COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Thor 377 Modern
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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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1224317007
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Owner:
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Thorseface
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Thor no. 377: “This Hollowed Armor”
Publication date: March 1, 1987
Census: As of 6/20/23, 12 copies in 9.8 (no change), 2 of which are signed (no change). There is no Canadian variant listed.
Writer: Simonson
Penciler, inker: Sal Buscema
Letterer: Workman
Colorist: Scheele
Favorite line and some thoughts:
"The Gods, Mr. Braedon, have dealt with mortals on a cash and carry basis for a long time."
-Thor. A true baller.
This book opens with a splash of the Dark Elves hurled about by a violent explosion in Svartalflheim, which is their home according to Walt's editorial voice. While there is no doubt that we are dealing with the same miscreants from the Surtwar--the portly Wormwood is back--their underground lair was not referred to as Svartalfheim in those earlier issues. Here, interestingly enough, Walt takes care to conflate Svartalfheim with Faerie, the name of the Dark Elves' home in the English Cotswolds per issues 346-348. At the very least, the implication is that Svartalfheim--one of the nine worlds of the Norse cosmos--is accessible through a variety of portals or places on Midgard. And Thor, who has ignored doctor's orders and left Roosevelt Hospital, has broken one of those portals by forging Asgardian steel (an alloy that includes a healthy amount of iron, unfriendly to the Dark Elves) in the same Pittsburgh foundry (Damascus Steel) where he long ago repaired Mjolnir (Journey into Mystery no. 120). The steelworkers have aged a bit but remember Thor, who pays Mr. Braedon (now the boss) with a big fat Asgardian check and assures his mortal ally that "the Rhinegold is more than a simple ring of doom in the operas of Wagner." Read your Tolkien, ya schmuck.
Clearly Journey into Mystery no. 120 made a huge impression on the young Walt Simonson; we've already seen the callback to that issue's Pittsburgh forging scene in Thor no. 339, where the dwarves forge Stormbreaker. But recall that the same issue was evoked by Heimdall's use of Loki's axiom "When the voice of Loki is still..." in Thor no. 364. Yet another reference will come up in Thor no. 378.
I suspect that since Walt already had managed to squeeze three out of five members of X-Factor into his Thor run he wanted to finish the set with the remaining two, hence the cameo by Beast and Iceman. Loki's ridiculous teleportation gun / attractor beam device is a deep pull from Journey into Mystery no.122, where he used it to bring the Absorbing Man to Asgard.
"Grendell," of course, is based on the Beowulf monster. While he's somehow gained an "L," the attentive reader will note that he's still missing an arm.
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