Jack Kirby Tribute Month, and we’re in the back end of Asgard Week. You knew it was inevitable that at some point, the prompt would have to be Thor!
Many of the characters I’ve been drawing here, I’ve never attempted before. I can’t say that about Thor, though. I’ve drawn him a few times.
Way back when I was trying to break into comics, I remember working up a sample page featuring Thor. One of the panels featured a close-up of an angry Thor, yelling just prior to leaping on his foe while swinging his hammer. I had heard that comic artists sometimes shot photo reference, so I shot a Polaroid of myself making the face I wanted, trying to get it just right. The end result was a Thor face that looked a little too much like me! The lesson as an artist is that using photo reference, you have to be really careful that it doesn’t take over.
I’ve gathered that some Silver Age fans back when Thor was first coming out made the connection that he was kind of Marvel’s equivalent to Superman: being able to fly, having super-strength and virtual invulnerability. There’s also the aspect of him having been sent to Earth by his father. A less obvious correlation might be between Thor and the original Captain Marvel, as both characters make a big magical transformation to get from their civilian identities to their heroic ones.
Tomorrow’s the finale of Asgard Week. Who’s it going to be? You’ll have to come back to find out!
Hi Mark! Love the comics you’ve been sharing but really need to see some MIGHTY FORE! ? God bless you, buddy!
Thanks for stopping by Don! Glad you’ve been enjoying this stuff. Funny; I didn’t even think of The Mighty Fore when I did this, but you’re right; that could count as another instance of my drawing Thor, after a fashion.
Eons ago, for Don’s Parody Press, I did a split comic with one side featuring a parody version of Thor called The Mighty Fore. I inked and lettered the one cover myself, which you can see here. The Fore story was written by Lyle Dodd, penciled by me and inked by Wayne Faucher. There’s no lettering credit, but I’d suspect it might’ve been Kurt Hathaway (since he quietly did a lot of lettering for Don in those days).
I also penciled a short five-pager for this comic that Lyle wrote, called “Xarol, the Creature without a Schtick!” Inked and lettered by Sam Wray.
And there I was distracted from today’s image by some fun stuff. The twirling Mjolnir does it for me. Mjolnir spinning takes on an angelic sort of halo around Thor’s head, particularly since we do not see much of the hammer. Good one. Like you, I never got the complete Superman parallel. There were parts of me that first saw a “sane” Hulk. But the real Captain Marvel, or maybe even Jr. better, as Don had the disabled leg. At any rate, an amalgam for sure.
Now to find if any Mighty Fore’s are out there. Thanks Mark.
Glad you liked my Thor here. Some cursory Googling reveals that you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding a copy (it’s always an odd feeling when I go to a Con and see a dealer selling a comic I contributed to; kind of the same seeing one online). Don’t pay an arm and a leg for a copy if you don’t have to!