tales of SILVER AGE TIME TRAVEL travel back to JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #122 (NOV 1965)
—In 1965, my family and I were still living on Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, and I had a new pen pal, RICK LOWELL, an American kid my age living in England at the time. He had to pick up his comics when and how he could—sometimes US editions at his own Air Force base and sometimes UK editions, which were identical except for a price of 
10d (ten pennies, nearly a whole shilling!) in place of the familiar 12¢ on all my comics. His favorite at the time was THOR, and we soon began furious back-and-forth arguments spirited discussions about time travel in the Marvel universe of the 1960s, starting with the time travel of a certain mortal, courtesy of Thor in Journey into Mystery #122.
Odin Be Praised!!
The time travel in that issue started innocuously enough with the God of Thunder rescuing a young woman from the aftermath of an explosion. (Just one of the those run-of-the-mill of explosions that happened with regularity in Silver Age comics. It was an explosive time.)
This scene was actually the first thing I complained about to Rick in my aérogramme 
(which cost nearly as much as a comic book and came with a cool drawing of President Kennedy).
How in the heck does Thor not recognize Jane immediately?! I wrote to Rick Do you think for one instance that Peter Parker would fail to instantly recognize Betty Brant or that Doc Doom would fail to recognize Sue Storm? Not by my Uncle Bob’s root beer!
A few weeks later, Rick’s answer to my objection arrived by return mail. (For all the millennials out there: Think of when your phone dings and a little word bubble pops up, all happening in slow motion.
Of course he didn’t recognize Jane through the smoke, said Rick. After all, this isn’t your grandpa’s DC comics where every superhero is perfect in every way. Thor doesn’t magically gain the exact superpower that’s needed for this situation—let’s call it smoke-vision. No siree Bob, this is MARVEL where superheroes are flawed, just like you an me, and just like the Platters’ Number 1 hit*. Yep, sometimes smoke gets in Thor’s eyes.
* Number 1 on the UK charts, that is, but only #3 stateside
I had to give in to Rick on that point. Marvel heroes were far from perfect, which was why we read them. And who knew? You and I certainly weren’t gonna fall to Earth from Krypton, but we sure could find some old stone hammer lying in a field any day now!
Anyway, it turned out that rescuing JANE was the nexus of the story’s problem, because of the inattentive Norse god not noticing a nosy reporter, lurking in the dark:
Man, oh man! This was the worst thing that could ever happen to a superhero**. Once your identity becomes public knowledge, all your nemeses start crawling out of the Wally woodwork, attacking your very own Jane Fosters! Moreover, it seemed that this possibility was no deterrent to that AP*** reporter, Harris Hobbs!!
** Fantastic Four excepted
*** Affiliated Press, that is
By the way, here at Tales of Silver Age Time Travel, we don’t get much opportunity to mention the fine hand-lettering done in the 1960’s comics, but kudos to the humble and ever-present ARTIE SIMAK for his outstanding word balloons in this crowded artwork by JACK KIRBY and VINCE COLLETTA.
To Boldly Go Where No Mortal Has Gone Before!*
* a little phrase my GRANDPA MAIN brought back to me from the future
But Thor was having none of Harris’s lip.
Herein lay my second complaint to Rick. Come on, I wrote. This is Thor! Who’s more honorable than Thor? He’s not really gonna use his sacred time travel to threaten the life of a mere mortal?!
Rick needed but five words to demolish that objection: Jane Foster. Not Lois Lane. And he was right. Thor would indeed lose his temper over his identity being potentially revealed and Jane thereby being put in peril, even if that were something that wouldn’t ruffle Clark Kent’s Brylcreem.
You’ll probably be happy to hear that before Harris relented, Thor also threatened him with a pleasant Kirbyesque future:
I’m pretty sure that’s an ancestor of the RED GHOST’S APES crawling out of the rightmost vent.
I did come within half a skosh of getting my pen pal Rick to relent on one final argument. Where in the Goblin’s green Earth did Thor’s time-travel tornado come from? I asked. Certainly Thor has traveled through time before, but only with the help of ODIN! Well, or the TOMORROW MAN, I suppose. And there was LOKI‘s Well of the Centuries, of course, and that thing the ENCHANTRESS did.**** But, really?! A tornado?
**** [please see back issues of Silver Age Time Travel. —ed.]
I agree, Rick wrote. Thunderpants has way too many time travel mechanisms for one God. But to be fair, we have seen Thor whirl his legendary hammer to create a time-bending tornado before. Check out page 13 of Journey into Mystery 86, Mike!
Which I promptly did.
Curse that Rick! He had no flaws at all. With his perfect memory, maybe he shoulda considered moving over to the dark side.
Coming Soon!
Coming soon! See the new Avengers—WANDA, QUICKSILVER, and HAWKEYE—along with ol’ Winghead himself facing off against KANG THE CONQUEROR in another majestic milestone in this, the majestic age of Marvel comics! Don’t miss it on the first Wednesday of April!
journey into mystery 122 cover by jack kirby and wally wood with interior images by jack kirby and vince colletta, ©1965 marvel comics group. journey into mystery 86 interior image by jack kirby and dick ayers, ©1962 marvel comics group.