Reading Through 2021 92: Thor: The Black Galaxy, by Tom deFalco and Ron Frenz

Thor: The Black Galaxy (Epic Collection vol. 18), by Tom deFalco and Ron Frenz

1990, collected in 2019

When these comics were new, I absolutely hated them. I had many things to learn.

It's 1990. McFarlane is doing Spider-Man, Liefeld is doing New Mutants, and Lee is doing Uncanny X-Men. Walter Simonson hasn't been on Thor for a few years. This was a cold book to my teenage eyes. 

The brashness to label the first issue of a storyline a "saga"... So so good!

And I get why I didn't like it then. This was old school. Writer deFalco had been working under Jim Shooter, and was made editor-in-chief around this time. His policy as the head of Marvel Comics was to just keep doing what Shooter did. There is nothing in this book that would have been out of place in a 1980 Marvel book.

I'm here for it, Count Tagar. The inking here is incredible work by Joe Sinnott, but the colors on it pop as well

For me at that time, that meant the book lacked any freshness, especially compared to the soon-to-be Image artists that were the stars at Marvel. Thirty years later, I'm reading these simply as comics rather than as a barometer of the times, and they they read a lot better than, say, all of McFarlane's Spider-Man run. 

That's how you do a double-page spread

This work is a refined, classic Kirby homage with a quality of craftsmanship that would be hard to find today.  Frenz was an artist I loved on Amazing Spider-Man (he was the artist around the mid 200s, the time of the black suit Spider-Man), but he evolved into a much more retro artist on Thor. The first half of his run had Joe Sinnott inking with bold lines and dynamic feathering, giving it even more of a Kirby-esque vibe. And probably older Marvel fans were loving it, but at my comic shop, it was not part of the conversation.

Asgard crosses over to the Negative Zone

To really put this in perspective, two years later, Alan Moore would be making 1963 for Image, doing a similar homage to classic Marvel and be hailed for it. Around the same time, Mike Allred would also start mining Kirby, pairing it with ginchy kitsch and getting praised left, right, and center. At the very same time, deFalco, Frenz and Sinnott were making the real deal and getting no credit for it. The argument might be that Moore was choosing to make Kirby-esque comics, while the makers of Thor were simply making what they made, but that's a disrespectful argument. It's the same snobbery that gave Roy Lichtenstein credit for ripping off 50's comic art but not the artist who actually drew it, or gives a trendy restaurant credit for seeing the beauty in street food when it puts it on a nice plate and sells it at four times the price.

There's a bit of Kirby in this

No, this Thor run is the real thing, not a distillation of it. DeFalco and Frenz weren't slumming, they were being the thing itself.

This collection is the third of four Epic Collections that have most of their run. I have collection 16, War of the Pantheons, which I only bought because it was 50% off, and shocked me how much life and energy I found in it. I missed volume 17, In Mortal Flesh, and it's now unaffordable in the current Epic Collection collector's market. This volume is, relative to Epic Collections, pretty good. Some volumes have a lot of filler, and these don't. It starts with an annual which was not done by deFalco and Frenz, and it's not great. The annuals of the early 90s at Marvel were generally just places to give gigs to aged-out veteran artists or try out younger artists. Here, 70's Herb Trimpe does a competent but uninteresting chapter of a lackluster crossover.

I'm not going to dog on Trimpe's art. Instead, check out what Hercules does on his day off!

A number of the Thor issues in this were split in two with a back up Tales of Asgard story, written by deFalco  and drawn by someone I've never heard of, Gary Hartle. I think I get what he was trying to do, get a chance to write characters like Balder or the Warriors Three, and give Frenz and Sinnott some time to make deadlines, but these also just lack the energy of the main Thor stories.

The impact in panels 1 and 4 is amazing, but the perspective and composition in the third panel really puts you in the action

The main title goes through roughly two arcs in the course of the 18 issues contained in the collection, with some smaller arcs in between. The first arc is the Black Galaxy Saga, which really wears the Kirby on it's sleeve. Thor investigates an organic galaxy being researched by the High Evolutionary, and witnesses things no man has seen before.

