Diggin’ Thru the Bins


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Tuesday, June 8, 2010


Steve Ditko's Thor origin story drawn for Charlton Comics.

I found this Thor origin story by Steve Ditko in a comic called The Saga of Thane of Bagarth issue number 24 from 1985 which was a reprint of an old Charlton comic from 1973. I’ve never seen or heard of it before.

I posted it on my back issue blog. Check it out!

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6 Responses to “Diggin’ Thru the Bins”
  1. Max says:
    June 9, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    Man, Thane of Bagarth is the best! I always see it as a backup feature in Glanzman’s Hercules comics. It’s an amazing time travel/ weirdo barbarian story that’s written by Joe Gill with art chores being handed off between just about everyone at Charlton comics during its heyday. I’ve only seen a few parts of it, but the parts I saw were drawn by Sanho Kim and Jim Aparo, and with Ditko in the Mix, I wonder how many artists worked on it and how long it is. Does anyone know?

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    • Rodrigo Baeza says:
      June 11, 2010 at 5:13 pm

      The episodes I’ve seen (in the same comic-book Frank has) were written by Steve Skeates, not Joe Gill. Don’t know if Gill eventually took over the character, though.

      Reply
  2. BobH says:
    June 10, 2010 at 4:29 am

    Ditko’s “The Hammer of Thor” is from OUT OF THIS WORLD #11 [1959]. One of several “Thor” stories in comics that preceded the most famous one, including some by Kirby that preceded 1959. THANE #24 is, somewhat surprisingly, the only reprint to date. Fun little story.

    Thane of Bagarth is pretty cool, too. Steve Skeates was the writer, actually, not Gill. Pretty sure Ditko didn’t draw any episodes, although around the same time he did do a story in a Warren magazine with a barbarian warrior named Thane. He returns in a few later issues. The Charlton Thane, I think, only ran as a backup in the HERCULES series from 1967-1969, with the first few chapters reprinted in that 1985 series. Aparo’s artwork is really good, you can really see the adventure comic strip influence in his work.

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  3. Frank Santoro says:
    June 10, 2010 at 9:00 am

    Thanks Bob!

    Reply
  4. Dan Nadel says:
    June 10, 2010 at 11:01 am

    Hey Bob — How many THANE stories are there?

    Reply
  5. BobH says:
    June 10, 2010 at 3:35 pm

    For the Charlton “Thane”, I think there are 13 stories, running as backups in HERCULES. I don’t have all of them, but the early ones are drawn by Aparo, the last few by Sanho Kim, and at least one in there is by the Charlton standbys Charles Nicholas and Vincent Alascia.

    If you meant the Warren one, I thought there were just three, CREEPY #15 (Goodwin/Ditko), #16 (Goodwin/Jeff Jones) and #27 (Bill Parente/Tom Sutton), but double checking here I just found out that Goodwin returned to write a swansong for the character a decade later in CREEPY #112, with Alex Nino drawing. I didn’t realize Goodwin returned to write a bunch of new stories at Warren in 1979/1980. I’ve got to get at least this issue, with stories by Williamson, Severin and Simonson (the first two with Goodwin) in addition to the Goodwin/Nino “Thane” finale..

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