Cobra & Hyde – Part 2

Just four issues after completely squandering any chance of being considered legitimate Thor villains, the Cobra and Mister Hyde try again.
Well I’m sure this time won’t be more pathetic than the last.

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Journey Into Mystery #110 (1964)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

What are you so worried about, Thor? Last time you defeated Mister Hyde in less than a minute without your hammer!

Paranoid much, Thor?

The reason why Thor is so nervous is that Loki is on Midgard^* right now.
^*Earth

And bailing out the villains that had been captured last time.
This would be over 5 million dollars in 2026.

I hope you’ll forgive me for completely skipping the Don Blake subplots.

Let’s focus instead on Thor and his “ememies”.

Loki gets an AWESOME reveal panel…

…and he uses his magic to make his new allies twice as powerful as before.
Which is straightforward for Mister Hyde: he’s just twice as strong now, fine.
But what does the Cobra get from this? What, he’s twice as flexible now? Twice as useless?

Well they certainly didn’t get their stealth doubled.

If I were to do a full Thor retrospective… which isn’t going to happen, sorry, too much work… I would definitely keep a counter for how many times Jane Foster is taken as a hostage.
It would get to double digits VERY fast.

The only explanation for how Thor maintains a secret identity in the original run is that Odin is CONSTANTLY using magic to make everyone forget, because he is just TERRIBLE at keeping his secret!!!

Maybe I’ve been underestimating the Cobra all this time: he MUST have super-speed to consistently escape Thor!!!

What “information” was correct, your memory? You’ve ALREADY faced Thor while keeping Jane Foster hostage! You should know EXACTLY how this would work!!!

And Thor just… lets the villains go. AGAIN.
Even with Jane hostage, this is just pathetic beyond words.

The actual reason why Mister Hyde hangs around Cobra: he can’t drive.

Did you think I was joking with that meme?

Odin is SO disappointed in Thor that he BANISHES HIM FROM ASGARD.
These two have an incredibly toxic relationship in the Silver Age, don’t they?

Thor realizes that he only has one decent villain in this period, so he immediately deduces that Loki is behind the Cobra and Mister Hyde this time.

So despite having been banished from Asgard like five minutes ago, he storms the place.
Yeah I’m sure that will endear Odin.

Once he finds Loki, he forces him to set the most obvious trap ever.

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that Odin is upset at the guy who just stormed his kindgdom taking out his guards five minutes after being banished.

Thor arrives at the place Loki sent him to, and *gasp* it’s a trap?
Who could possibly have seen THAT coming?

Yep, the Cobra 100% has super-speed now.

This is one of the few moments where the Cobra & Hyde team COULD have worked as Thor villains: if the Cobra had developed some super-venomous gas that works on gods, MAYBE it would have worked… but no, Thor is just as vulnerable to that as a mortal I guess.

Look it’s perfectly fine with me if you don’t want Thor to be invulnerable to everything in the mortal world, but maybe be SLIGHTLY consistent on how durable he is.
You can’t show him shake off nuclear explosions one issue and the next show him being knocked out by a regular explosion!

Thor is fine, though. Jane Foster… not so much.

This is supposed to be a dramatic scene, but Thor goes so over the top with his poses and facial expressions that I find myself laughing.

Fantastic teamwork, guys.

And so we close the issue with Thor creating a Time Warp to stabilize Jane.
Yeah in this period the hammer could do absolutely anything.

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Journey Into Mystery #111 (1964)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

A cover so epic that we don’t even need to explain what it’s showing.

The Cobra and Hyde were caught in the Time Warp, so Thor has to fight both while also protecting Jane Foster.

You can count on Cobra to keep his dignity in this.

The story is trying its best at selling these two as a legitimate threat, and I’m still not buying it.
Thor defeated Mister Hyde in one minute without the hammer! Even if he’s twice as strong, how is this a problem? Especially since Thor DOES have the hammer now?

Heck THE HOUSE is a bigger threat!

Odin is really moved by Thor’s love for Jane.

Which makes him think back at the time when he ALSO fell in love with a mortal.
Most of what I know about Norse mythology comes from Marvel comics so like 80% is wildly inaccurate, but I can’t find any parallel to any specific myth.
You would think that this would come up more often, especially in these early issues, but not only this is the first time it’s ever brought up… it’s also the LAST, as far as I know.

One of the reasons why Cobra and Hyde remained a team for so long might have been that readers were hoping one they they would eventually kill each other, since they keep trying.

If you’re as strong as Mister Hyde now, Cobra, how come you haven’t tried punching Thor even once?

Once again I ask: how did Cobra manage to escape the reputation of being the most pathetic Marvel villain?

Also Thor can survive poisonous gas thanks to his cape now.
Sounds legit.

Wait, I was under the impression that Loki was the one to create all these traps… turns out it was Mister Hyde all along. I forgot that he’s still a super-genius at this point.

By which I mean he’s a technological genius. He’s still pretty dumb.

This shortcircuits the whole system, taking down the Cobra too.

Odin has finally decided to help Jane. Too bad that he’s STILL TRUSTING LOKI.

You’re lucky there are a couple of working neurons in Asgard, Odin.

After a whole mini-adventure by Balder… which is honestly way more engaging that whatever Cobra and Hyde were doing… he finds a potion that heals Jane.

Talk about a Deus Ex Machina: the gods LITERALLY dropped the solution to Thor’s problem.

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Historical significance: 2/10
You would think that Odin realizing Thor truly loves Jane, or that Odin himself went through something similar, would make him change his attitude… but we’re going to repeat the same story beats over and over again after this.
Its only impact on Cobra and Mister Hyde is that if SOMEHOW their previous two-parter didn’t kill their credibility as Thor villains, this one surely did.

Silver Age-ness: 6/10
Thor’s hammer can do whatever the writer needs at any moment.

Does it stand the test of time? 2/10
The Kirby artwork is simultaneously the only saving grace and what sinks some potentially interesting scenes, because he draws Thor’s anguish so over the top that I just can’t take him seriously. The threat is almost as laughable as last time: even with the power boost by Loki, Hyde and Cobra are just not believable as Thor villains. Even if he is supposed to be holding back a little bit to avoid injuring Jane even more.
Odin still trusting Loki so much is almost a parody at this point, and it’s even going to become WORSE as the series goes by.
The book is very close to reaching its best phase of the run, but we’re definitely not there yet.

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What else was in these two issues? Two mythological stories; the first one is VASTLY superior to the rest of the book, the second is quite forgettable.

We also have one of the best Thor pin-ups of all time.

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Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

That was the last time Cobra and Hyde were Thor enemies. They also cameo at the wedding of Mister Fantastic and Invisible Girl, like 99% of other Marvel supervillains.
I don’t have anywhere else to put this cameo, where the Cobra is immediately upstaged by better Thor villains.

And Mister Hyde fights Hawkeye.

We don’t see how that fight goes: the story jumps somewhere else, and at the end Mister Fantastic sends everyone home.