In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn whether Jack Kirby seriously never drew Odin in the same outfit twice during his iconic run on Thor with Stan Lee.

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and third installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for Part 1 of this installment's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Jack Kirby never drew Odin in the same outfit twice during his Thor run.

STATUS:

False, but Shockingly Close to Being True

Reader B. Serum wrote in to ask, "I seem to recall Odin getting a brand new Kirby design in every issue he appeared in — is that a thing? Do we know why? All the other Asgardians maintained their design from issue to issue."

In general, I think Thor is one of those Marvel books where it is hard to see it as anything but a Kirby-driven project. That's not to say that the other projects WEREN'T Kirby-driven, of course, but if you were to tell me that Stan Lee came up with the basic idea for the X-Men or the Incredible Hulk, I couldn't really say for SURE that that's not the case. Now, Fantastic Four seems a lot more like Jack Kirby's past work on Challengers of the Unknown, so that's harder, but the basic idea of the group might still have been driven by Lee.

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Thor, though, it seems very hard to believe that that's not Kirby-driven, as he literally introduced Thor into his comics TWICE over the years and was clearly very much into Norse mythology in a way that Lee was not. It's worth noting that when he left Marvel, the only early 1960s books that he was still drawing were Fantastic Four (the book that CREATED the Marvel Age) and Thor. Thor was always a very personal book for Kirby, but especially when he returned to the book as a regular artist (after Joe Sinnott briefly became the artist on the book) when the series (then called Journey Into Mystery) dropped its unrelated back-up features and added a "Tales of Asgard" feature. "Tales of Asgard" was Kirby entirely in his element. Telling various stories set in the Marvel version of Norse mythology? It was an absolute blast (Kiby then took to tying in the backups to the main features in a really clever way, as well, like introducing a character in the Tales of Asgard and then seeing them in the present and stuff like that).

The main thing to note is that Kirby was into Thor more than some of the other comics he worked on. I think really the Inhumans would be the only other characters that I would compare to Thor in terms of characters that Kirby was AS into as he was into the Thor cast (I mean, obviously, Kirby loved the Fantastic Four, but I still think he was MORE into Thor than even the FF, he just obviously also understood how important the Fantastic Four were, overall, as Marvel's first or second best-selling comic book series).

One of the areas where you could see that extra detail was when it came to Odin. The awesome little stuffed bull, Bully, had a great bit on his site about the many hats Kirby made for Odin and it's really true, Kirby went NUTS with outfits for Odin!

What's funny is that early on, the outfits were intricate, but normal enough...

but over time, good golly, miss Molly, they got so amazingly ornate!

But as you might notice by looking at them, they are also bizarrely DISTINCT from each other!

Even when a story would clearly be continued from an earlier issue, Kirby would find a way to have Odin change. Even in issues where Odin was in his Odinsleep, he would be in different outfits in his freakin' BED! And think about it, Kirby wasn't just drawing Odin in one story (the main Thor feature) but also in the "Tales of Asgard" back-ups, so whenever Odin showed up in the main feature, that meant that he would be making two appearances in that issue and yet still, he would spend the time to create distinct outfits for Odin. And I don't mean, "slightly different ornateness," as I would obviously count that as being the same (for instance, how the design of the spider changes through the years on Spider-Man's costume. It's obviously still the same costume). As you can see above, they're not just subtly different, they're clearly INTENTIONALLY different.

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I read through the entire Kirby run on Journey Into Mystery and Thor (starting with the main features first, since they had more multi-arc stories) and then the "Tales of Asgard" stories and really, throughout the entire main feature run, there were some outfits very early on where it was possible that Kirby wasn't even MEANING to draw the outfit different, but then it was clearly an intentional choice for the rest of the series. So there wasn't a SINGLE instance of Kirby keeping Odin in the same outfit twice in the main feature.

And for the "Tales of Asgard" backups, it was pretty much the same, but shockingly enough, there was ONE exception! And, as you might imagine, it was early on, as Odin wears the same outfit in Journey Into Mystery #97 and #98. Again, there are some subtle differences (the belt design is more ornate in #97, for instance), but come on, it's obviously the same design.

It seems likely that Kirby initially figured that Odin could rock the same outfit in the past, but then he would mix things up in the present, but then very quickly, Kirby started doing different outfits for Odin in the past, as well.

But other than that, Kirby drew Odin differently each time (and heck, if you want to be unreasonably pedantic, you can even say those two designs are different and say he NEVER drew Odin the same twice).

Thanks for the suggestion, B. Serum!

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PART THREE SOON!

Check back soon for part 3 of this installment's legends!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com. Also, if you have thoughts or possible corrections, also feel free to e-mail me!

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