Again, the colors! You couldn't do this better using Photoshop

It involves one of Kirby's greatest creations, the Celestials, and Frenz is more than capable of bringing an epic quality to the work.

Double-page spreads should blow your mind

After the saga has ended, Thor returns to earth and fights the Wrecking Crew, one of Kirby's much less interesting creations. There is a crossover with Excalibur where they fight at a New York pier, and for me, this was a lull in the book. Thor fighting at street-level in New York isn't half as interesting as him having adventures in space or in Asgard. I'm here for the crazy stuff I can't get anywhere else. I was losing interest, when suddenly Excalibur's mission to recapture the Juggernaut takes them to an alien planet where Juggernaut has been proclaimed the almighty leader. And just like that, I'm back on board!

The back of the book reprints some of Sinnott's original inks

All in all, I loved this book and am looking forward to more, with a few massive caveats. I love what deFalco and Frenz were doing here. It was authentic, high-quality old school Marvel Comics. They weren't trail blazing, but they were doing a great job on what they were doing. As the volume is ending, the atmosphere of the book starts to shift, and it's a little troubling.

That is a 2/3's of the page panel. Look at that ink!

The first is that Al Milgrim starts stepping in on inking duties. Joe Sinnott was a classic heavyweight inker. Milgrim was a Marvel editor whose art and inking I associate with books on a deadline. I'm sure he enjoyed the job, but he was always competent, never much more than that. I have volume 19, and having flipped through it, it seems like Milgrim became the regular inker. It's not a deal breaker, but Sinnott was a pretty key member of this creative team for me.

A double-page spread with Milgrim inks lacks a lot of the power of previous ones 

Another downturn for me was the appearance of a superpower enforcement police team. They don't have powers, they just specialize in cases involving powers, and they aren't inspired in any way. As a kid, I was never into G.I. Joe or any men in uniform type characters, so maybe they worked for others better than for me.

That's not gonna work on an Asgardian god, you fool!

Lastly, whether it was pressure from the bean-counters at Marvel, or simply deFalco and Frenz wanting to create something that'll connect with the kids, the book starts trying to be "cool" toward the end. Make no mistake, deFalco and Frenz were not cool guys. And their uncoolness is part of what makes this run so great. And I understand their impetus to make something that jives with the kids like Cable did. But it's not great stuff.

This probably lost as many readers as it gained. Maybe it gained a little more, since it was 1991

In the Black Galaxy Saga, deFalco tried writing a cool, young character, and the silence was deafening, the character swiftly disappeared to the planet Poochy went to. A god created mere days ago using youth lingo. It has strong "Hello, fellow kids!" energy.

Frenz gets credit for Juvan's hairstyle

That said, I think this is one of the best runs from the era. I had this image of Tom deFalco as a hack for most of my comic-reading years. Actually, I have that image of a lot of the artists and writers at DC and Marvel from the 70s and 80s. Mainly the guys who worked there until they got pushed out by younger styles. I judged them a lot on what they couldn't do, which was stay fresh and dynamic forever. Now that I'm in my 40s, I'm reading their work a lot differently, and not judging them for not appealing to 13 year olds forever. Looking at the work now, I see the craftsmanship and passion in it, but I also see the fun. It's when it's trying to be cool that it starts being very uncool, and losing some of that fun. 

"It's the nineties, pal! Those days are OVER!"

This book isn't flawless by any means, but it has a lot of great work in it. It's nearly 500 pages of Thor, and I'd estimate about 300 of those are awesome, and the rest ranging from mediocre to solid. But it's a must-read for anyone looking for a Kirby fix. Of course, go get the Kirby reprints first, that's the source, but if you are into Moore's 1963, or anything Tom Scioli does, this belongs on the shelf with those.

Thor gets political