Two words: Tiger Shark.    All around great tough guy villain.

In my opinion, the problem with Thor wasn't the concept as much as the execution.

There just aren't a lot of well-written Thor solo stories before the Simonson run. Even the early non-Kirby stuff isn't nearly as good as most other Silver Age Marvel.

The classic character I never got was the Silver Surfer. He's too cosmic - it's hard to relate to him on a human level. Plus, I thought he was way too whiny.

Just an opinion, of course. But I can't think of many defining Thor stories or runs before Simonson's classic tenure.

In fact, I always thought the Kirby-driven "Tales of Asgard" back-up stories usually were better than the main Thor stories, other than Kirby's own Thor stories.

People shouldn't sleep on the nice issues Simonson did around the 260s of Thor's 1970s comic. An epic battle with the Destroyer, inhabited by the spirit of Balder, brings the Thunder God to his knees. Then there's the whole Eternals/Asgardians war, and the subsequent revelation of Odin's plan to stave off the Judgement of the Celestials (which honestly read better when I was younger, but is still pretty interesting).

I'm gonna be honest...my favorite issues of Thor were recently discovered in the DeFalco/Frenz run:

The scope of this particular arc thrilled me. Without spoiling the hell out of it, Thor encounters a Celestial "World-Killer" who makes the other Celestials look like kids. This arc has one of the coolest Thor moments I've ever seen: Thor INSIDE the Celestial, trying to destroy its brain; losing his hammer, almost completely beaten, Thor refuses to despair and attacks the Celestial's brain "shell" with his bare hands and teeth. That may never be topped for Never Say Die.

Maybe if I went digging for some of the Kubert stuff that is spoken so highly of around these here parts, I'd change my mind.

***

 Even if you don't like the stories, and I suspect you will, the art in those alone is worth it.

Hawkman and Aquaman in particular need a certain kind of milieu to work at their best. They're not the kind of characters that you can plug in anywhere and go with, in individual titles.

Hawkman works better in a kind of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK adventure setting, where both his brain and brawn and his impressive visual can be fully explored. I'm saying Hawkman belongs on one of those pulp covers from the 1930s, mace-battling men with elephant heads in the Dark Heart of Africa. Matter of fact, he has (not from the 1930s, but)!

I was never really satisfied with the whole Don Blake thing. It didn't detract from my future enjoyment of stories, but there was a funny feeling of disappointment inside me when it was revealed that Blake was an invention of Odin's. It's hard to put into words, but it just didn't feel right.