Title : COME WITH ME - ON A JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY...
link : COME WITH ME - ON A JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY...
COME WITH ME - ON A JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY...
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| Images copyright MARVEL COMICS |
One of my all-time favourite origin issues is JOURNEY Into MYSTERY #83 - introducing The MIGHTY THOR (or THOR The MIGHTY as he's referred to inside the mag). That's the cover of my very own copy you're looking at up there, which first came out in August 1962. Well, that's not quite true, because although it was cover-dated August, it actually went on sale in May of that year. "Wait a minute," I hear you cry, "there's no date on the cover!" Yup, but there was on the US issues, which were printed first; then the cover plates were amended to include a UK price and remove the month from underneath the issue number. As these comics came over to our shores as ballast in ships, we didn't get them until many months after our American cousins, so it was pointless having a date on our copies (which were printed on the same presses as the ones for US readers).
Below is the 1966 GOLDEN BOOK & RECORD SET reprint of the above comic, and as you can see, some of the detail of Thor's hair has been lost. Inside, the splash page was printed in black and white on the interior side of the cover, and the final page of the origin story had the last panel omitted, with the other two being extended to fill the space. The 'drawing-up' of the soldiers helmet and head is rather clumsy (see further down), but I doubt that many readers noticed it back in the day - unless they had the original printing to compare it with, that is.
Next up is a 1999 German edition, and I've included an interior page (further down) so that you can see how it looks in a foreign language. On the whole, the re-lettering throughout the tale has been done with some proficiency, and the balloon shapes don't seem cluttered or squeezed, which can sometimes happen when one language is exchanged for another. One of the things I tried to do (and usually succeeded) when re-lettering a strip in another tongue, was to ensure that the pages looked as if they had been created that way. I've seen some pages by lesser letterers (don't scoff - they exist) with words crammed right up against the balloon or caption outline, making the published result look terrible. This one manages to avoid that.
Now here's an interesting thing I noticed while looking at these covers in preparation for scanning. If you compare the cover below with the ones above (best to enlarge them to their full size), you'll see that the detail is much sharper than even J.I.M. #83's cover. This surprised me, because I'd expected the original printing to be better - but no, it isn't. In the cover below, you can see individual brush strokes that just reproduce as blobs of black in the 1962 presentation. If you want what is probably the best-ever single issue printing of this classic tale, then you should do your absolute best to get your hands on the issue below. It's dated October 2017 in the indicia inside, so might well still be available in your local comics shop.
Okay, I know I've shown these before, but what follows is an original production stat of the cover as JACK KIRBY and JOE SINNOTT drew it. As you can see, there were far more STONE MEN (later revealed to be called KRONANS), some of whom were removed because STAN LEE thought the cover was too cluttered, resulting in Thor being visually overwhelmed by them. I thought that too many Kronans were removed, so therefore played about with the stat to produce the cover as I would have done it. (Click to enlarge, then click again for optimum size.) Hey, MARVEL - are you reading this? Next time you reprint this ish as a single comic, use my version of the cover - no charge! Okay, that's it for now, the other pages are accompanied by footnotes to explain things as we go along. See you all next time, culture-lovers.
And now, a selection of interior pages - with footnotes...
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| Original printing. Note the misspelling of Thor's name |
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| 1966 reprint, with two panels on bottom tier extended |
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| Didya know that Thor was multi-lingual? You do now |
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| 2017 reprint. Simply glorious |
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