Journey into Mystery #85
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeJourney into Mystery #85 is one of the most consequential single issues in the Silver Age Marvel canon, delivering Loki — Thor's scheming adoptive brother and the Marvel Universe's definitive trickster villain — to readers just two issues after Thor's own debut. Beyond Loki, the issue simultaneously establishes Asgard, the Bifrost Bridge, Heimdall, Balder, Tyr, and the first named mention of Odin, effectively constructing the entire cosmological scaffold on which decades of Thor storytelling would rest. It also introduces Mjolnir's composition as the fictional metal Uru, a detail invented wholesale for the comics and woven permanently into Marvel mythology. Loki would go on to become arguably Marvel's richest villain — a character complex enough to anchor his own Disney+ streaming series — and every version of that character traces its lineage directly to this thirteen-page story.
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The Thor feature in Journey into Mystery was a collaboration among editor Stan Lee, his younger brother Larry Lieber (who scripted dialogue under Lee's plots), and penciler Jack Kirby, with Dick Ayers providing inks; the issue was distributed to newsstands in August 1962 bearing an October 1962 cover date. Because Marvel's policy of crediting creators on story pages had not yet been instituted by the time this issue went to press, no in-story credits appeared, a situation noted by longtime Marvel editor Tom Brevoort, who characterizes the creative division as Kirby largely plotting and penciling while Lieber scripted. The indicia lists the publisher as Atlas Magazines Inc. — reflecting the transitional moment between the Atlas and Marvel identities — and the book still carried the format hallmarks of the era, including mandatory two-page prose text stories (this one a reprint of a 1956 tale from Marvel Tales #148) required for second-class postal mailing privileges.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First Silver Age appearance of Loki (the God of Mischief), Thor's adoptive brother and primary antagonist; technically a pre-Silver Age version of Loki had appeared in Venus #6, but Marvel now designates JiM #85 as Loki's first Silver Age appearance.
- First appearance of Asgard and the Bifrost Bridge in the Marvel Universe, establishing the Asgardian cosmology that has underpinned Thor comics ever since.
- First appearance of Heimdall (Warder of the Bifrost), Balder, and Tyr; first named mention (cameo) of Odin, lord of the Asgardian gods.
- First time Thor's hammer Mjolnir is identified as being forged from the fictional metal Uru — a name invented for the comics, with no basis in actual Norse mythology.
- Written by Stan Lee (plot) and Larry Lieber (script), penciled by Jack Kirby, inked by Dick Ayers, colored by Stan Goldberg, and lettered by Artie Simek; two backup stories in the same issue feature art by Don Heck and Steve Ditko respectively.
- The Thor lead story was loosely adapted for the 1966 Marvel Super Heroes animated television series, with that production combining it with a later issue to fill the required runtime.
- The main Thor story has been reprinted many times, including Journey into Mystery Annual #1 (1965), Marvel Masterworks #18 (1991), the Marvel Famous Firsts: 75th Anniversary Masterworks Slipcase Set (2014), True Believers: Kirby 100th (2017), Marvel Tales: Thor #1 (2019), and the Mighty Marvel Masterworks: Thor Vol. 1 (2021), among numerous international editions.
- The first part of the Thor story was expanded and retold in Thor: First Thunder #2 (2010), reflecting the issue's continued importance as a foundational text for the character's mythology.
Key issues in Journey into Mystery
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