Plot by Stan Lee – Script by Larry Lieber – Penciled by Jack Kirby – Inked by Dick Ayers – Lettered by Art Simek

Thor takes a step back. Kirby doesn’t.

After the mythic promise of the previous issue, Journey Into Mystery #86 feels like a slip backwards.

Last time we got Asgard, Loki, and the sense that Marvel was finally discovering how big Thor’s stories could be. This time, it’s back to anthology sci-fi — military testing, cobalt bombs, and a time traveler from the distant future named Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man.

The story opens with Thor helping the military test weapons for their fight against communism, which is not exactly the most natural use of a Norse god. The whole setup feels awkward for the character, as if Marvel had one foot in mythology and the other still stuck in its old atomic-age, cold war formula.

Zarrko arrives from an ideal future of peace and prosperity — a world so perfect that he wants to conquer it just to have something to rule. He feels a bit like a rough draft of the kinds of time-travel villains Marvel will eventually get much better at.

The MacGuffin this time is a cobalt bomb, stolen during testing and carried into the future, where Thor has to follow him.

And to get there, Odin grants Thor the power of time travel.

Sure. Why not.

That said, this issue does mark an important step for Thor himself. We don’t really see Don Blake here, and Thor feels more distinct than before. He calls Odin “Father.” He speaks a little more grandly. He’s still not fully the Thor we know, but the voice is starting to take shape.

And visually, this issue belongs to Kirby.

Even if the story feels odd for Thor, it feels completely right for Kirby. Futuristic landscapes. Strange weapons. Fantastic machinery. Explosions of energy. There are moments here that feel like early glimpses of the visual language he’ll soon make famous. You can already see the seeds of what later gets called Kirby Krackle.

So while the issue doesn’t quite know what kind of Thor story it wants to be, Kirby absolutely knows what kind of comic he wants to draw.

The ending is pure early Marvel. Thor unleashes a thunderstorm. Zarrko is defeated. The bomb is recovered. The future is saved. And because this is still 1962, Zarrko ends the story with amnesia — one of Marvel’s favorite ways to clean up a plot.

It’s a strange issue.

A step back for Thor, maybe.

But not for Kirby.

Marvel in the 60s – Entry #20