This is a "Gonna Make a Change," which takes a look at the odd evolution that comic book series used to make. You see, nowadays, when a comic book series wants to re-tool, comic book companies simply cancel the book and start a brand-new series (heck, change a creative team and books will often reboot). In the old days, however, comic book companies felt that they had too much capital invested in the higher numbers and wanted to avoid starting over with a new #1. So we got to see some weird changes over the years.

Today, I look what happened to Thor's title after the God of Thunder died during Onslaught.

In 1994, Warren Ellis and Mike Deodato revamped Thor with a brief run that turned the title on its head...

The concept of the book was that the World Tree was, in effect, tricked into thinking that Ragnarok had occurred, throwing the gods into disarray...

Thor essentially was stripped of his godhood and the various other gods all had their memories removed and became human.

William Messner-Loebs took over the title after Ellis' opening arc, but the problem was that while Loebs was still telling the story, Onslaught happened and that story involved pretty much all of the Avengers as well as the Fantastic Four all seemingly killed, so Thor's story abruptly came to a close in Thor #502...

In that issue, he brought back the alternate Thor, Red Norvell...

Okay, so Captain America, Avengers, Iron Man and Fantastic Four all ended their series, but in the case of Thor, Marvel decided to continue the story of the "Lost Gods," just without Thor in the story anymore. The series went back to the name it started with back in the 1950s, Journey Into Mystery, continuing the numbering from Thor #502 Tom DeFalco took over writing duties, as the various Asgardian gods tried to come back from their new lives...

It lasted until Journey Into Mystery #513...

The gods all returned...

Thor was almost back at this point, but instead of returning the title to Thor, Marvel then decided to just make it a pure anthology series.

Shang-Chi kicked things off, with a story by Ben Raab and Brian Hagan (inks by Vince Russell and Sandu Florea)...

Then Scott Lobdell and Randy Green did a Black Widow arc...

And Marv Wolfman, Karl Kerschl and Al Milgrom finished off the run with a nice Hannibal King two-parter....

What an odd little time for this series. I liked it at the time, but it's certainly a curious approach, considering how anthology titles haven't worked for decades.

Okay, folks, if you have suggestions for comic book series that went through notable format changes that you'd like to see me spotlight, just drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!