Thor

Background

Thor is the god of thunder in ancient Norse mythology and the son of the Norse chieftain of the gods, Odin. In Marvel Comics cosmology, Thor was banished to Earth in the 20th century in the form of the mortal Dr Don Blake, a lame physician, by Odin, in order to teach him humility. He only remembered who he was when Blake found the mystic hammer Mjolnir in a cave in Norway and used the power of Thor to repel an alien invasion after being transformed back into his true self. Blake continued to exist as Thor's mortal alter ego. Thor later became a founding member of the Avengers and remains active as a superhero. His arch enemy is his foster brother Loki, god of evil, who was inadvertently responsible for the Avengers' creation. Marvel's Thor was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Solo title

Thor, or The Mighty Thor, was a weekly title published by Marvel UK from 20th April 1983 until 11th January 1984 (39 issues), although it was actually retitled Thor and X-Men with issue #20 when it absorbed failing sister title X-Men. All content was reprinted from American Marvel titles The Mighty Thor and, after the merger, X-Men. On 18th January 1984, the Thor and X-Men strips were transferred into the pages of Spider-Man. The first two issues of Thor contained free gifts, a "space spinner" and a Thor sticker, respectively. Most issues also contained pull-out posters in the centre pages, a common feature in Marvel UK titles of the time.

• The proclamation "every page in great Marvel colour" on the covers was actually a bit of a cheat, since "Marvel colour" in this case meant two-tone rather than full colour a lot of the time.
• Thor also starred in the Mighty World of Marvel Summer Special in June 1983, which carried an ad for the new weekly.

Other Marvel UK appearances, and titles from other publishers

Aside from his solo title, Thor was also a long running back-up feature in Spider-Man Weekly at several times during its 666-issue run, and featured in several other titles including Valour, the Valour Winter Special, Marvel Action, The Titans, Marvel Team-Up, The Super-Heroes Annual and Captain America. As a long standing member of the team, he has also appeared regularly in the various Avengers titles published by Marvel UK and in more recent years by Panini. Solo Thor stories began being reprinted by Panini in Marvel Legends in 2007.

Thor also featured in Mystic, a title published by L.Miller and Son, as well as random issues of reprint titles from Alan Class Publishing.

In 2012, Panini published a Thor Annual based on the success of the Avengers movies.