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Essential Thor, Vol. 4 (Marvel Essentials) |  | Authors: Stan Lee, Gerry Conway
Creators: Jack Kirby, Neal Adams, John Buscema
Publisher: Marvel
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $9.59
as of 9/4/2010 19:06 MDT details
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Seller: whypaymorebooks
Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 161954
Media: Paperback
Reading Level: Young Adult
Pages: 608
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.8 x 6.4 x 1.7
ISBN: 0785130764
Dewey Decimal Number: 741
EAN: 9780785130765
ASIN: 0785130764
Publication Date: June 24, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
"The Fall of Asgard!" "The End of Eternity!" "A Time of Evil!" If it's not one thing, it's another - but everyone's favorite Thunder God is on top of it all, even when he's inhabiting his evil foster brother's body! Trouble comes from all directions with cosmic clashes against Galactus and the Stranger; demonic doings from Surtur and Mephisto; and Dr. Doom, the Wrecker, and Mangog picking up the slack! Plus: giants, trolls, demons, robots, and more! Collects Thor #167-195.
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| Customer Reviews:
amazon service rocks October 13, 2009
Robert G. Espinosa
1 out of 7 found this review helpful
Received my order within 3 days. I was impressed by how quickly it got here. Everything was in superb condition. Exellent service!
Sheer Asgardian Power! August 9, 2009
G. YEO (Singapore)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
THOR was next to the Fantastic Four, the most dynamic Jack Kirby-Stan Lee collaboration of the sixties. I'm going to mention Jack Kirby first because his artwork defined the characters and worlds of Asgard more than any other artist before or since. Kirby seemed born to draw the Golden God and the story ideas drove him to create wilder and wilder stuff. Despite the usual Marvel Silver Age angst - Thor and Odin in Father-son, God-mortal issues; Thor and Donald Blake Alter-ego problems - these melodramas never seem to overshadow the core of the comic's appeal: sheer all-out action and abandon.
Why THOR succeeded above many other series was the strength of the Asgardian universe. King Kirby and Smiling Stan were able to draw on the rich mythological tapestry of Thor and his fellow Gods. Kirby in particular loved immortals - New Gods, Eternals, etc so he was completely in his element. The "villains" in the form of Loki, the Nordic Queen, Hela, etc - are living breathing beings and among the most complex characters that Marvel had created - transcending the usual bad-guy stereotype that other books suffered from. It's fair to call them antagonists rather than the bad guys as they existed for a reason. Everything and everyone is intertwined in this universe, and even the all-mighty Odin faces emotional and life-changing dilemmas like the Gods of old always did.
Artistically, one can almost appreciate the artwork more even without its original color. This collection actually renders itself well in black and white simply because of the in-your-face, larger-than-life, action packed panels (something many other comics don't do). Kirby's pounding pencils practically leap out at you as Thor and Mjolnir his thunder hammer wreak carnage in battle after battle across the universe.
Also, THOR Vol. 4 is particularly impressive because it features Neal Adams and John Buscema's art as they took over Kirby and his slavish details. A special note of thanks should go to Artie Simek - the overlooked letterer, but undoubtedly the best of his day.
The book on all levels is truly cosmic.
(PS - also worth getting as it features Galactus's origin.)
One "Wild" Experiment! July 5, 2009
Noel Pratt (Washington, D.C., and better places)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
This is a somewhat sloppy cut-n-paste of remarks to a fellow fan...
"Wild" Bill Everett's six-issue THOR collaboration with Jack Kirby is one of the best experiences I've had in comic-art appreciation, and the main reason for getting this collection. I had no real idea how tired I'd begun to be of Vince Colletta, whose work had looked tired and lazy for about 8-9 issues but who might've been about to come back, from the looks of his last ish before Everett took over the pens.
All of a sudden: The Man steps in. Everett showed us what Kirby was really doing of late. Now, who knows how good a thing this was by Jack -- cuz it's also as if Bill E was saying to him, "Okay, I'm gonna go with your stylistic changes and be true to them...I'm gonna manifest YOU, King."
