The Mighty Thor

Illustrated throughout, the Penguin Classics Marvel Collection presents specially curated comic book anthologies of the origin stories, seminal tales, and characters of the Marvel Universe to explore Marvel’s transformative and timeless influence on an entire genre of fantasy. Collects Journey into Mystery #83, 85, and 114-116, and Thor #128-133, 154-157, and 159-161. It is impossible to imagine American popular culture without Marvel Comics. For decades, Marvel has published groundbreaking visual narratives that sustain attention on multiple levels: as metaphors for the experience of difference and otherness; as meditations on the fluid nature of identity; and as high-water marks in the artistic tradition of American cartooning, to name a few. During the 1960s, under the hands of the inimitable creative team of Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Larry Lieber, Marvel’s Thor combined the raw material of ancient Norse mythology with the nonstop action of super-heroic adventure comics and the speculative reach of classic science fiction. The result was a heady brew: epic, operatic, melodramatic, even psychedelic. This collection gathers some of the most important story arcs from the foundational years of the series and includes seminal early appearances of such characters as Hercules and Ego, the Living Planet, as well as Thor’s first encounter with Galactus! This edition provides a detailed scholarly introduction, contextualizing Kirby’s work on Thor within his larger oeuvre, alongside a foreword by Rick Riordan, an extended critical apparatus by Charles Hatfield and Ben Saunders, and an appendix of additional material drawn from Kirby and Lee’s popular back‑up series “Tales of Asgard.”