Marvel’s neophyte superheroes continued to develop by fits and starts in the titles appearing on newsstands in September 1962.
The Hulk’s character development zigzagged again with this, his title’s fourth issue (Nov. 1962). The monster regained his free will and some of Dr. Bruce Banner’s intelligence, although his personality remained aggressive.
Using a gamma ray to transform at will, the Hulk was free to act as a full-fledged superhero, fighting the commie space robot Mongu and even becoming a founding member of the Avengers. But his title would end in two issues.
In Strange Tales 103 (Dec. 1962), the teenaged Human Torch seemed as formidable as the full Fantastic Four, capable of thwarting an entire alien invasion alone.
Johnny Storm finds himself captured, bound, and submerged by insidious invaders from the Fifth Dimension, but he’s freed by the blue-skinned alien beauty Valeria, using her handy Hypno-Ring. Then he goes to town, whipping up a super-tornado to whip the alien tyrant.
In Fantastic Four 9 (Dec. 1962), we find the super-team bankrupt, with the Sub-Mariner scheming to use their poverty to trap them. It was another of those real-world problems that Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko would use to set Marvel’s superhero titles apart.
In Tales to Astonish 38 (Dec. 1962), Ant-Man meets his first arch-enemy, the scientist Elihas Starr, a/k/a Egghead, and we learn that Henry Pym’s ants are not his slaves but his friends (the fact that thwarts Egghead in this first confrontation).
In Journey into Mystery 86 (Nov. 1962), we meet Thor’s father Odin for the first time. But the protagonist had been introduced in Journey into Mystery 83 as Don Blake, a lame physician who merely acquired the powers of Thor from his hammer. How then could he be the son of Odin or the brother of Loki (who’d been introduced in the previous issue)?
Indeed, Odin seemed a little surprised that Thor had forgotten the method by which he could use his hammer to travel through time. The conflict wouldn’t be resolved by Lee and Kirby until 1968 when they revealed that Blake was merely a personality conjured by Odin to teach Thor humility.
Even in issue 86, I could see how Thor might have some trouble staying humble.
After all, he could fly, shrug off nuclear blasts, create thunderstorms, smash giant robots, fell trees with a slap, spin through time, and even deflect the rays of a delta-electron gun with his hurricane-force super-breath.
To do all that, even I’d wear shoulder-length hair.
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