Our story today is a corker from 1968: “If Asgard Falls …” from Thor Annual #2, written by Stan Lee and drawn by Jack Kirby (with customarily perfect inks by Vince Colletta), the kind of fine hammy high fantasy that always best suits this strangest of all the original crop of Marvel superheroes Lee & Kirby dreamed up, a clean-shaven version of the Norse god Thor, incarnated in the present day as a crime-fighter and Avenger. Don’t get me wrong: Lee & Kirby were such a genius team that they could – and did – create believable scenes where Thor foils bank robbers and mad dictators. But it’s these epic fantasy stories that really allow both writer and artist to cut loose. Here at Stevereads, of course, we’ve looked lovingly at some of those epic fantasy stories, here, here, and here, for instance.

“If Asgard Falls …” is a prime specimen of both how juicy this kind of story can be and how frustrating it can be. The story opens in the fantasy realm of Asgard, home of the Norse gods, where the Tournament of Titans is about to take place, a grand tourney of mock-combat among all the warriors of the extended realms of Asgard, with the winner getting a golden suit of armor. In a charming, quintessentially Stan Lee moment, Thor is standing at attention in his father Odin’s chamber, trying to ignore the whispered calls of his friends outside the window while the old man rants and rants and rants:

Yet, well do I remember those hallowed days of yore … when the bludgeoning blade of Odin did strike with the fury of a thousand storms! ‘Twas then the summer of my life … when tall and straight as an oak stood Odin! And now, though minstrels still sing of Odin’s feats … while campfires flicker … thy father hat reached the twilight of his years … ’tis for the young to seize the torch of gallantry and hold it high! Thus has it ever been! Thus shall it ever be! Even the aging lion must one day allow the eager cub to lead the hunt!

“What is this?” Odin finally says, “The attention of the thunder god doth seem to falter!” (Well yes, you old windbag – just about anybody’s attention would) Instead of banishing Thor from Asgard forever in response to this minor infraction – as he’s done countless times in the past and will do countless times in the future – Odin waves off his impetuosity and lets him hurry to the Tournament.

Where foul practice is brewing! In parallel plot-lines, we see Thor and his comrades being thwarted by illegal sorcery in the Tournament even while Thor’s distant, banished brother Loki is sending his spirit-form to Earth in search of a great villain from an earlier Thor storyline: a giant indestructible suit of armor called the Destroyer (those who know the Marvel version of Thor mostly from the movies will recognize the Destroyer from the first of those “Thor” movies) that needs a guest spirit animating it in order to move – enter Loki, who wants to use the Destroyer’s enormous powers in order to take his revenge on Odin and Asgard. Why Odin left the Destroyer’s empty hulk lying around in the ruins of an Asian temple is never answered, but then, “If Asgard Falls …” has more unanswered questions than even Stan Lee usually comes up with.

Starting with the origin of the Destroyer itself. In this issue, Heimdall, the guardian of Asgard’s rainbow bridge, exclaims, “‘Tis the living engine of destruction … created ages ago by Odin himself in the long-forgotten past to guard the planet Earth from ultimate disaster!” And only one page later, Odin himself says, “He was designed to serve Asgard … to be the weapon supreme in an hour of need! Hence, it did please me to make him indestructible!”

But regardless of why the Destroyer was created, Loki’s plan at first looks to be going like gangbusters: he’s plowing his way through the warriors assembled for the Tournament, pressing on straight to Odin’s dais, intent on using the Destroyer’s energy powers to bump off the old man. Here at Stevereads, we’ve seen Odin menaced by the Destroyer in other storylines, and in “If Asgard Falls …” (no explanation for the title, either – whether or not Loki succeeds, Asgard’s not endangered, just Odin) the very idea fills Thor with horror. He springs to confront the Destroyer, and in an absolutely professional panel sequence, Kirby shows us Thor’s blitzkrieg attack, culminating with a temporary downing of the Destroyer (“Asgard be praised!” Thor says, “I have achieved the impossible!”).

But the only real way to defeat the construct is to defeat its animating spirit, and when Balder the Brave shows up at the last minute and tells Odin where he can find distant, exiled Loki, the key is clear – but, Balder wonders, is there time for Odin’s power to reach Loki and shut down his mind? To which Odin answers, “Banish thy fears! Am I not eternal Odin? Though the Destroyer be ready to hurl his bolt of death … ’tis I who possess the power to tear the very fabric of eternity! Thus at my command … let time stand still!”

And time duly does so. Why on Earth – or in Asgard, for that matter – the old goat didn’t just freeze time as soon as the Destroyer showed up (let alone why he was whining on about being old and feeble earlier on), we’re never told. Instead, he fires off a beam of energy that reaches Loki and puts him to sleep, thus causing the Destroyer to topple like a puppet with its strings cut. Then Odin, feeling uncharacteristically magnanimous, grants everybody a golden suit of armor for the day.

It’s a nifty, re-readable little story, one that sold well in 1968 and then sold even better when it was reprinted again in “Giant-Size Thor” #1 in 1975, this time sporting a classic Gil Kane cover that doesn’t even mention the Destroyer. And of course it’s been reprinted two more times, in the “Essential” series of black-and-white reprints and in the “Marvel Masterworks” series of color reprints. It stands as a classic example of the perennial problem of giving Thor a strong enough opponent to keep him busy.