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Many thanks to the work and inspiration of such luminaries in creative mythography as Dennis Power, Dr. Pete Coogan, Win Scott Eckert, Henry Covert, Kevin Heim, and Barry Ward.
The research conducted for this particular article was hampered by a certain degree of contention inherent within the community of scholars whom I work alongside of. That contention is in regards to how we should deal with a study conducted of any individual who has claimed to be a deity, considering how there has been a resurgence of polytheistic religious faiths over the past few decades that may find our conclusions offensive. Further, those who do believe, as well as those who don’t believe, could well manifest a bias—albeit in opposite directions—when confronting an issue that has the potential to be so emotionally charged. Hence, the resultant debates could short-circuit the synapses of an empath with their sheer level of projected ire. However, the matter may not lend itself to one side being right and the other wrong, for the evidence would appear to suggest that there are multiple explanations for several self-proclaimed deities who have laid claim to a moniker that is familiar to those who have studied both ancient world mythology of various cultures, and those who study modern Neo-Pagan theology.
There is one camp amongst the esteemed scholars of Wold Newton University who believe that all tangible beings who have claimed a divine status were in actuality either humanoid extraterrestrials from deep space or extratemporals of distant alternate future time tracks, each utilizing advanced technology to simulate vast supernatural powers to people of a less advanced world or time period; or, immortal humans or posthumans who used their great power to simulate the feats or veneer of a deity. In deference to this camp, let’s face what appear to be some incontrovertible facts that all the attendant research has uncovered: Some so-called deities were indeed aliens from distant worlds or anachronauts from future timelines; and others have indeed been immortals and posthumans indigenous to that time and this planet. After all, we have a world where humanoid aliens like the Capelleans and the Eridaneans had been running rampant for a long time, fighting their usually covert but no less spectacular war amongst mostly unsuspecting humanity. And moreover, we have a world filled with immortals of the “Highlander” variety, and those who operate as the congress controlling an incredibly far-reaching and influential secret society such as the Council of the Nine (often simply referred to as the Nine). The Nine have often claimed to be stand-ins for ancient Pagan deities of world mythologies, including one of their tribunal, Xau Xaz, taking on the name of Odin, the father of the Asgardian thunder god Thor, the main focus of this article. [1]
On the other hand, other research has turned up compelling evidence that there may be advanced non-human intelligences that are vortices of energy from higher realms of reality deeply connected to the material realm we live in. These intelligences may take on humanoid appearances, distinct personalities, and varying levels of power over specific natural phenomena or cultural/metaphysical concepts that are relevant to a given culture of people. These vortices of intelligent otherdimensional energies somehow appear to form a psychic and spiritual symbiotic relationship with people of various cultures and locations across time and space. Thus are born entities who can be called deities, or gods and goddesses. These powerful beings tend to build the equivalent of a societal and hierarchical structure that largely mirrors that of the human culture whose collective belief, reverence, and worship they form this psychic symbiosis with, albeit on a much grander scale. Hence, a celestial city like Asgard and several connecting realms—i.e., the Nine Realms of the Norse cosmology—develops and comes into being much as human city-states and villages are gradually constructed by the hands of these deities’ mortal worshipers.
The true nature and complete origin of these centers of powerful intelligent energy who have developed this reciprocal relationship with different human societies are effectively unknown. However, once various tribes of these beings coalesce into existence in their respective otherdimensional realm of very fluid physics, they seem to exist more or less permanently, though the degree of power and influence any given pantheon of deities have over the society they have psychically and spiritually bonded with--as well as the material world in general--appears to be dependent upon the level of worship, belief, and reverence directed at them at any given time. As noted, these beings do seem to form distinct tribes, for want of a better term, with some degree of as yet unexplainable familial connection with each other much as human societal units do. Further, as one may expect, their followers tend to perceive their deities as having humanoid-like genetic relationships that occur via the exchange of sexual congress and periodic reproduction that mirror their biological counterparts in the material world. The deities will even seek to form personal human-like social relationships, such as emulating monogamous marriage, child-rearing, and basic forms of morality and ethics that closely mirror those of the human tribe who reveres and psychically bonds with them.
As a result of mimicking humanity so closely, the deities form majestic societies that are readily identifiable to human cultures and institutions. In fact, according to Norse myths, the Asgardians are actually comprised of two separate tribes of these intelligent beings, the Aesir of Asgard and the Vanir of Vanaheim, who allegedly merged into a single tribe after a war between the two resulted in a standstill. Hence, one must wonder how often this has occurred with other pantheons, as well. [2]
Which brings us to Thor, the mighty warrior god who wields the powerful enchanted battle hammer Mjolnir. He is said to be the much-revered son of Odin and Jord, the latter apparently one of the many guises of Gaea, the reputed life-force of the planet Earth itself. The sentient, almighty life force of the planet is said to be able to coalesce into physical or quasi-physical form, and to act as a progenitor of beings of extraordinary power who act as defenders of this world. This includes, according to the beliefs of the Mothraerian religion, the legendary guardian daikaiju who is imagined to take the form of a truly colossal female lepidopteron after first spending time in a monstrous larval stage after hatching from an enormous egg-like structure. [3] Thor is simply a human-looking form of divine being believed by some to have coalesced out of this primal planetary bio-mystical energy, as are the great majority of major deities. Other, lesser deities with limited domains may be particularly potent and stable tulpas. It should be noted that this doesn’t hold true in a universal sense, particularly when one examines deities like the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, who is believed to appear in the form of a gigantic feathered flying serpent, much more resembling a daikaiju than a standard deity; if such a being exists in any form—or once did—his origin may be more inherently similar to that of Mothra than Thor.
Evidence has been uncovered by scholars with a heavy degree of understanding of the mystic and metaphysical arts that deities of the sort described above can manifest in two different ways on the material realm, where they take a semblance of physical form. This is more a temporary measure to enact a powerful but relatively fleeting interaction with the material realm. In other cases, at least certain deities can embody themselves in a physical sentient being, most easily a human of the same genetic bloodline of those who have bonded with their particular pantheon via devout worship in a metagenetic fashion since antiquity. They most often do this at the moment a human infant--usually of the appropriate gender and proper bloodline--is born, basically taking the place of their soul for a spark of divinity. This grants these newborn individuals the potential to eventually evolve past their common humanity, and to gain a limited portion of the deity’s power, knowledge, and memories. The latter type of manifestation on the physical realm—i.e., embodying themselves in a human infant of the proper bloodline at the moment of birth—is designed for a much lengthier form of interaction with the material realm. In the latter case, the actual deity split a portion of his/her divinity for this purpose, while leaving his/her main portion in whatever realm their pantheon normally inhabits. In this way, they can still aid and receive psychic tribute from their remaining worshipers, while their lesser "split off" aspect directly involves themselves in material affairs on a continuing basis (more on this below).
However, deities generally tend to manifest on the material plane in either of the two aforedescribed methods only under special circumstances, or during periods of time that represent pivotal points in the history of Earth (such a time was the late 20th century into the present of the early 21st century, when major changes in the human thinking process took place, resulting in—among many other things—a resurgence of belief and reverence given to the polytheistic pantheons of old, and the general emergence of many alternative spiritual systems to the three Religions of the Book). This is because true deities of this type have to deal with two major limitations if they take on such temporary physical personifications despite the obvious advantages of doing so (e.g., direct physical interaction with the material plane and its inhabitants).
