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| Copyright Marvel |
NOT SPROUT MEN
Judging by the story title Thor the Mighty is to face the Stone Men of Saturn, and our hero looks metal as fuck and ready for action, but we must tear our gaze away from the blond-locked Trve Metal Warrior to observe the two panels in the corner, for the frail and decidedly non-kvlt Dr. Don Blake is visiting Norway on vacation, and as he turns away from admiring the sea view he doesn't see a UFO coming in to land...The Saturnine Stone Men (they still look like sprout men) emerge from their craft and immediately set about showing off to each other about how amazingly STRONG and TOUGH they are in Earth's oxygen-rich atmosphere. One uproots a pine tree! Another jumps off a cliff! My deliberately incorrect metaphorical interpretation here is that Nu-Metal douchebros have come to conquer the home of Trve Kvlt Black Metal, intending to turn the grim and frostbitten kingdoms to a realm of keg parties and chestbeating gym sessions.
Luckily for the world Old Man Varg -- a fisherman from the nearby village -- spots the aliens and goes to raise the alarm, though unfortunately the villagers have all seen Varg's YouTube videos and just think he's spouting nonsense again.
But one Dr. Don Blake is listening in and the next day goes to investigate...
DE MYSTERIIS DON BLAKANAS
Following strange footprints, Dr. Blake finds the aliens as they promise DEATH to anybody who finds them, but as he leaves he steps on a twig and has to retreat! Somehow, despite using a cane and making it clear he can't go fast enough to outrun the aliens, he outruns the aliens, but as he nears a cliff edge he trips and loses the cane! Whatever will he do? Luckily narrative causality provides a cave he can hide in, and even more luckily he spots a way out further in, thus making the "hiding in a cave" plan somewhat less Fucking Stupid.Sadly the way out is blocked by a boulder, and our frail-bodied doctor is unable to shift it. In a fit of Emo he slumps against the cave wall, and at the same moment a secret door opens! He limps into the secret chamber thus revealed and finds... a gnarled wooden cane.** And then, showing a fairly shaky grasp of physics, decides to try using a two-and-a-half-foot cane as a lever to move a 12+ foot rock... unsurprisingly this doesn't work and Dr. Blake (miraculously still undiscovered by the searching stone men) lashes out with it in anger, causing a lightning and fire to burst forth!
Dr. Don Blake finds himself clad in denim and leather, with flowing blond hair, and the stick has now become a mighty hammer inscribed with (in comic fucking sans because apparently the gods are middle management trying to appear friendly and quirky) the words: "whosoever [sic] holds this hammer, if he*** be worthy, shall possess...
THE POWER OF... THOR
The Mighty Thor mightily lifts the boulder that only a few moments ago had proved such an obstacle, and escapes the cave, mightily. Then, feeling that he is safe from the stone men, he sits down to contemplate his mightiness; remembering such useful information as how Thursday is named after Thor.But with another flash of light the Mighty Thor turns back into the frail Dr. Blake! Turns out the 'hold' part of the inscription is really quite literal, and if holding hasn't happened in the last sixty seconds he stops being mighty and metal, and becomes frail Dr. Blake once more (and this will be used as a means of creating peril for the character with tedious regularity for a loooong time).
The hammer back in his possession Blake-Thor devotes some time to fucking about with it, remembering more relevant stories such as it returning to his hand when thrown, and that the hammer itself is unbreakable. He calls upon snow (kvlt) and a tornado (not-so-kvlt) by striking the hammer twice on the ground, and stops the storm by striking three times. And then discovers he can become Don Blake on purpose by striking the ground once. Awed, he muses on how the greatest power in the world was hidden in that cave (a cave that was right near a village and wasn't very big yet hadn't been explored in decades if not centuries... which is really quite a big plot hole because even allowing for the whole worthiness thing someone would have found the stick by now and put it in a museum or something) and that he must now warn the world of the threat of the stone men!
BATTLE IN THE NORTH
Meanwhile, a NATO radar base detects a fleet of UFOs and jets are scrambled to intercept, but the stone men, who have a fleet suddenly, are having none of that shit and broadcast a hologram of a MOTHERFUCKING DRAGON, causing the pilots to panic and bail out (and, later, to explain to their superiors why they all abandoned millions of dollars worth of aircraft), then missiles are sent up but they are no match for the ships' atomic shielding (clearly not Stark missiles because those would have been full of micro-transistors and would totally have done the job).
On the ground Dr. Blake is dismayed at how badly things are going, because apparently the battle is occuring right above him, and so he turns back into the mighty THOR to intercept the fleet. Thor mightily whirls his hammer about his head, and then catching it by the unbreakable thong a split second after release he is able to fly thru the air towards the distant fleet!
Thor comes into land amongst the invaders, who apparently have also landed, which means the battle didn't happen above Blake's head after all, because when you've already had one big plot hole you might as well through caution to the wind and just keep going. Swinging the mighty hammer mightily Thor keeps the stone men at bay, but even though he's outside he is also right below their captive cage (not just continuation, but escalation. I'm surprised the whole plot hasn't just vanished at this point).
The cage descends! The human is trapped! Or not, as despite being highly advanced the stone men make their cages out of iron and Thor is able to bend the bars aside and make good his escape. The leader of the stone men (really though, they all look the fucking same**** and have no clothes or badges. How do they actually know their leader is?) orders that Thor be disintegrated, but before all four of the armed soldiers can shoot, he throws his mighty hammer and disarms them. I mean, these guys have a fucking FLEET but only four dudes with guns? Frankly Thor could probably just go make himself a cuppa and wait for their invasion to fail through sheer incompetence.
The next thing up the stone men's metaphorical sleeve is THE MECHANO-MONSTER. Surely this will defeat the human! FUCK NO. Thor smashes it with one blow, and (surprise, surprise) it turns out they only brought one. Dismayed, the aliens retreat back to their ships and flee the planet. Worst. Invasion. Ever. They came in 50 ships (I counted) but only six stone men actually appear to have disembarked, of whom only four brought guns, and they only had one STOMPY DEATH ROBOT. It almost seems like Thor is basically irrelevant to the story by this point... once NATO had got tanks involved the invading 'army' would have been squished like bugs.
Anyway, speaking of NATO, Thor spies the approaching infantry (all five of them, so maybe the aliens would have won after all) and decides he doesn't want to be questioned, so with a tap of the hammer he turns back to Dr. Blake and limps off into the sunset while the soldiers wonder what could have happened to the aliens, because it couldn't possibly have been the random guy walking away from them... who they also fail to apprehend for questioning because obviously you'd let an eye witness to an alien invasion just fuck off back to America.
Tune in next time as I explore the fabulous origin of Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish #27.
*How many of those did they have, anyway?
**Fucking hell, GM! This had better have at least a level 2 enchantment in it, otherwise it's a shit treasure.
***Now that Thor is a woman internet morons are actually using this as evidence that Thor must only be male. Twats.
****They're aliens, it's not racist.
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