JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY #103 (1964)
by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
There haven’t been many ladies in the villain origins retrospective, but at last we have some representation at Marvel. Let’s hope Enchantress is less embarrassing here than in her fight with Dazzler.
We begin with Thor returning to Midgard* exhausted after his latest adventure, deciding to take a nap as Don Blake.
(*Earth)
“For strange reason”… Jane, did you EVER imagine that maybe he’s not into you!? No wonder you were near the bottom of my ranking of Silver Age love interests.
Jane is SO annoying, in fact, that Loki has a scheme to distract Thor from her: recruit a smoking hot blonde!
No, seriously, that’s his plan.
Loki recruits Enchantress with Odin’s permission; not that it takes much to convince her, since she was already vamping it up.
(also, Loki looks super weird without his helmet!)
Weirdly enough, the Marvel Unlimited reprint has part of her clothes re-colored from her traditional green. I don’t have a printed copy of the original, but there ARE other reprints that have her in green. So I wonder if that’s the color of the original… sometimes Marvel Unlimited has weird recoloring choices.
And so Enchantress goes to Midgard*, taking care of the first duty of every super-villainess: shopping!
(*Earth)
You can’t convince me Jack Kirby is not going for a Marilyn Monroe impersonation.
Enchantress puts the moves on Don Blake, but he’s completely and utterly uninterested by her being able to twist her ankle while standing still.
But Thor’s love for Jane is SO strong that he has enough “strength of character” to resist Enchantress. Despite the fact that he’s acted completely indifferent to BOTH women so far.
Since apparently seduction is her only power at this point, Enchantress recruits her sidekick and immortal simp: Executioner, the other supervillain debuting this issue.
Executioner is supposed to be HUGE: later in the story he’s described as being eight feet tall.
Still makes it look like Enchantress printed Jane’s picture on a stamp.
Since Don Blake can’t find Jane at her apartment, he turns into Thor and goes to the police (WTF!?)… that’s BEFORE he learns there are supervillains involved… and it turns out that Executioner is so infamous he immediately figures out his identity!
Thanks to the Comics Code, Executioner won’t use his axe to cut anyone’s head. Instead his axe can cut through dimensions. (!!!)
The fact that Executioner can apparently go to Limbo whenever he wants will eventually be utterly hilarious in a future Avengers issue I’ll cover.
Executioner is a powerhouse, but it’s soon clear he’s not as strong as Thor. I think this was a huge mistake that hurt the character’s staying power.
Instead, their fights hinge on figuring out whose magical weapon is capable of more ridiculous feats.
Aaaand the fight ends almost immediately once Thor disarms Executioner, who unlike him can’t simply will his weapon to return. Yet another decision that hurt the character.
That’s probably why Executioner has a serious case of hammer envy, and he tries to negotiate an exchange after removing his helmet and revealing one of the best haircuts ever.
Thor agrees to surrender his hammer to save Jane. At this point his hammer was already shown to be able to take Thor to any place he wanted, so why couldn’t he just go to Limbo himself!?
Executioner makes the mistake of trying to lift Mjolnir, but he’s not worthy. Interestingly, this is early enough in Thor’s history to still have some inconsistencies: normally he shouldn’t be able to move the hammer at all, but here he can lift the handle.
However, this is when Enchantress reveals that she is A LOT more powerful than it seemed.
But like Executioner, she also makes the mistake of going after the hammer. You NEVER go after the hammer!!!
This gets Thor SO mad that he throws them back to Asgard! Because that worked sooooo well with Loki.
And so we end with Don Blake going back to the woman he loves so much he resisted Enchantress… despite showing absolutely no interest whatsoever.
Odin, buddy, can you please god up and take her out of the book?
Historical significance: 8/10
Enchantress will be an important supervillain for a long time, especially until the mid-80s since there were very few female supervillains back then. She’s gone against pretty much anyone active until that period, and then some. Executioner, on the other hand, was firmly just a Thor villain.
Silver Age-ness: 9/10
You rarely go higher than this on the Marvel scale.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
Enchantress and Executioner are fine; the latter feels more like a throwaway villain, but they both do their job. The problem here is Thor: he’s just too bland! And of course the biggest issue is that I just cannot see any chemistry whatsoever with Jane.
How close is this to the modern character?
Enchantress: 7/10
Executioner: what modern character?
Enchantress is relatively close to her characterization until the 90s… the power-hungry and self-obsessed femme fatale with too much magical power for her own good.
Over the years she’s become a more complex character. She can be a villain or an anti-hero of sorts, playful or cruel, just having fun or bent on some sinister scheme.
For the longest time she was one of the Asgardians without an exact equivalent to actual Norse mythology, but she’s been linked to a few since then.
Executioner, on the other hand, was basically stuck being her sidekick. As I said, I think he was seriously hurt by the fact that he never felt like a big threat to Thor… he could’ve been a rival of sorts, but he felt like little more than an inconvenience.
Which is also true of the very early Enchantress, but she had sex appeal.
He was eventually killed in 1985 during the Walt Simonson run, during the FREAKING AWESOME Thor #362.
Being an Asgardian he has been seen after his death a few times, even being resurrected for a while… but that ending was so FREAKING AWESOME that he STILL deserved to go to Valhalla!!!
