Thor In Animation - A Retrospective
As with a lot of the old school Marvel characters, The Mighty Thor first appeared in animation in the 1966 Marvel Superheroes show, and like 3/5, has yet to receive his own animated show since. Never one of Marvel’s big guns in any form of media, The God Of Thunder now seems poised to be Marvel’s next big thing, with a rumoured appearance of some kind in Iron Man, along his own upcoming feature film and animated series, and of course, a place in Marvel’s crown jewel – it’s upcoming Avengers movie. Thor’s original venture into animation can only be described as limited. With little to no budget in place, the producers simply opted to add animation to the original comic panels, insert music, voices and SFXs and be done with it. It all depends on the viewers taste as to how well this works – if you’re a fan of Jack Kirby artwork and enjoy seeing Stan Lee’s stories brought to life, I imagine you’ll greatly enjoy these shows. It might be a little too cheap and cheesy for the rest of you. Personally I’ve always been give and take – I admit to struggling to fully watch The Incredible Hulk segment when Liberation released the DVD a few months back, as it was a little off putting to see consistently changing models and characterisation in the same show, only episodes apart. A lot of that steams from me not really appreciating the older Hulk stories, I prefer my Hulk stories as a mild mannered scientist on the run from the military while seeking a cure for his gamma related illness, which wasn’t really to be found in 60’s show, as he maintained his secret identity throughout… although, no one but Rick Jones was aware Banner was The Hulk in the 1980’s cartoon and that’s still the very best version of the character in my personal opinion. 
Having said that, I recently sat down and watched the entire 60’s Iron Man cartoon, and despite a bit of odd continuity, really, really enjoyed it. Then again, I was on an Iron Man high at the time and am a fan of the character – I freely admit I’m not a massive Thor mark, and don’t really claim to be very knowledgeable of the character – I’m not even sure what the characters origins are and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to correctly pronounce his hammer’s name. In short, dear readers, don’t expect a massively long Hulk/Iron Man/Spider-Man romance style retrospective here. Aside from his own 60’s show, Thor would also appear in both The Hulk and Captain America segments, as they guest starred The Avengers. If memory serves, it was actually the original Avengers in the Hulk show, and the revamped and the later incarnation, led by Cap in his show. He spent a lot of the episode in petty debate with The Hulk, who didn’t appear to be too found of Goldilocks but there wasn’t much more to it than that. Dr. Donald Blake, Thor’s human alter ego would make an appearance in the 1981 Spider-Man show, and Thor himself would make a quick, brief cameo on a television set as part of The Avengers, Peter Parker’s favourite TV show. I hope there was nothing revolutionary or important about either of these appearances, because I really don’t remember either of them. (I swear, I should just get Jon T to write this pre-90’s stuff, most of the time I really don’t know what I am speaking about!) Thor would make a full fledged guest appearance in Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends, the show that’s as probably as close to Marvel Team Up as we’re ever going to get. There’s plenty to be found about the show at MAA and www.spider-friends.com but for the ill educated amongst us, the show is based upon the adventures of Spider-Man and his college room mates, Iceman from The X-Men and newly created character, Angelica Jones, Firestar. Together as The Spider-Friends they thought the various villains of the Marvel universe and, as mentioned above, cameos and team ups from other Marvel characters were plentiful. 
The Vengeance of Loki sees The Spider-Friends travel to The North Pole under assignment from The Government (oh yeah, Iceman is actually a secret agent) where they meet up with Thor, who is trying to stop his brother Loki from stealing some diamond which will grant him great power when it’s reunited with some other diamond he already has. Spider-Man and Firestar don’t really do a great deal in the episode beyond getting captured and Thor is banished to The Desert Of Despair while Loki disguises himself as Thor and causes Chaos in New York. It’s not one of my favourite episodes, but it’s enjoyable enough. Thor’s design is a little off – the blue pants don’t quite work for me but the rest of it of it does. I usually love the models in this show, as more often than not they’re based on the artwork of the legendary John Romita. Sr. Since there were no appearances for him, or any other guest stars in The Incredible Hulk cartoon of the era, the next time we would see Thor on the television would be as part of television movie with him in a starring role. With Bill Bixby’s Incredible Hulk series ending, the show eventually came back with three television movies. One of them featured Daredevil and another Thor as backdoor pilots for television shows – neither of them was really that good and neither got the show commissioned. There’s not a lot to this movie or Thor/Blake himself but I thought it was worth mentioning all the same. There – I’ve mentioned it.
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