The Mighty Thor
Will be published approx. on 5. November 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
464 pages
978-0-14-313827-3 (ISBN)
Description
During the 1960s, under the hands of the inimitable creative team of Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, Marvel's Thor combined the raw material of ancient Norse mythology with the nonstop action of super-heroic adventure comics and the speculative reach of classic science fiction. The result was a heady brew: epic, operatic, melodramatic, even psychedelic. This collection gathers some of the most important story arcs from the foundational years of the series and includes seminal early appearances of characters such as Hercules and Ego, the Living Planet, as well as Thor's first encounter with Galactus! The Penguin Classics Marvel Collection provides a detailed scholarly introduction, contextualizing Kirby's work on Thor within his larger oeuvre, alongside an extended critical apparatus and an appendix of additional material drawn from Kirby and Lee's popular back-up series "Tales of Asgard."
Reviews / Votes
"A groundbreaking example of comics representation in literature."-Publishers Weekly
"Penguin provides introductory essays; superb analyses by the series editor, Ben Saunders; and extensive bibliographies."
-Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
"Stories become classics when generations of readers sort through them, talk about them, imitate them, and recommend them. In this case, baby boomers read them when they debuted, Gen X-ers grew up with their sequels, and millennials encountered them through Marvel movies. Each generation of fans-initially fanboys, increasingly fangirls, and these days nonbinary fans, too-found new ways not just to read the comics but to use them. That's how canons form. Amateurs and professionals, over decades, come to something like consensus about which books matter and why-or else they love to argue about it, and we get to follow the arguments. Canons rise and fall, gain works and lose others, when one generation of people with the power to publish, teach, and edit diverges from the one before ... A top-flight comic by Kirby-or his successor on "Captain America," Jim Steranko-barely needed words. You could follow the story just by watching the characters act and react. Thankfully, Penguin volumes do justice to these images. They reproduce sixties comics in bright, flat, colorful inks on thick white paper-unlike the dot-based process used on old newsprint, but perhaps truer to their bold, thrill-chasing spirit."
-Stephanie Burt, The New Yorker
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Target group
Children/juvenile
Dimensions
Height: 250 mm
Width: 177 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
368 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-14-313827-3 (9780143138273)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Stan Lee (1922- 2018) and artist Jack Kirby made comic book history in 1961 with The Fantastic Four #1. Lee oversaw the adventures of many super hero creations for over a decade before handing over the editorial reins at Marvel to others. For the remainder of his long life, he continued to serve as a creative figurehead at Marvel and an ambassador for the comics medium. Born to Jewish-Austrian parents on New York's Lower East Side, Jack Kirby (1917-1994) came of age at the birth of the American comic book industry. Horrified by the rise of Nazism, Kirby co-created the patriotic hero Captain America with Joe Simon in 1940. In 1958, Kirby began his collaboration with Stan Lee. They co-created the foundational text of the modern Marvel Universe - The Fantastic Four - and introduced new characters, including the Avengers, the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, the Silver Surfer, and the X-Men. Today, Kirby is regarded as one of the most important and influential creators in the history of American comics. Larry Lieber (1931-), alongside his older brother Stan Lee, contributed to the fantasy and big monster titles of the nascent Marvel line in the late '50s and early '60s. In addition to scripts for Thor in Journey Into Mystery, the Human Torch in Strange Tales and Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish, Lieber also scripted the very first Iron Man story in Tales of Suspense #39. Rick Riordan, dubbed 'storyteller of the gods' by Publishers Weekly, is the author of five #1 New York Times best-selling middle grade series with millions of copies sold throughout the world, including Percy Jackson and the Olympians, now a live-action series on Disney+. Ben Saunders is a professor of English at the University of Ore-gon. He is the author of Desiring Donne: Poetry, Sexuality, Inter-pretation and Do the Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes, as well as numerous critical essays on subjects ranging from the writings of Shakespeare to the recordings of Little Richard. He has also curated several museum exhibitions of comics art, in-cluding the record-breaking multimedia touring show Marvel: Uni-verse of Super Heroes-a retrospective exploring the artistic and cultural impact of Marvel Comics from 1939 to the present.