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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
And here's another little belter of a comic from out of the dim and distant, fog-enshrouded mists of time. Actually, that last bit's a lie - because I can recall having my original copy of this comic as if it were only... well, not quite yesterday, but last week at least. That's due to the fact that, not long after acquiring it, I was ill and confined to my bed for a day or two, and I remember re-reading the comic tucked up in bed with only a bedside light to illuminate my literary pursuits.
Feeling slightly better after finishing #143 of The MIGHTY THOR's Asgardian adventures, I got out of bed with the intention of going downstairs to the bosom of my family. My brother assisted me, but I took a sudden dizzy turn at the top of the stairs and had to be returned to a horizontal position under the warm, cosy, enveloping blankets I had just abandoned mere moments before. No wonder the issue is burned into my memory - who would ever forget a night like that?
This tale was reprinted in SMASH! around the same time I had the American original, and I recall comparing the layout in the British comic to the U.S. one. (MARVEL strips were resized, two pages to one, for their U.K. reprintings in three of the five POWER COMICS from ODHAMS PRESS, of which Smash! was by this time the sole survivor.) Many years later, I learned that VINCE COLLETTA had started to ink this issue, but for some reason BILL EVERETT took over. If you look carefully at the splash page, you can see the mix of the two different styles.
The issue was also later reprinted in ORIGINS Of MARVEL COMICS in 1974, and when I got my hands on a copy soon after it became available in Britain in '75, I was overjoyed to once again see this fondly-recalled tale from my boyhood. True, only six years or so had passed since I'd owned the original comicbook, but that was over one third of my life away at that point and consequently seemed much longer than the same period of time would likely appear to me nowadays. (All to do with proportions I guess, but what do I know?)
The scans you see here are from a copy I obtained more years ago than I care (or am able) to remember. It's certainly close to half my life away anyway. One look at that cover and I'm a child once more, back in my bedroom in Belmont again, reading the comic by the soft light of a lamp, with the outline of the room's few furnishings faintly visible as they stand guard in the gloom beyond. (So much for those who say my childhood is behind me; truth is, it never truly left me. It's the same for everyone, I imagine.)
Anyway, feel free to forget my self-indulgent waffle - just so long as you enjoy the scans herewith presented and are perhaps reminded of your own first, long-ago encounter with this cataclysmic comic, then I can savour the satisfaction that comes from a job well done.
Altogether now: "For Odin, for Asgard!"
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