The first limitation is that they are unable to wield their full level of power in such a form. The second limitation is that despite being far more difficult to injure or slay than a mortal human being (to varying degrees, depending upon the individual deity in question), they are nevertheless capable of being killed in such a form if they receive a sufficient degree of injury; if this happens, it can have severe psychic repercussions on the actual immaterial entity that makes up the sum total of the deity in the other-realm that he/she normally inhabits (e.g., Asgard, Olympus, Celestial Heliopolis, etc.).
Embodying themselves in a human infant from birth can be particularly risky, especially if the human in question is somehow killed or rendered comatose by a serious injury prior to manifesting a portion of his/her divine attributes. The deities who lead the pantheon will often try to “curve” fate to prevent this from happening, but not even the most powerful of deities in the cosmos can control the power of orlog--i.e., Fate--entirely. Nor can even the most prescient oracles amongst these beings anticipate every possible contingency that can manifest in the future. Nevertheless, certain specific deities will tend to take this risk, often at the behest of the leaders of their pantheon, if the latter deems the time period and/or the general purpose of such a prolonged material manifestation to be sufficiently important.
In regards to the main focus of this article, the Asgardian thunder god Thor, the 20th century up to the present--the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century at this writing—was replete with multiple material manifestations of this deity. This was partially due to the fact that his father, Odin, conceived him with the Earth Goddess (it's not actually known if they copulated in temporary humanoid physical embodiments, or did so metaphysically in immaterial energy form) largely for the purpose of acting as a defender of Midgard (the Asgardians’ word for Earth, the materially manifested realm of humanity).
The first time Thor was known to have manifested himself in a material sense on the Earth plane in the 20th century was during a 1942 incident involving a Nazi summoning. The infamous and brutal Nazi military leader Johann Schmidt, known to the world as the Red Skull, took advantage of the fact that the modern Germans are the descendants of the Teutons, who worshiped the Asgardian deities in ages past (though they called them by different names than the Vikings did; for instance, they referred to Thor as Donar, and Odin as Woden). Consequently, the German mystics serving the Third Reich were of the proper bloodline to claim fealty to the pantheon of Asgard, and to summon them to their aid. This occurred during a time when an enclave of Nazis in Axis territory were under siege by a contingent of one of the “All-Star” military groupings of special posthuman agents sent by the U.S. on behalf of the Allies. Consequently, Thor took immediate temporary material embodiment, assisted by the energies summoned by the Nazi mystics. In this instance, the “All-Star” contingent consisted of special agents such as Captain Steve Rogers, a.k.a., Captain America, and Namor the Sub-Mariner, which is why the Nazi enclave needed the help of Thor. In the course of the battle, however, Captain Rogers managed to convince the thunder god that the Nazis were responsible for many evils, including the confinement of people belonging to various minority groups to slave labor and execution in concentration camps, and attacking other sovereign nations unprovoked. Once this was proven to the thunder god, Thor’s inherently strong sense of honor caused him to conclude that he had no choice but to abandon all support of the Nazi regime despite their bloodline. He then returned to his incorporeal state and resumed his place in the Asgardian dimension. [4]
However, it was later revealed that this temporary physical embodiment was animated by but a portion of Thor’s sum total incorporeal aspect, because another portion of his total being was embodied—for the first time, at least as of the 20th century—in a male infant of the Blake bloodline born around the same year. This newborn was named Donald “Don” Blake, who grew up an intelligent and bold but humble young man who was deprived of any chance at being athletic after being struck by an automobile in his early childhood. This accident severely fractured his right leg and part of his hip; they were surgically repaired, but he was unable to walk without a very distinct limp for the rest of his life. Blake nevertheless struggled to deal with this infirmity, as he did well in his academic studies, but he was often plagued from late childhood onwards by vivid dreams full of strange beings and imagery--including a symbol resembling an inverted capital “T” and the rune character Thorisaz (both of which serve as symbols of Mjolnir). These visions eventually combined to make him “realize” he was in actuality the Norse god of thunder embodied in human form. His Nordic bloodline--descended from many of the high priests/priestesses, warriors, and farmers who worshiped Thor in ages past—made him the ideal host for Thor’s divine life-force from a meta-genetic standpoint. [5]
For what is hypothesized to be a myriad of reasons, Odin had decided that the late 20th century was the time for the Norse deities to once again begin building a power base on Midgard. The All-Father and his powerful otherdimensional tribe were no longer content to allow the upstart monotheistic religions to be the dominant spiritual influence on the people, politics, and sociology of the Earth realm, especially since such important events as the Harmonic Convergence, the Crisis, the Demon Castle War, and the Millennium were rapidly approaching. Furthermore, the mischievous and sometimes outright malicious trickster deity of the Norse pantheon, Loki, had already attempted to do his own manipulations on the Earth plane since the early part of the 20th century, having once materially embodied himself by taking possession of the form of an evil human wizard during the 1950s; in that form, he clashed with a glamour model who was serving as an avatar of the Greco-Roman deity Venus. [6]
However, Odin was ahead of this by dispatching part of his son Thor’s essence to bond with the life-force of the infant Don Blake at the moment of his birth, effectively replacing his original human soul with one that was quasi-divine, as described above. Because Blake had not yet fully manifested his inherent Thor identity in the 1950s, Odin was forced to manipulate events so as to insure that Venus stepped in and stopped the trickster deity instead, lest his antics compromised some of the All-Father’s plans to restore human interest and impetus to revere the Norse deities in the new era (something he had been gradually working towards by arranging the genesis of Neo-Pagan reconstruction religious systems, such as Asatru and Odinism). However, when the young Blake began revealing to both family and friends that he believed he was a material incarnation of the Norse god Thor, he was considered an embarrassment to them, and his statements often caused him to become ridiculed and ostracized by others. Blake found himself unable to effectively prevent this treatment despite his innate courage due to his physically lame and non-athletic status. He did his best, however, to keep his loneliness and trauma secret, while studying Norse mythology incessantly and pouring his time into his studies, hoping for a career in either physical therapy or nursing.
Soon after reaching his 21st birthday, Don Blake succeeded in gaining a nursing degree. However, around this time, he also became increasingly aware of the deity he actually was--or, rather, whom the unique personality he developed in the course of his human life shared a persona, a life-force, and a destiny with. He found himself becoming increasingly politically aware during this time, sympathizing with the plight of the common human, developing a strong desire to improve the political and economic structure of the world so as to make it a better place for the human race he felt a strong innate desire to protect. Ultimately, he hoped to help the entire human race ascend to a higher level of existence. He began developing a strong interest in alternative belief systems and lifestyles, as well as supporting the legalization of drugs for recreational use, even going so far as to turn a blind eye towards co-workers in the hospital whom he knew were illegally selling various pharmaceuticals on the side. Nevertheless, his proclamations to godhood and other eccentric ways failed to endear him to most people he knew, including a fellow nurse named Jane Foster, whom he developed a strong interest in. All of these things, coupled with the continued visions he was subject to whenever he tried to sleep, eventually resulted in his having a nervous breakdown, forcing him to seek hospitalization and psychiatric treatment.
During the course of his clinical stay in the mental hospital, the psychiatrists who treated Blake became convinced that he was suffering from severe schizoid effective disorder and possible schizophrenia, which they felt to be responsible for his hallucinatory visions and the odd beliefs that appeared to develop from them. In addition to the medicine he was prescribed to help control the condition that his doctors believed him to be afflicted with, Blake was told to pull together his considerable savings and take an extended vacation for relaxation before resuming work as a nurse. For reasons related to his studies of his heritage, he felt a strong compulsion to travel to Scandinavia for his vacation.
