MY FAVORITE COMICS - "Tales of Asgard" from The Mighty Thor # 97-145

Since I've been on a sort of Jack Kirby's Thor high lately here on the blog, I might as well save the best for last : the Tales of Asgard back-up. I loved how these regular five page short-stories expanded the world of Thor and tied up the current incarnation of the norse god of thunder to its original mythic roots with inventive abandon and creativity. My all-time favorite of the bunch? Why, the "The meaning of..Ragnarok"/"Aftermath!" two-part conclusion to the epic quest through the Sea of Fear. Grandeur unleashed!

MY FAVORITE COMICS - "The Scourge of the Super Skrull" from The Mighty Thor #142

This one gets a place on this pantheon merely on the virtue of the splash page and the following couple of pages. Thor on a race against a biker!? This is what made marvel so famous way back when: the surreal contrast between the mundane and the majestic... and Jack Kirby, of course :-)  

MY FAVORITE COMICS - "The Wrath of Replicus" from The Mighty Thor #141

Unforgettable! Everything falls so perfectly in place on the mere sixteen pages within which this comic takes place... Slugger Sykes... Mrs. Garden... Dr. Donald Blake. Don't let yourself be deceived by the violent splash page - this is one of the best examples of a morality tale played out within the superhero genre confines without subverting its conventions.

MY FAVORITE COMICS - "Spider-Man tackles the Torch!" from The Amazing Spider-Man #8

Remember when superhero comics were FUN? I do and this here comic is one of the finest examples I can think of. I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it when I first read it many years ago, but like fine wine it only got better with time. Highly recommended reading for all the ultra-serious people that seem to dominate the current superhero (and not only) comics scene!

MY FAVORITE COMICS - The Incredible Hulk #1-5

I was lucky enough to read all the first five issues of The Incredible Hulk as a kid and I still love every single page of them. Reading these feels like I'm watching missing episodes of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits. While not as revered by fandom as other works by the same creative team, there's a primitive quality about these tales, both in art and story, that has never been matched in the Hulk's subsequent stories - it's almost like there are two Hulk characters, the one by Jack Kirby on these issues and the one that has had a lengthy run done by several hired hands afterwards. There's an eeriness, an ominous mood about these tales that even today I find extremely captivating and that I've never seen on any other subsequent Hulk comic.

MY FAVORITE COMICS - "To become an Immortal!" from The Mighty Thor #136

The fact that many of my favorite comics from back when I was a kid were reprints from earlier times probably says something not only about my tastes but also about the enduring quality of those same comics. This one hits the motherload! We get Jack Kirby's art and storytelling at the height of his creative power and vision, Vince Colleta's scratchy ink lines, Stan Lee's verbose diarrhea, old cheap four color printing on pulp paper and a tale chronicling the final moments of the forbidden romance between a beautiful mortal girl and the norse god of thunder. What else could a seven year old kid possibly want?

MY FAVORITE COMICS - "The Origin of Doctor Strange" from Strange Tales #115

Why does Hollywood keep on redoing the origin of popular characters whose genesis everybody already knows? Why do origin tales inspire so much fascination among people? Could its source be the mysteries surrounding our own collective origins? Is there such a thing as a perfect origin story for a character? Whatever the answers to those questions might be, I know that one of my personal favorite origin stories of a comic book character is this short comic originally published in the 1960s. It entered my life many years later through a reprint when I was around seven. There was something so perfect about how everything came together on this one, from Steve Ditko's simple yet expressive drawings to the character journey of the arrogant doctor turned humble pupil. In fact, it's so perfect, I find no personal need for any further Doctor Strange stories.

MY FAVORITE COMICS - Fantastic Four #44-51

Widely regarded by many as the highest pinnacle of Jack Kirby's output at marvel comics in the 1960s, I read this sequence of comics through reprints scattered here and there that I managed to hunt through more than a decade, starting when I was around six years old. If you put aside all the continuity baggage and heritage these comics would develop later on and try to read them as purely as possible, it's like experiencing a dream: there's a rapid succession of developing events and unexpected characters that seem to come out of nowhere and you're never quite sure what to make of it or where it will all lead. Still, the story never stops making sense, even if in a nonsensical way, just like in dreams. The stakes just keep on being raised to ever more incredibly heights, starting with the introduction of an hidden race of superpowered creatures until the point where the protagonists are up against God on a conflict of biblical proportions, yet the human dimension is never lost. The characters still have to deal with everyday matters like getting a dish-washer fixed, falling in love, shaving, going to college or being depressed... Like I said, it looks and feels like a dream, blending the common with the incredible and blurring the edges between the real and the unreal. Trust me, looking back as an adult here's what I can tell you: superhero comics don't get better than this!