13 COVERS: A THOR 60th Anniversary Salute

Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jun 5, 2022 | 1 comment

Kirby classics all the way…

What a crazy day in Marvel history: On June 5, 1962, three comics were released that would have a spectacularly enduring impact on pop culture history: Amazing Fantasy #15, Journey Into Mystery #83 and Tales to Astonish #35, giving us Spider-Man, Thor and Ant-Man, respectively.

That’s according to Library of Congress copyright info — thank you Mike’s Amazing World of Comics — so I’m sure that given the vagaries of newsstand distribution, they actually hit stands at slightly different times. Nevertheless, it’s nothing short of extraordinary that these characters co-created by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Larry Lieber would all be birthed together.

Naturally, each has fared differently in the decades since: Spider-Man has been a global comics phenomenon for decades while Thor and Ant-Man emerged into the general public consciousness thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In any event, we’re having a three-pronged celebration: this 13 COVERS salute to Thor, Scott Tipton’s WHY ANT-MAN IS MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO — FOR REAL and THE TOP 13 STEVE DITKO SPIDER-MAN COVERS — RANKED.

So sit back and enjoy this celebration of the profound creativity of the House of Ideas.

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For this 13 COVERS salute to Thor, we’re doing something we’ve never done before — showing off the first 13 covers of a title. Generally, our galleries fit a theme of some sort but in this case I’ve decided to simply present Jack Kirby’s earliest vision of the Thunder God, in chronological order.

The power and the glory were there from the start.

Dig it.