Blake quickly recovered from his fugue upon arriving in Norway, which he found himself inexplicably enamored of, as if it was where he truly belonged. Taking a hike in a small wooded area, he found himself drawn to a cave he came across, which he felt an inexplicable compulsion to explore. While doing so, he found what appeared to be an ancient battle hammer of Nordic origin lying upon a slab of rock, as if it had been set there for the express purpose of him finding it. Overcome by curiosity, Blake lifted the hammer to examine it closely, and he found himself enveloped by a powerful electrical field of mystical origin that proceeded to fully unleash his godly attributes within the limits his material human form allowed: His height and musculature were greatly augmented as they and his skeletal structure increased in density, granting him posthuman physical attributes; greatly extending his life span while in this physical body; causing his full knowledge and memory as the thunder god to emerge and completely combine with his mortal persona; and for his life-force to fully link with the enchanted hammer Mjolnir (or at least a physical simulacrum of the hammer his worshipers envisioned him as wielding). As a result, Blake truly became a material embodiment of Thor, and his psychic linkage with this hammer granted him complete control over its mystical properties. [7]
Soon afterwards, Blake, now calling himself Thor, put his newly manifested power to the test when he defeated a trio of large semi-humanoid aliens with a skin of rock-like consistency who were the advanced scout of an interdimensional incursion from a strange alternate reality version of the planet Saturn that existed in a pocket universe. Following the defeat of the “Stone Men from Saturn” (a world they referred to as Kronus, though no relation to the Klingon homeworld of the same name), Thor spent the next decade gaining fame by battling various menaces that threatened innocent lives, including the various manifestations of the trickster deity Loki (who has a love/hate relationship with Thor, and considers him an errant “brother”), as well as supporting many progressive and outright socialistic movements of his time after moving back to the United States. During this era, he also successfully romanced Jane Foster, but that romance ended after a few years when Thor failed miserably in an attempt to confer godly power upon her so she wouldn’t be confined to a mortal existence and lifespan.
Also during this era, Odin utilized the assistance of the death goddesses known as the Valkyries to gather the essences of three ancient fallen warriors of great skill and spirit—which included a Celtic warrior named Fandral, a Mongolian warrior named Hogun, and a very portly retired warrior of English descent (said by some to be the essence of Falstaff himself) named Volstagg—and joined them to the life-forces of two modern police officers and a football player so they could manifest their ancient skills with the weapons they specialized in on the material plane. Their physical attributes were enhanced to a slightly posthuman level in the process, and they were sent to aid Thor in some of his exploits. This trio of Asgardian life-forces linked with human beings referred to themselves collectively as “The Warriors Three,” and they became close friends with Thor in addition to reliable allies when called upon.
Notably during this decade, Thor battled a superhumanly strong and repugnantly evil incarnation of Mr. Hyde, a member of the Jekyll family who was able to re-formulate a derivative of his infamous ancestor’s serum, and who utilized the alias of Calvin Zabo for his professional lab work. This version of Mr. Hyde often allied himself during the ‘60s and ‘70s with the criminally inclined herpetologist Klaus Vorhees, who synthesized a serum from snake biology during his attempts to develop a universal antidote for all snake venom, which upon testing on himself granted him enhanced flexibility and speed, thus enabling him to actually constrict human beings to death with his body, and to evade capture with great alacrity. Vorhees, who may be related to another infamous branch of that lineage [8], also developed various means of administering snake venom to his adversaries as a weapon. Donning a gaudy looking uniform made out of synthetic snake skin and calling himself the Cobra, Vorhees struck up a partnership with the brutal Mr. Hyde, with the two often fighting together against Thor and sometimes other heroes, like the 1970s incarnation of Daredevil, until the partnership ended after the two evil men suffered a major falling out.
Also notably, other pantheons of deities began manifesting temporarily and embodying themselves in human beings on the Earth plane between the 1960s and the present. During the ‘60s, Hercules from the Greco-Roman pantheon appeared on the scene, seemingly embodied in a permanent human form. Seeking to parlay his prodigious physical prowess into a film career, this boisterous but basically benevolent embodiment of the Greco-Roman “prince of power” once battled Thor, but soon afterwards became allies with the thunder god when the latter elected to defend the Olympian warrior when he was manipulated into signing a bad contract by the death god Pluto, who temporarily possessed a respected film director. Since then, other members of the Greco-Roman pantheon, such as Mercury and Athena, have likewise appeared in human embodiments on the material plane, as have Egyptian deities like Isis and Horus. [9]
Later in the decade, Thor encountered the goddess Sif, who had been physically embodied in a human girl since birth, and having manifested a portion of her godly powers and a formidable sword to go with it, was also synchronistically "arranged" to run into Thor. This material incarnation of Sif became both Thor’s lover and another battle companion when needed (in the Norse myths, Sif is said to be the wife of Thor). Stories of Thor’s exploits were picked up and published in a highly fictionalized form by the then fledgling modern version of Marvels Comics, formerly Timely and Atlas, beginning several months after Thor’s initial appearance to the world. This series of fictionalized and exaggerated stories were published in Marvels’ sci-fi comic Journey Into Mystery Vol. 1, which was eventually given an eponymous re-titling to reflect Thor’s feature role in it. [10]
The later research of Prof. Win Scott Eckert uncovered how this first 20th century physical embodiment of Thor met his demise around circa 1972 after being displaced back in time to the year 10,000 BC while pursuing Loki through a series of Asgardian caverns that contained a temporal anomaly. Initially arriving back in the Hyborean Age in an amnesiac state, Thor (suffering from a further loss in power) encountered and battled the legendary warrior indigenous to that era known as Conan of Cimmeria, with this conflict ending in a stalemate and a brief friendship between the two. While aiding Conan against the powerful Hyborean sorcerer Thoth-Amon, Thor—whose physical embodiment was even more susceptible to death in this ancient era before worship of the Norse deities even began—was fatally injured during his battle with Thoth-Amon. Before dying, Thor bequeathed his hammer to Conan, asking his friend and ally to take it to his own god Crom as a symbol of the bond that humans and deities of later ages would form between each other, and Conan attempted to honor this request. [11]
As revealed far later, Crom apparently placed the hammer deep inside another cavern, where Don Blake’s nephew Gilbert Donald Blake, an archeology student, would be drawn to via “suggestion” from Odin circa 1988 AD (more on this below). In the meantime, Thor’s godly essence departed the slain physical body he had inhabited for many years, and was restored in a catatonic state to his core energy aspect existing within Asgard. Since this quantum-based energy can easily transcend time and space (unlike physical matter) Odin of the then present (i.e., circa early 1970s) was instantly aware of his son’s corporeal demise despite the fact that it technically occurred many millennia in the past.
Desiring to re-create a physical embodiment of Thor as quickly as possible, Odin chose a proper receptacle for part of Thor’s essence in the leader of a biker gang of Nordic descent named Red Norvell. Like many bikers of the time, Norvell was predisposed to having a violent temper, but he had a good degree of redeeming qualities and even an outright sense of nobility in his character. Further, he had a strong natural rapport with the thunder god due to his following the exploits of Don Blake’s godly alter-ego in the newspapers and paranormal zines like Fate and Omnibus over the past decade; in fact, Norvell named his biker gang the Sons of Thor, and their symbol of choice emblazoned on their leather jackets was the inverted “T” symbol signifying Mjolnir.
