarding Kirby's style change in women's clothing, I think Luke is right and Kirby had fairly recently moved to California, always a trend-setting state, and the styles were somewhat abruptly & rapidly changing. Young girls were coming to the Canyon (1967, probably refers to Laurel Canyon). It would have been hard for a guy like Kirby not to notice.

I just reread this story in the 3rd Thor Omnibus, and I think it holds up pretty well as a one-and-done. How much it really owes to The Immortal, I'm not sure. Wikipedia makes the series sound much more like The Fugitive than this, in that it's primarily a chase story and the hero's immortality is conveyed via blood transfusion, rather than a mind swap. Kirby would revisit the basic plot of this story in Mister Miracle 8, when that hero battles "the Lump" in a psychic "Arena of the Gods".

The women in that one panel do not look like Kirby (or Everett) figures to me. Maybe added in "post" by Buscema or Romita to spice things up?