COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Thor 382 Signature
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Grade:
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9.8
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Certification #:
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3855569003
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Owner:
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Thorseface
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Thor no. 382: “Journey into Mystery”
Publication date: August 1, 1987
Signed with sketch by Simonson on 8/25/21.
Census: As of 6/20/23,18 copies in 9.8 (up by 1), 4 of which are signed (up by 1). There is no Canadian variant listed.
Writer: Simonson
Pencils, inker: Sal Buscema
Letterer: Workman
Colorist: Scheele
Favorite line(s) and some thoughts:
"Nay, even the fates would fare no better for he should cut their threads and bind them before they knew he was about!"
-Loki
"So be it!"
-Thor
With this issue Simonson's epic run at last reaches its conclusion. At some point in the run it surely occurred to Walt or his editors that were he to stick it out long enough he could finish the run with the 300th consecutive issue of the title to hit the stands since the first appearance of Marvel's Thor in Journey into Mystery no. 83. And while the JiM title was fully discarded for "Thor" with issue no. 126, the title Walt gave to issue no. 382 honors the character's first appearance way back in 1962. The anniversary also explains the issue's longer than usual length.
A great many narrative threads are tied up here. I haven't mentioned the orphans Kevin and Mick in a bit. As this book and the past few issues reveal, Walt had a particular plan for them all along. Similarly 'ol Kurse, who started out as a Power Pack enemy, has become the protector of the children of Asgard, a role that somehow seems perfect for him. Hela, we learn, has always had the hots for Thor. A restored Thor returns to Asgard just in time to layeth the hammer down on Utgardloki (the main antagonist in the Balder the Brave miniseries) and his Jotun comrades. Thor and Balder finally get a chance to have that drink in honor of Skurge.
Walt had planned an additional arc that would see the Asgardians fight the Jotuns. It was advertised in a two-page spread in Marvel Age Annual no. 2, 1986 and was billed as "The Saga of the Vengeance of Thor" and described as follows: "In 1986, in the absence of Thor, the Frost Giants of Jotunheim marshaled their forces and invaded Asgard, citadel of their traditional enemies, the Norse Gods. What folowed was the God-Giant War. And when it was over, the giants had won. What happened then began a legend that will live as long as stories of valor are told by the human heart." The Marvel Age art, which was repurposed much later as a variant cover for Jason Aaron's War of the Realms no. 1, showed Thor and friends fighting off the Jotuns with machine guns (probably the same weapons given to the Asgardians by the U.S. troops at the end of the SurtWar). Even little Hildy appears there, with an eye patch! I suspect that elements of this arc play out in condensed form in the final issues of Walt's run. But we never really got the full picture, for which this human heart sorrows.
Loki's exclamation (see above) about Thor outsmarting the fates is important. By surviving Jormungand, who "really was becoming simply too powerful in that large, clumsy way of his," Thor has confounded his prophesied fate as described in Norse mythology. Bear with me now as I indulge in a little metacommentary: Walt's run is an effort to more forcefully situate Marvel's Thor in an "authentic" Norse mythological context, but to follow that premise to its end would mean the death of Thor. Our hero's circumvention of his prophesied death at the hands (claws?) of the Midgard Serpent is yet more proof that we are not reading the Eddas but remain very much in Marvel 616, where Thor will never really die. How ironic, then, that Thor forces Hela to restore to him the possibility of death. Arguably, this tension between mythology / prophecy and the business of comic books is a dimension of Michael Avon Oeming's brief run on Thor, which is in no small way indebted to Walt's work. There, Thor does exactly what Loki suggests: he cuts the threads of the fates and exposes the life-death Ragnarok cycle for the repetitive, never-ending cycle that it is. I'm hopped up on Sudafed as I write this (are you surprised?), and none of this really makes any sense, but I'm certainly having fun. Writing is fun. Thinking about things is fun. And comic books are good to think with.
The issue concludes appropriately with something of a reset of Thor and Loki's traditionally antagonistic relationship, though Thor has, as Loki remarks earlier in the issue, learned a few new tricks since the beginning of the run. I've always thought Sal's drawing of Loki's broken arm painful just to look at!
It has been 35 years since the conclusion of Walt's storied run. While he has drawn Marvel's Thor on several occasions since then (do yourself a favor and read Indestructible Hulk nos. 6-8 from 2013, a pure joy), he never came back to the title to write and pencil on a regular basis. In more recent years, however, he conceived a new approach to the Norse mythos. Simonson's Ragnarok, published by IDW, is written and drawn by Walt and, of course, lettered by John Workman. It tells the story of a zombified Thor who--it is not yet clear- yet how-survived Ragnarok. To my mind this work is the spiritual successor to Walt's Marvel run, and for this reason I asked if he could add his new Thor to his old on the cover of this book.
So, I've finally reached the end of this little exercise, which I choose to dedicate to Loki the cat. Over the course of the last year of his life he sat in my lap as I typed this nonsense and offered the occasional useful suggestion in the form of a sigh or the touch of a paw. He died on December 7, 2022, having just turned 17. Rest in peace, dear friend. I will see you again.
-Thorseface
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