Upon being joined with the essence of the actual Thor, which Norvell learned about via an extended psychic visionary tutorial by Odin in his sleep, the biker found a new physical version of Mjolnir materialize in his midst, which was bonded to his life-force. He then abandoned his high-rolling days to continue the mission of the original physical embodiment of Thor to the best of his abilities. Norvell did a fairly good job of this for the next few years, until Loki teamed with an otherdimensional enemy of the Asgardians known as the Mangog to prematurely initiate one of the cyclic cleansing Ragnarok events that would destroy Asgard and the current iterations of the Norse deities, so they would be replaced by new versions. With this scheme, Loki hoped he could manipulate the force of orlog to make him the ruler of the new version of Asgard that would emerge from the chaos of this latest Ragnarok event. Though Loki’s attempt to twist Fate to his own ends was thwarted by Norvell as Thor--with the assistance of a sorceress named Karnilla, who was acting as an agent of the Norns (the Norse interpretation of the triune personification of Fate or Kismet)--the prematurely catalyzed Ragnarok had to be carried out to its end. During the course of the resulting conflict, Norvell heroically sacrificed his life in a fierce otherdimensional battle with the dragon known as Jormangand the Midgard Serpent. [12]
By the time the 1980s decade had rolled around, Odin once again wanted a materially manifested incarnation of his thunder god progeny to be active on Midgard/Earth to deal with the travails that were afflicting the human race at the time during the build-up towards the Millennium, soon after which another cyclic Ragnarok event was due to occur. [13] He accomplished this desire by having a portion of Thor’s sentient godly essence merge with neo-hippie construction worker and peace guru Sigurd Jarlson, a native of Norway who had immigrated to America for work. Ecstatic to share his consciousness and life-force with Thor, Jarlson eventually more or less abdicated his form and Earthly assets to the needs of the thunder god, who continued his crusade for changing the world for the better via progressive social activism and direct confrontation with threats to freedom and the safety of human beings against both mundane and paranormal menaces. The latter threats included continued conflicts with Loki during his frequent material manifestations via possession of various human beings; the Nordic witch that took the coven name Amora, who lusted after Thor but failed to win his heart; and the powerful dark elf from the realm of Svartalfheim known in legend as Malekith the Accursed, who once attempted to use an ancient mystic relic resembling a golden casket to focus the energies of his human worshipers into creating a severe global blizzard to ravage the Earth’s ecosystem.
Also during the decade of the 1980s, this incarnation of Thor faced off against Dracula-Prime shortly before the Vampire Lord’s temporary destruction via the Montesi Formula when the Prince of Darkness targeted the material embodiment of the goddess Sif; formed an alliance following a brief rivalry/conflict with the noble alien warrior who possessed an enchanted hammer similar to his own known as B’etaa’Rae’B’ll (whose name was whimsically twisted in various sources, including the Thor comic book, as “Beta Ray Bill”); assisted the Legion of the Strange and the Monster Squad against different menaces, including a band of posthuman assassins targeting posthuman mutants; a golem-like creature possessed by the spirit of a dark elf called Kurse; found himself subject to a horrid necromantic spell that rendered him unable to heal from any injury or die, as a result of invoking the wrath of the Norse death goddess Hela; and ultimately managed to resist that curse to die heroically defending the world from yet another attack by Jormangand the Midgard Serpent, who was released onto the Earth plane as an aftereffect of the back-to-back transdimensional events known as the Crisis and the Harmonic Convergence. [14]
However, as the 1980s drew near a close, a very interesting phenomenon occurred: Another Thor emerged onto the scene courtesy of one of the many relatives of the Blake family, in this case Dr. Gilbert Donald Blake, Ph.D., a young archeology professor who was fascinated with the alleged family history of his Uncle Don, whom he knew was said to share a life-force with the legendary thunder god. As a result of intensive research, Gilbert Blake discovered a very ancient cavern with runic inscriptions and a stone temple in an area corresponding to some unidentified location in modern Scandinavia. Upon penetrating into the cavern on his own, Blake discovered where, 10,000 years previous (evidently on this same timeline), the now long-obscure deity Crom had placed the skeletal remains of Blake’s famous, time-displaced uncle, as well as the physically manifested version of Mjolnir given to the Hyberean deity by Conan at the dying Thor’s request; the hammer was laid beside the body to honor the fallen god.
Blake’s spirit somehow felt a psycho-magnetic ‘attachment’ to his deceased relative’s body (which still contained Blake lineage DNA, as well as residue signatures of Thor’s godly essence), and he felt a compulsion to grasp and lift the hammer. Upon doing so, he found that not only could he lift the hammer despite Odin’s enchantment that only a living being who was worthy could do so (thus obviously implying, on some level, that Gilbert Blake was worthy), but he also felt a second compulsion, to visualize the sum archetypal essence of Odin and shout the All-Father’s name aloud. Upon doing so, the hammer formed a direct conduit to Odin’s divine essence, which combined with the magickal electricity within the hammer to tap into the DNA of the deceased deity’s former physical embodiment before him so as to somehow construct a living duplicate entity. Having only a portion of the memories of the original Thor from the 1960s due to the extremely long millennia that had passed, thereby causing even his purely spirit-based memories to “atrophy” to some extent. This second revived Thor and Gilbert Blake struck up a sort of symbiotic mystical relationship where their life forces were bonded, though not actually merged, as had been the case with Blake’s uncle and the thunder god a few decades earlier. Gilbert Blake found that he could also use the hammer at will to discorporate this new version of Thor, presumably by sending his mystically re-assembled atoms to an area of Limbo, and then summon him back to corporeality again by repeating the process with the hammer described above.
Shortly after this, Blake ran into an old colleague of his, Dr. David Bruce Banner, Ph.D., a biologist who suffered the curse of transforming uncontrollably into the green version of the Hulk whenever he was sufficiently angered or pained. At first, this new version of Thor and the Green Hulk knocked heads with each other due to yet another incidence of the much chronicled sociological phenomenon amongst posthumans known as the Misunderstanding Melee, but Thor was soon impressed with the prowess of the Hulk and ended up assisting him and his human alter-ego in the latter’s attempt to rescue his girlfriend from kidnappers. After this, Gilbert Blake told David Banner that he was going to continue using his symbiosis with this second Thor to battle evil in honor of his uncle’s memory, as well as allowing Thor more time for recreation on the material plane via partying and women so as not to treat him simply as a living weapon. [15]
The further exploits of Gilbert Blake and this incarnation of Thor as a team of two semi-autonomous individuals remain unrecorded in any current report, but this was not to be the last we heard of them nevertheless.
Also around the close of the 1980s, after the Thor-possessed form of Sigurd Jarlson sacrificed his physical form and life to deliver an equally fatal blow (or so it was then believed) to the Midgard Serpent, Odin collected the essence portion of his thunder god progeny and gave it a new mortal vessel: The virtuous architect Eric Masterson, whose lineage was not largely Nordic, but was a close friend and colleague of Sigurd Jarlson who also became a friend of Thor. When Masterson was fatally injured in the course of an altruistic act, Odin saved the heroic mortal’s life by bonding Thor’s essence with him. The noble nature of Masterson readily accepted the bond, realizing there was no other way to survive despite his loss of independent existence, and he was also eager to restore Thor to the world.
For the next several years into the 1990s decade, Masterson operated as the Thor of this era, but sometime after this Odin decided to grant the two heroes a fully autonomous existence from each other. Hence, the portion of Thor’s essence that possessed Masterson’s body was extracted by Odin and coalesced with that of the other material Thor manifestation who was bonded to the life force of Gilbert Blake. This merging created a single being where there had once been two (albeit, two versions of the same being who each possessed a portion of the same godly essence). [16] Gilbert Blake gave his well wishes to this single, “whole” version of Thor who no longer needed the former’s guidance in the mortal world, and Prof. Blake returned to his archeological studies full time, his whereabouts since then unknown.
