In "When We First Met," we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, "Avengers Assemble!" or the first appearance of Batman's giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man's face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.

My pal Brad R. wrote in a while back to ask me about this one. It's about when Thor began to speak with his famous Shakespearean style of dialogue, with all of the "thees" and the "thous" and stuff like that.

The first thing to remember about Thor is that the character, as invented, barely resembles the character that we now today. Originally, as shown in Journey Into Mystery #83 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Joe Sinnott), the whole concept of Thor was that Don Blake found a magic hammer that gave him the powers of Thor. Think modern day Billy Batson and Shazam. When Billy Batson says "Shazam!" he now turns into Shazam (or Captain Marvel, if you just can't let that part go). Originally, when Don Blake turned into Thor, he also remained himself, just as Thor.

As you can see, it's totally just a play on that old idea of "What if you had superpowers?" or whatever. You know, what would a regular guy do if he suddenly had the power of Thor. Initially, that was how Thor was depicted in the comics. Another interesting thing about these early Thor issues is that Stan Lee initially hired a few different writers to write Thor's adventures and so they all kept it pretty basic.

Things changed, though, when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby returned to the series right before Journey Into Mystery #100. Jack Kirby loved Norse mythology, so Kirby developed a back-up series for the book called "Tales of Asgard." Early issues of the Thor feature in Journey Into Mystery had established that the Thor in the comic was actually THE Thor, but what that meant was kind of vague, as he continued to think and act just like he was Don Blake in Thor's body.

During the return of Kirby and Lee, however, Thor started acting more like an Asgardian character from the Norse myths and with the introduction of the Tales of Asgard back-ups, we got more stories about Thor in Asgard.

See here, in Journey Into Mystery #97, how Thor has a new, more formal way of speaking...

It just isn't that Shakespearean "thee" and thou" style yet.

Even later stories featuring Thor as a young man were done in the same, more formalized but not Shakespearean way of speaking...

So when did things change?

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In Journey Into Mystery #120, Thor starts the issue speaking the way he regularly did at the time...

but then he goes to Asgard and we see his new affected way of speaking for the first time...

but when he returns to Earth, he reverts to the old way!

It is not until Journey Into Mystery changed to Thor, and specifically when Thor was fighting with Hercules (who had committed to ALWAYS speaking in the Shakespearean way of talking) that Thor adopted the "thee" and the "thou" stuff full time...

So really, in a way, it seems like it is Hercules' fault that Thor talks the way that he does. I, though, choose to assume that it is Thor just doing an affected way of talking, like how people will speak differently with their friends than with their family.

Thanks for the great question, Brad!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book first, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!