Thor #205: Review

Nov 1972

Gerry Conway, John Buscema

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Story Name:

A World Gone Mad!

Review & Comments

Rating:

Thor #205 Review by Peter Silvestro (October 12, 2022)

Review: Thor fights opponents Mephisto keeps throwing at him. The adventure is nice though the villain’s attacks lack subtlety; the sneakiest he becomes is when he reveals that had Thor actually hurt any of his friends, he would have been damned for eternity. The theological implications are questionable, though clearly the Norse Gods have no place for repentance and forgiveness in their doctrine, despite having seen Aesir and Vanir pardoned by Odin in the past. Anyway, the issue works as a mindless action epic, a little less so if one puts any kind of thought into it.

Comments: Part two of two parts. The whereabouts of Tana Nile and Silas Grant, kidnapped with Hildegarde, will be revealed in issue #211. Mephisto’s faithful servants are identified at the Marvel Database and include Adolf Hitler, Jack the Ripper, Blackbeard, Attila the Hun, Genghis Kahn, Benedict Arnold, Rasputin, and Eric the Red. The letters column includes ones by future Starlog writer David McDonnell and comics blogger Rick Keefe.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Thor #205 Synopsis by Peter Silvestro

Mephisto welcomes Thor and Sif to Hell, having kidnapped all of Thor’s friends and a multitude of men from all the nations of the Earth as part of a scheme to conquer the world. Thor gets testy so the villain sets a pack of demons on him which Thor easily bests. For the second battle, Mephisto has the mind-controlled Sif attack Thor so the Thunder God seizes and restrains her to protect her from harm. Mephisto then demonstrates how he is going to have the kidnapped men of the Earth possessed by his demons so as to create chaos. And then the next opponents for Thor to fight is the mind-controlled Balder and the Warriors Three (and presumably Hildegarde, who is present but not seen at this point). Thor conjures up a whirlwind to carry his friends to the top of a mountain and cover it with boulders to contain and protect them. Mephisto then introduces the Legion of the Lost, a cadre of evil world leaders and dictators. First up, Thor is attacked by the Nazi army as led by Adolf Hitler then a force of Huns led by Attila. Thor defeats them all easily but the villain is determined to have his soul as well as the Earth so he sets the multitudes of the Legion on him and Thor spends hours fighting and defeating them. When the assault stops, Thor attacks Mephisto directly, the baddie seizes his wrist and burns him severely and demanding his profession of loyalty to Mephisto for him to stop. Breaking loose, Thor refuses and takes the foe in a headlock and hurls him into a sulfur pit and bring the roof down on him, sealing Mephisto inside. All of his friends are freed from the mind-control spell and he uses a vortex to send all of the kidnapped men back to their homes and a second vortex takes Thor and friends back to the surface to discover that, for all the enemy’s threats, Earth is unchanged….