As for Eric Masterson, his continued health was maintained by Odin using his great healing powers to stabilize the architect’s condition and having the master metalsmith dwarves Brokk and Eitri create the template of a metallic mace (this strangely manifested mystical metal was referred to by some mystics and metalworkers as uru), which they christened Thunderstrike. Fully materializing the template of this mace into corporeal form, enchanting it with his power, and bonding it to Masterson’s life-force, Odin’s psychic “voice” bade the still injured Masterson to grasp the mace in his hand, thus fully suffusing his mortal form with a fraction of Odin’s power. This act not only fully healed Masterson, but it also granted him a measure of posthuman physical prowess that, while inferior to Thor, was still enough to render him quite powerful from the point of view of a normal human being. As Masterson now operated largely independently of his friend Thor, who returned to his work as a guru for self-improvement and outspoken advocate for progressive politics in addition to fighting various paranormal threats to the human race. Masterson, wielding Thunderstrike, battled crime in the environs of New York City for a few years until he lost his life after falling under the “death curse” of a materially manifested embodiment of Seth, the Egyptian god of evil, who had possessed the body of a human geneticist. [17] The mace Thunderstrike was apparently destroyed in Masterson’s climactic battle as part of his final altruistic sacrifice, but rumor has it that slivers of the weapon’s uru metal were gathered by people working for Thor and later mystically re-forged into components of a new weapon, an enchanted telescoping baton. The rest has reportedly been reforged into a new version of the mace that was given to Masterson's son, Kevin; further research on this needs to be conducted.
Shortly before the end of the 1990s decade, this incarnation of Thor was dimensionally displaced during a conflict involving the Order of the Secret Defenders and the quartet of posthuman adventurers known as the Four. The two teams joined forces in an attempt to stop Christoff Van Damme, the successor of the scientifically and mystically gifted but thoroughly twisted Victor Von Damme, a.k.a., Dr. Doom, from merging an alternate Earth artificially created via purloined technology of the ancient beings known as the Long Gones with the “mainstream” Earth. Such an event was easier to accomplish at this point in time due to the closeness of the Millennium, which would have enabled Von Damme to take over the Earth as the legendary ‘Anti-Christ’ figure. Thor managed to thwart Van Damme’s efforts, but only at great personal sacrifice. [18]
Following the tumultuous events of the Millennium, in the early ‘00s Thor’s essence was collected by Dr. Strange working in concert with several other formidable mystics (including Dr. Fate and Dr. Mist), and the master mage manipulated a paramedic named Jake Olson--a great-nephew of the esteemed former editor-in-chief of the Daily Planet newspaper James Olson, and second cousin of popular twin actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley--into agreeing to provide a physical conduit for Thor’s essence. This was something the Strange Doctor could get away with since the Norse deities were then indisposed following a surprise attack on Asgard by the essences of an alien pantheon of deities simply referred to in mystic circles as the "Dark Gods" (but believed by some techno-pagans and cultists to have been the forces of Darkseid, the legendary ruler of the hellish otherdimensional planet called Apokolips, in an attempt to trigger yet another premature Ragnarok event). Strange also hoped the newly revived thunder god would be indebted to him as a result of this, but Thor quickly resisted this involuntary “debt.”
After locating and liberating the essence of his fellow Asgardians from the clutches of the Dark Gods, Thor returned to the physical realm to resume his previously described activities. However, with the seeming dispersal of Odin’s essence following a mad scheme by Loki to set the cosmic fire demon Surtur free from the confines of his fiery realm Muspelheim, Thor left the Earth plane. Thus, he abandoned the company he formed to provide him a P.R. platform and publish his books and articles (World Tree Inc.), along with his physical embodiment entirely, to return to Asgard to rule the enchanted realm in his father’s stead. Upon absorbing the sum total of Odin’s power (i.e., the "Odinpower"), Thor took the throne as the new All-Father of Asgard. However, his restoration to non-corporeal form was followed by dictatorial decisions connected to his refusal to stay out of Earthly affairs in a direct manner. Attempting to materially manifest Asgard in the skies above the Earth and take over the planet so as to save it from itself, as well as put paid to Dr. Strange for his previous manipulations of the thunder god, the master mage retaliated by recruiting a large contingent of his Secret Defenders to prevent this from happening. The end result of this conflict was the Strange Doctor and his sorceress lover Clea finding themselves forced to stop Thor by using a set of powerful Asgardian baubles called the Norn Stones to initiate another Ragnarok event to wipe out the present incarnation of Asgard and its divine inhabitants.
That incident resulted in a slight "reboot" of history where Thor’s essence was displaced over 20 years in the past so as to merge with the life-force of another newborn member of the Blake clan, Donald “Don” Trenton Blake, a nephew of the Don Blake who acted as Thor circa the 1960s. Don Trenton Blake was a college student struggling to earn his degree so as to become a nurse practitioner. Soon after starting his junior year of college, Blake was suddenly hit with an unexplainable psychic compulsion to jump on a Greyhound bus and travel across the country to a lone desert area in Nevada where the physical embodiment of Thor’s hammer appeared to crash land in the middle of the sandy dunes a few days earlier. Knowing of his uncle’s incredible reputation, Blake was quick to answer this compulsion, and true to his belief, he proved the only individual out of dozens of people who were unsuccessfully attempting to lift the enchanted weapon to actually succeed in doing so. The moment he did this, Blake’s body was entirely suffused with Thor’s essence (which was stored in energy form within the hammer). He then set off on the goal to locate his fellow Asgardians, as he knew their essences had been embodied in human infants at the time of their birth much as he had been since early in the 20th century. He realized that by now they would likely be manifesting posthuman attributes, and at least part of the latent memories and knowledge they possessed as organic avatars of the Norse deities.
First using his hammer to absorb the psycho-schematic template of Asgard, Thor traveled to a secluded area outside of a small Oklahoma town called Broxton that was known for being a “window area” to magickal and paranormal events/visitations. There he hoped to take advantage of the arcane energies extant there to aid him in materially manifesting Asgard in its newest cycle to date following the latest Ragnarok. Then, using his hammer as a locator device, along with the resources of his company World Tree Inc., he sought and located many of his fellow Asgardian deities in their human embodiments. The mortal forms they were embodied were typically in their early adolescence to early 20s. This was the point in their lives when most of them were able to regain most of their divine memories and acquire posthuman attributes and natural abilities commensurate with their nature as physically manifested deities. This included Thor’s old allies Sif, the Warriors Three, and Balder. Unfortunately, Loki was likewise so embodied, and he was soon to emerge on his own, whereas his daughter, the death goddess Hela, escaped the destruction of Ragnarok by hastily placing her essence in the body of a wealthy hedonistic casino owner in Las Vegas.
