Review: Thunderstrike #4

Thunderstrike #4, “Evil Woman,” Cover Date January 1994
Written by Tom DeFalco, Penciled by Ron Frenz, Inked by Al Milgrom

In my previous Thor review, I comp’ed to never having been a big fan of the character’s solo series, emphasizing how at his worst, the character can be a little too similar to Superman with a funny accent. As such, I haven’t read much of Thunderstrike, so a lot of this information is second-hand.

Thunderstrike is Eric Masterson, an architect merged with Thor early in DeFalco’s run, echoing the “Dr. Donald Blake” alter ego of the silver age. Unlike other alter egos (except Captain Mar-Vell), Masterson kept his own personality, including an ex-wife and young son. For a time period, he served as Thor on his own, while Thor was exiled for killing Loki. After Thor came back, Odin created a new mace for Masterson. He debuted as “Thunderstrike,” a slightly less powerful 90’s version of Thor that got his own series in the 90’s.

Review: Thor #428

Thor #428, "If this be Juggernaut," Cover Date January, 1991
Written by Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz (plot), Penciled by Ron Frenz, Inked by Joe Sinnott

Thor is one of those ongoing series ideas that I never really understood. A perfectly acceptable supporting character in the Avengers, he's kind of limited by being a pretty hugely boring character who speaks in a strange accent. He's had an on-going series on-and-off for nearly fifty years, and outside of Walt Simonson's run, in which recognized Thor's blandness by focusing on a diverse supporting cast and less on Thor, the series has more or less been pretty forgettable for the majority of that time. That said, one of the better forgettable runs on the book probably belong to Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz, formerly of Amazing Spider-Man. The duo are perhaps best-remembered for their all-time classic Spidey story "the kid who collects Spider-Man," a story that could've so easily turned treacly, but managed to avoid it just long enough to bring on the waterworks for most Spidey fans. After leaving that book, the team stayed together elsewhere, moving to Thor post-Simonson, where their attempt to get around the "Thor is boring" problem was to introduce a new, untrained character into the Thor mythos. DeFalco and Frenz would later collaborate on an issue of "What If?" that featured Peter Parker's daughter, Spider-Girl, who would go on to have a pretty successful hundred issue run through the late 90's and 2000's that was a throwback to early Spider-Man stories, but with a bizarre influx of DeFalco's 90's Spider-Man work.

But enough preamble, let's get to the smiting!