Plot by Stan Lee – Script by Robert Bernstein – Art by Joe Sinnott – Letters by Artie Simek
September 1963 has been a pretty remarkable month for Marvel. The Avengers have formed. Atlantis has become an entire world. The X-Men are about to arrive.
Marvel appears to be moving forward. Thor, however, is still stuck in the past.
Journey into Mystery #96 begins with Don Blake discovering that all his time being Thor has been terrible for business. His medical practice is suffering because he’s constantly disappearing, and Jane is getting increasingly annoyed that Blake keeps locking himself in his laboratory and refusing to answer the door.
In fairness to Blake, he’s been busy rescuing school buses that fall into the Hudson River.
This continues the increasingly confusing relationship between Blake and Thor. A few issues ago, Thor was wandering around Asgard as Odin’s son without giving Don Blake much thought. Here we’re firmly back to Blake as a doctor who happens to become Thor when trouble arises.
Elsewhere, Merlin’s perfectly preserved body is delivered inside a sarcophagus to a museum.
The scientists examining him notice that a man who has been dead for centuries looks remarkably good.
So naturally, they leave him alone.
Merlin wakes up and finds a newspaper, catches up on several centuries of current events, and gives us the story of his life.
Merlin wasn’t actually a sorcerer. He was a mutant.
Merlin quickly decides that the modern world would benefit from his leadership and begins causing trouble, including interfering with a rocket launch.
Eventually he encounters Thor and challenges him.
This leads all the way to Washington, D.C., where Merlin encounters President Kennedy and battles Thor.
It’s exactly as strange as that sounds.
Thor eventually realizes that simply hitting Merlin isn’t accomplishing much, so he transforms back into Blake and tricks him instead. Merlin winds up returning to his crypt, where apparently everyone can go back to pretending none of this happened.
There really isn’t much more to Journey into Mystery #96. And coming where it does in Marvel’s chronology makes that especially noticeable.
Thor’s own mythology has been expanding. Loki and Odin are becoming recurring characters. When Thor left the other heroes behind in Avengers #1 and went after Loki, his portion of that comic felt enormous.
Marvel increasingly seems to know what makes Thor interesting.
They just can’t stop sending Don Blake on anthology adventures long enough to do it.
Marvel in the 60s – Entry #81
Leave a Reply