The embodied Asgardians (sans Odin) quickly populated the physically reconstructed version of the Asgardian landmass hovering a few feet above the ground in Broxton under the rulership of Balder, where they were able to manifest quasi-material forms for lengthy periods. Thor continued to attend to his chosen missions in the greater Midgard, taking back the reins of World Tree Inc. in the process, until the warrior Volstagg was framed by a disreputable government agent into an incident that took many innocent human lives. This was done to give the corrupt director of the Ordnance’s elite contingent of covert posthuman agents known as Task Force X (gathered together via the black ops "Project: Thunderbolt"), Nelson Osborn, the excuse he needed to lead a presidentially unauthorized assault on the materially manifested Asgard over the rural outskirts of Broxton, a mission that he called Operation: Siege. A fierce battle ensued with great losses on both sides, until the President of the United States, learning of this illicit breach of his command, contacted CIALD director Bruce Wayne and had him organize a group of posthuman soldiers gathered from the Bureau (under the program called "Project: Ultimate Justice") to aid the embattled, quasi-manifested Asgardians in repelling the illegally attacking agents of Task Force X. Thor himself soon arrived and entered the fray. Unfortunately, the materially manifested Asgard was destroyed in the assault by a well-placed Sentry Missile, but the agents of Task Force X were effectively neutralized, with the now insane Nelson Osborn taken into federal custody. [19]
FOOTNOTES
[1] See The Nine and Other Legendary Immortals: Gods Among Men?, Prof. P. J. F., Wold Newton University Press, 1979. See also Prof. Dennis E. Power’s online article Triple Tarzan Tangle. Some of this author’s own research appears to suggest that the enigmatic but powerful immortal manipulators known as the Council of the Nine (often referred to simply as ‘the Nine’), had actually formed mystical bonds with the true incorporeal Norse deities of Asgard. They utilized the power they extracted from this magickal symbiosis to empower and enhance the effects of the elixir they created from now-extinct herbs to confer near-immortality upon themselves, and other abilities as well. In return for this, the Nine acted as representatives of the godly pantheons on Midgard, not only re-enacting the various myths on the Earth plane with their actions and schemes, but engaging in various other activities on behalf of the deities they represented. This included organizing certain early Teutonic tribes on the Asgardians’ behest so that these primordial higher energy intelligences would sustain their existence and influence via a large grouping of human worshipers and spellworkers. The eventual leader of the Council of the Nine, XauXaz, gained his ascendancy within the group due to eventually spiritually bonding with Odin, the recognized king of the Asgardians; towards this end, he absorbed small but potent degrees of this Sky Father deity’s power, effectively becoming an long-existing avatar of Odin on Earth.
This explains why XauXaz said that he was actually the Odin of Norse and Germanic mythology (the latter of whom referred to the All-Father of the Asgardians as Woden); in a certain sense, this was the truth. But when the Nine’s manipulations of history became thoroughly corrupt and self-serving in their persistent attempts to create their vaunted Undying God, they were later believed to have been abandoned by the members of the Norse pantheon whose corresponding avatars were the other eight members of the Council of the Nine. This had the effect of weakening their overall power base enough so that the adventurers Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban were more readily able to defeat them during their epic clashes in the late 20th century. For more on this, see Philip Jose Farmer’s three reports, A Feast Unknown; Lord of the Trees; and The Mad Goblin. See also Farmer’s report Time’s Last Gift for research regarding the nature of Lord Greystoke’s travels back in time from an alternate future of 2070 to the distant past of 12,000 BC that led to the Nine using the extratemporal jungle lord as their inspiration to create the Undying God. That plan ultimately led to their manipulations in causing Lord Grandrith and Doc Caliban to be born as deliberately crafted parallels to Lord Greystoke (a.k.a., Tarzan) and Dr. Clarke Savage (a.k.a., Doc Savage).
[2] See “My Gods! Are Thor, Hercules, and the Rest For Real?”, Zatara, Giovanni, Omnibus magazine, 1982.
[3] See Divine Goddess Mothra, Yamato Press, Ikeda, Kimiyo, 2001. This is yet another example of the diverse forms divine beings can take in the eyes of those who worship and/or revere them.
[4] See The Occult Atrocities of the Nazis, Obsidian Press, Blood, Jason and Druid, Anthony, 1972; and Ordnance File #221-Omega, compiled by Captain Steven Grant Rogers, uncovered and released to the public by Wikileaks, 2009. See also Roy Thomas’ reports “Thunder in the East” and “A Time of Titans,” which were published in a highly fictionalized form by Marvels Comics in The Invaders Vol. 1 issue #’s 32 & 33 respectively.
[5] See articles “Metagenetics” and “Genetics & Beyond: Metagenetics – An Update”, McNallen, Steven A., The Runestone, 1983 and 1999 respectively. Please note that this author, while believing that research does point towards the basic validity of the meta-genetic concept within the morphic field that encompasses the sum total of humanity from our very genesis to the present, I do not agree with all of Mr. McNallen’s conclusions. My prime disagreement with his doctrine is the tenet which decrees that bonds based on ancestral lineage alone are necessarily the strongest. This is because the different races and diverse ethnic variations of each have very frequently intermarried throughout the many millennia of the human race’s existence, which means that no bloodline or continuation thereof is truly “pure.” Further, individuals from different ethnic groups and races, and allegedly even those originating from different planets or dimensions (likely with a little scientific assistance), have formed strong and unbreakable emotional and spiritual bonds with each other on a level that transcend mere genetics. Hence, this strongly implies that bonds on the emotional, mental, and spiritual levels can oftentimes transcend anything limited to the physical realm, such as genetics, at least under specific but fairly frequently recurring circumstances.
This does not invalidate the conception of metagenetics entirely, but merely suggests that the boundaries as described by an author who supports a separatist (albeit not racist) ideology may have over-simplified these boundaries to fit his personal belief system. Though it may well be likely that a Norse deity can more easily embody his/herself in a person who is a member of a specific genetic lineage who had long ago forged a powerful transcendental bond with the energy resonance comprising the core of the Norse pantheon of gods, these deities—and those of other pantheons—have clearly formed strong bonds with individuals who were not of direct Nordic or Germanic descent, and even with some who were not of any distinctly European heritage. These mortal individuals claimed to have been aware of some natural but indefinable rapport on a deep spiritual level with the Norse (or other) pantheon of deities from an early point in their lives, which may not have become completely clear until sometime later. This may suggest that these individuals have a more mixed ethnic or even racial lineage, semiotically speaking, than they are readily aware of. Otherwise, they may have somehow formed a bond with the Norse deities for eschatological reasons that cannot yet be explained. For instance, all races and ethnic groups of humanity are descended from a single distant ancestor.
[6] See The Girl Who Was Venus, Herself, Harlequin Press, 1969. This book by a once popular and glamorous model who is said to have channeled the power of the Greco-Roman deity whose name she took as a stage identity during the 1950s for a variety of purposes--everything from influencing romances, furthering her modeling career, spreading the word of peace, and opposing various criminal and paranormal menaces, including this embodiment of Loki—has been long out of print, but worth seeking out at used book stores for the info it provides. The exploits of the model called Venus were published in fictionalized form by Atlas Comics during the ‘50s, which she felt was good publicity for her career, but whose inaccuracies she hoped to clear up in her 1969 memoir. Of course, Marvels Comics, the popular successor to Atlas, has continued to portray Venus in a highly fictionalized form in their various Agents of Atlas mini-series, along with guest appearances in other comic books they published during the ‘00s (the Agents of Atlas are based upon an early 1950s incarnation of the group of posthuman misfits who would later become known as the Legion of the Strange, whom Venus was sometimes associated with), but this time the comics allege she is a siren who took on the identity of a Roman deity.
[7] Various reports have been documented about the zany though often technologically advanced denizens of these otherdimensional pocket universe variants of the planets and other celestial bodies we are familiar with from our own solar system. These invasions occurred as a result of such strange aliens invading either the version of Earth that is indigenous to those pocket universes, or sometimes launching a small-scale interdimensional invasion of the Earth we live on, possibly not realizing in at least some cases that the Earth they invaded was not the one of their own reality. These sometimes unintended dimensional displacements may have occurred due to inadvertent contact with the Gordian Anomaly that makes space travel within the near-vicinity of numerous dimensional versions of Earth hazardous to even the most advanced star-faring technology.