I've read that Vinnie was a hack and I couldn't believe it. The support for that accusation seems to have been that he dismissed Kirby's backgrounds sometimes...or something. Well, the guy was great for a good while if ya ask me (and no one has). It's like he managed to succeed in doing Kirby a certain very peculiar way -- getting to the Larger Than Life by way of a billion skinny lines made with a rapidiograph.
But Everett! First I thought, "Okay, good, a dash of the Chic Stone days...and??" But then it took off. What this is, it's a preview of the New Gods just over the horizon! This seems to indicate also that Joe Sinnott was holding down a certain style on FANTASTIC FOUR, but of course Joe just worked it better, and also did allow Jack's latest quirks in somewhat...what I'll call the Kirby Kubism.
In fact, I'll go out on a limb (I belong to no comics online chats, etc.) and say that Everett with these issues challenged Kirby, and that's why we all got to see Kirby's work for DC. This must have emboldened him in his time of late-Marvel depression. I don't know how the THOR letters page was reacting, but I think Jack "saw what he hath done and saw that it was good."
During this rave about Bill Everett, I forgot that Colletta inked the first Kirby Fourth World books. Okay, so whatever. Pretty good, I guess. But then Mike Royer-! This is what I'm talking about, this is what Everett paved the way for. You can see it. It may be that which wouldn't have been allowed (even by Kirby himself) if not for those six issues of THOR w/ Everett -- who was an old veteran and who, I imagine, faced with the choice, said "I'm gonna let Jack shine on his own here; let's just see what happens when I totally respect the penciller." Tracer, shmacer...I'm no comics artist, I don't know exactly how it should be OTHER than to trace a master like Kirby. Romita inking Kane is one thing -- you kinda want Johnny to do his own thing. But when Kirby's got something up his sleeve, I'll gladly take a trace, and don't forget the skill that still goes into making those lines. I'm telling you, even when Thor looks ugly, or Don Blake looks like he's gained 7 years, it's magic! Check out the variation in the facial features of Volstagg et al....slanting eyelids, etc. Colletta had just been gliding over the details (cuz you figure Everett's not gonna be making stuff up like that). OR, it's even possible that Kirby's changes were furthered by Everett because he sensed he had the inker with the cohones to get it right! Hmm... So maybe it allowed Kirby to come out with the stuff cut from his own weird cloth.
I'm just without speech. Little did I know this would also be a 6-issue return to the old spirit of THOR and that the art would be so overwhelming I could hardly follow the story. You'll want a good lamp to gape at the linework lovingly reproduced here.
Jack evidently wanted to have Thor-Blake-Thor going on...and on earth as it is in Hea- , er, Asgard. Or maybe he and Stan said let's get back to the freewheelin' fun of it all. So this is not to take anything away from Stan's scripts. Those and/or Kirby's plots are actually funnily askew and deus ex machina at times but the fun is there.
But again, at the risk of overstating this, Everett is amazing! He is the real revelation. One cannot pass out of the Silver Age without giving this THOR collaboration its due. To read these and try to also hold in your mind Roy Thomas's heavy and cluttered scripts going on in the same months is impossible. Not that RT wasn't improving steadily -- and to be fair, he had to tackle all those damn team titles. But this is the sh** for me.
The similarity to Mike Royer's inks means this is what Kirby was supposed to look like at this time. You can tell, why? Just watch how it looks when Colletta comes back for issue 176 (I think). You can tell he's not quite slcackin anymore, and he always did manage to get Loki down pretty well (though not like Kirby w/ Bill E), but he persists in making Thor's face look like they were trying to do over at DC: everyone had to make Superman look like the Curt Swan. For Thor, that meant dull, squared-off, leaden.
The variety of line is awesome, and Bill Everett (creator of the Sub-Mariner) must have had a good touch of devil-may-care to pull this off so masterfully. You don't get the idea he's slavish to Kirby, just that there's some kind of beautiful, groundbreaking experiment afoot.
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