The incredible degree of difficulty to detect this recurring spatial anomaly accounts for the many unexplainable malfunctions and crashes of both Earthly and advanced alien spacecraft while traveling near Earth, or some cases of dimensional and chronal displacement while doing so [see upcoming article, “What’s Up With All Those Alien Spacecraft Crashing On Earth?” for the full skinny on the uber-hazardous Gordian Anomaly]. Reports of these otherdimensional pocket universe aliens--who can hail from any of the worlds or their attendant moons and other celestial bodies within those strange variants of the Sol system (including various asteroids and mini-planets like Sedna and Pluto), but who most often seem to be from strange dimensional variants of Mars--have appeared in reports such as Glenville Mareth’s adaptation of Paul L. Jacobson’s file SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS and Larry Buchanan’s file MARS NEEDS WOMEN. A well-documented otherdimensional variant of Mars accessible to the Earth of this universe via astral projection into a duplicate corporeal form, referred to by its many species of sentient denizens as Barsoom, has been described in many files: The earliest of these were Edwin Lester Arnold’s report Gulliver of Mars (a.k.a., Lieutenant Gulliver Jones: His Vacation) and the several initial reports by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the first being titled A Princess of Mars.
[8] See various files listed under the Friday the 13th master folder for more info.
[9] The exploits of this material embodiment of Hercules, whose original human identity is unknown (but reported via some unsubstantiated rumors to be a B-class actor with the suspicious-sounding Harry Cleese), have been recorded on and off in highly exaggerated form by Marvels Comics from the 1960s to the present, as well as files such as HERCULES IN NEW YORK (though the latter file has various apocryphal claims). He has reportedly performed various covert missions for the U.S. government under the sporadic temporary “Justice League” teams under the auspices of the Ordnance's "Project: Avengers" through the years, as well as periodically renewing his interest in a film career. Different psychically acquired stories of this Hercules’ exploits in disparate alternate future time tracks have been filed, and also published in likely exaggerated comic book form as Hercules Unbound by DC Comics in the mid-1970s and Hercules Vol. 1 by Marvels Comics in the early 1980s.
Hercules’ brother Olympian deity Ares, the god of war, has also appeared in embodied form on Earth, at first temporarily in possession of certain human beings during the 1960s-1980s, where he sought to foment wars and clashed with Hercules, Thor, and Wonder Woman under different incarnations; exaggerated versions of his machinations were published by both Marvels and DC Comics. More recently, Ares appeared permanently embodied in material form via a bonding of his essence with a human infant a few decades ago, and cooperating with the Ordinance's "Project: Avengers" on certain covert missions requiring the services of posthumans. Most of these latter exploits were published in heavily fictionalized accounts by Marvels Comics.
Mercury apparently had a short temporary embodiment during the early 1940s for a few important select missions on behest of Zeus/Jupiter, and these were recorded in exaggerated form by Timely Comics. He soon had his essence de-corporealized to mystically possess and confer his power of speed upon a human college student named Jay Garrick, who then sometimes served the Allies as a member of various temporary covert “All-Star” teams of posthuman soldiers. Garrick, who became known as “the Flash,” also had fictionalized adventures of his published in comic book form during that time by DC Comics. This story has been retold in extremely fictionalized form by DC Comics in the early issues of their master file Earth 2.
Rounding out the Greco-Roman embodiments at this point are reports recorded as recently as the previous decade of Athena being embodied in human form, where she took up the identity of Athena Olympios in contemporary New York City and battled various threats to humankind. Most recently, she took an active role in the 2012 “Prophecy” event to counter the destructive predictions of the ancient Aztec calendar. Her various files have been published by Dynamite Comics.
A collection of files concerning an embodiment of the Egyptian goddess Isis were published in highly exaggerated form both by DC Comics and in a report called THE SECRETS OF ISIS (a.k.a., ISIS) during the 1970s, where the powerful goddess had apparently embodied herself in the mortal form of school teacher Adrian Thomas to fight the usual threats against humanity; and then later during the 2000s embodied as a Middle East refugee of good heart and soul named Adrianna Tomaz. For a short period of time, Tomaz was a positive influence on Teth “Black” Adamajhaid, the powerful sorcerer and influential ruler of the tiny Middle Eastern nation of Kahndaq until his regime regrettably imploded under circumstances too complex to go into here.
Other examples of materially embodied deities—both temporary and for lengthy periods via bonding with humans from birth—from various sources are also on file, and may yet warrant an essay of their own in the future.
[10] The comic books featuring Thor that were published by Marvels Comics in an on and off again status from 1962 to the present—which began in Journey Into Mystery Vol. 1 #83--fictionalized most of the events editor Stan Lee and his brother, scripter Larry Lieber, collected for sheer entertainment value, including great exaggerations of the level of super-strength and power that Thor possessed (much as rival DC Comics did with Superman, Captain Marvel/Shazam, Wonder Woman, and others), as well as the scope of many of his exploits. They also fudged certain details, such as claiming that his enchanted hammer could appear in the guise of a wooden walking stick rather than just a miniature version of itself; implying that Thor’s mortal identity was a top notch physician specializing in surgical procedures rather than just a skilled nurse and medic; making alterations to his personality by eliminating its many eccentricities and causing him to act more stereotypically “god-like,” including initially having him speak in hoary Shakespearean verse to suggest a generically archaic way of speaking; depicting all of the Asgardians and deities from other pantheons as having a natural existence as physical beings in most cases; and divesting his mortal person from all of its then-contemporary counter-cultural characteristics, including depicting him as only acquiring long hair when reverting to his Thor identity, and leaving out all aspects of his “hippie” lifestyle. In actuality,Thor apparently could revert to his mortal form again if need be, but with his hammer attaining the appearance of a metallic key chain rather than transmogrifying into a wooden cane; he spent much less time in his vulnerable human form than was implied in the highly fictionalized comic book version of his life; and he never at any point preferred the comparatively simplistic life of the mortal Don Blake to that of an actual deity embodied in human form.
In the comic book stories, Lee and Lieber had Odin embody Thor in the form of Don Blake to teach him humility, even though in actuality this was but one of many equally important reasons that the thunder god was involuntarily embodied in Blake’s form at this specific point in time. Moreover, it was actually accomplished sans the convoluted means of creating Blake that the comic books periodically invented for the sake of clarity. Rather, part of Thor’s godly essence was simply merged with Blake’s own life force upon his birth; he was never an artificially created human. Likewise, he spent much less time in the U.S., and more time in his native Scandinavia, during the course of both his heroic and political work, than the comics implied. Additionally, versions of the Warriors Three and Sif were incorporated into the comic book version, and these four individuals would periodically unite and similarly aid future material incarnations of Thor. Notably, the political aspects and controversial lifestyle choices of Thor’s life on the physical plane were entirely left out of the stories that Marvels Comics published over the years, until writer Mark Millar made a more realistic depiction of Thor as a person for Marvels Comics ‘Ultimate’ line of comics, beginning with The Ultimates Vol. 1 in the early ‘00s.
[11] See Alan Zelenetz’s report “What If Thor of Asgard Had Met Conan the Barbarian?” as published by Marvels Comics in What If? Vol. 1 #39. I owe many thanks to further research from Prof. Win Scott Eckert for uncovering the full story behind this trans-temporal incident, which he published in his tome Crossovers Volume 1.
[12] Many details regarding Red Norvell’s stint as Thor were changed in the Thor comic books published by Marvels Comics in the 1970s storyline featuring a variation of his story. Believing readers would not warm up to the leader of a biker gang due to the large number of such violent motorcycle-riding criminal gangs then plaguing the highways of America--such as Hell’s Angels, the Satans, the Born Losers, the Hellcats, and the Pink Angels (there is even a report by Michel Levesque claiming that there was a biker gang during this era whose leader and his girlfriend were infected with a mystical curse-induced form of lycanthropy)-the writers of the comic book story arc dealing with Norvell as Thor changed his status to make him a reporter.
For more info on the dangerous biker gangs who rampaged across America during the 1960s and 1970s—some of whom were dispatched by the heroic activities of those such as martial arts master and former soldier Billy Jack and master stunt cyclist Evel Knieval, as well as random individuals such as Vietnam veteran Johnny Martin—see R. Wright Campbell’s report HELL’S ANGELS ON WHEELS; Al Adamson and Greydon Clark’s report SATAN'S SADISTS (a.k.a., NIGHTMARE BLOODBATH); Tom Laughlin and Elizabeth James’ report THE BORN LOSERS; Tony Huston and Robert F. Slatzer’s report THE HELLCATS (a.k.a., BIKER BABES); Margaret McPherson’s report THE PINK ANGELS; Michel Levesque’s report WEREWOLVES ON WHEELS; and Alan Calliou’s file EVEL KNIEVAL.
Although Norvell had red hair and a beard & mustache, much as Thor was depicted as having in mythological texts, when his fictionalized story arc was completed in the Thor comic of the 1970s, the “original” Thor was said to be back, and he was once again depicted with blonde hair and sans a beard and mustache, which were attributes of the Don Blake incarnation.
[13] The cyclic nature of the Ragnarok event may be endemic, and entirely natural and necessary to the nature of reality in the realm of Asgard. Though such a periodic cataclysmic and cleansing event is not explicitly known to afflict the godly denizens of other such extradimensional mystic realms—e.g., Olympus or Avalon/Otherworld—such events have been known to afflict other reputed extradimensional godly realms, such as those said to exist as part of a ‘Fourth’ incarnation of a dualistic realm of technologically-inclined deities who inhabit twin but polar opposite spheres co-habiting in the same realm; they are referred to as New Genesis and Apokolips. These yin/yang quantum realms were described as part of 20th century folklore by the techno-pagan movements, various transhumanist orgs, and transcendentalist movements; and described in various tomes, most prominently Legends of the Fourth World by Kirby, Jack, National Press, 1970. Kirby would soon go on to write and illustrate fictionalized tales of these ‘New Gods’ that were published by DC Comics in titles such as The New Gods; The Forever People; and Mister Miracle; they would continue to be periodically published under new creative hands to this day.
[14] These events were also depicted by writers and artists in a highly fictionalized and exaggerated form via the Thor comic book published by Marvels Comics during the 1980s decade. The consequences of the Crisis and the Harmonic Convergence were only explicitly reported in other sources, however, including a mini-series published during that decade by DC Comics concerning the former entitled Crisis On Infinite Earths.
[15] See Nicholas Corea’s report THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS. Certain aspects of this report were fictionalized, such as this version of Thor being described as simply a resurrected Viking warrior of fully human origin who called himself "Thor" in honor of the warrior deity. It should be noted that other members of the Blake family had careers in various scientific fields, and it was clear that “Donald” was a popular name to be given to males in the genealogy as either a forename or a middle name. This may suggest a particularly famous or esteemed member of the lineage named Donald Blake going back prior to the 20th century.
Another such member of the family was a research scientist named Prof. Donald Corman Blake. Just several years before his similarly named nephew in the medical field became the Thor of the 1960s, Prof. Donald Corman Blake had been inadvertently involved in a ghastly incident: The discovery of the preserved form of a mutant sub-species of coelacanth that had been subject to heavy exposure to the same specific gamma radiation frequency which caused members of the Banner lineage to transform into versions of the Hulk. Prof. Blake was exposed to the creature’s irradiated blood, and thus mutated into a murderous sasquatch-like primate, which forced others who knew Prof. Blake to kill him in self-defense; that incident was described in Jack Arnold and David Duncan’s report MONSTER ON THE CAMPUS.
This member of the Blake family, and his familial connection to the Don Blake who became Thor, was uncovered via the research of Prof. Barry Ward. Prof. Ward has theorized that the obvious presence of the ancient, extraterrestrial mbwun virogen that alters the genetic components of various lineages to allow members of these families to undergo various types of therionthropic transformations when exposed to certain stimuli of either a supernatural or scientific nature—including a certain mysterious but specific frequency of gamma radiation whose particles emit a greenish glow when viewed under laboratory conditions; I have referred to as the Frequency-13 level of gamma radiation. The carcass of the mutant coelacanth that mutated Prof. Blake may have suggested a connection between the Blake lineage and that of the Banner and Jekyll genealogies. This is because, Prof. Ward conjectures, both of those families had latent mbwun viral alterations in their chromosomes that allowed more than one member of their clans to metamorphose into powerful monstrous forms (albeit of different distinct appearances between the two clans) due to various scientific stimuli, which was chemical in one case. and radiation in another.
For info on the Jekyll lineage, see Prof. Dennis E. Power’s multi-part series of Hyde and Hair articles. Among the more infamous of the Banner clan and near-relatives whose mbwun metamorphoses were triggered by Frequency-13 gamma radiation was Dr. Robert Bruce Banner, the Gray Hulk; Dr. David Bruce Banner, the Green Hulk; and Jennifer Walters, the She-Hulk. For one posthuman scholar’s interpretation of the tragic Banner family based on his research, see Prof. Dennis E. Power’s online article on the Hulk.
Marvels Comics likewise produced different volumes of a long running Incredible Hulk comic book series from 1962 to the present, but they presented highly fictionalized and exaggerated versions of actual tales mixed with entirely fictional stories that, among other things, conflated the Robert Bruce Banner and David Bruce Banner versions of the Hulk, in addition to other members of the Banner lineage, into a single entity with a single consistent but somewhat convoluted backstory. More realistic depictions of the David Banner Green Hulk were recorded in a series of files by Universal also called THE INCREDIBLE HULK.
[16] The two different incarnations of Thor who existed at the same time for a few years, the differences in their personae, and their subsequent re-merging were acknowledged in an almost completely fictionalized and metaphorical manner further into the 1990s in the short-lived “Heroes Reborn” line of comic books published by Marvels Comics, specifically their title The Avengers Vol. 3.
[17] For a time during the 1990s, reports of Masterson’s exploits were picked up by writers and artists who worked for Marvels Comics, and fictionalized versions of these incidents that greatly exaggerated the scope of Masterson’s power and influence on various events into a relatively short-lived comic book named after the hero’s mace, Thunderstrike. During his fairly brief tenure as a mortal conferred with a portion of godly power, Masterson was occasionally recruited by Dr. Stephen Strange for his Order of the Secret Defenders to perform various missions, as a result of Masterson becoming indebted to the ‘Master of the Mystic Arts’ due to the sorcerer giving the mace-wielding hero pertinent information on how to secure his son from any retribution by Seth. Nevertheless, Masterson’s son was later said to have acquired a re-forged version of Thunderstrike, and some of his father’s godly power.
[18] This incident was told in a file that was highly fictionalized for both entertainment and disinformation purposes by a confluence of researchers/writers—Peter David, Chris Claremont, Joe Casey, Joe Kelly, and Fabian Nicieza—entitled Heroes Reborn: The Return, and published by Marvels Comics. For information on the Four, whose exploits were told in highly fictionalized and/or exaggerated accounts throughout the years under a variety of writers by DC Comics as The Challengers of the Unknown and by Marvels Comics as The Fantastic Four, one should see the research presented in this online article by Prof. Dennis E. Power.
[19] The destructive Operation: Siege was told in highly fictionalized and exaggerated form for both entertainment and disinformation purposes in Brian Michael Bendis’ file Siege, and partially in Kieron Gillen’s file Thor: Siege, both of which were published in illustrated story format by Marvels Comics.