From the Mouths of the Marvels:

"But I shall find a way to defeat Thor! For I have all eternity in which to scheme!"

- - Loki, page 13

Oh come on, Dr. Don! We're on to you! We're so on to you!!!

Thor from Journey Into Mystery #91
April 1963 • 13 pages

Publication Date: February 5, 1963

Letters Page: No letters page was published in this issue

I: Feature Story: "Sandu, Master of the Supernatural!"

Pages: 13

Plot: Stan Lee
Script: Larry Lieber
Pencils: Joe Sinnott
Inks: Joe Sinnott
Letters: Terry Szenics

First Appearance: Sandu, Valkyries

Villain: Sandu, Loki

Guest Appearance: Jane Foster, Odin, Valkyries

Emblems of Asgard: Belt of Strength

Synopsis: Odin holds onto the Belt of Strength for his son Thor, wondering aloud when Thor will find himself needing to use it.

Thor flies across town and notices a bank floating in the air. He tries to push it back down to the ground, and then it simply disappears! The people from inside the bank are shaken up and all the money is missing. Thor goes to a mountain top to speak to Odin and ask him if Loki is still at Asgard. Odin confirms that he is, so Thor assumes he's not involved. At a sports betting office, wads of cash rise into the air and float away, and Loki watches from Asgard and cackles to himself that there are "things which Odin does not know!"

On this cue, the story flashes back to a couple days previous, when Dr. Don Blake and Jane Foster go out to a carnival. At the sideshow, they see Sandu the Great, a mind-reader who seems to know that Dr. Blake is in love with Jane Foster. As luck would have it, Loki is scouting for mortals who might help him get revenge on Thor, and in Sandu he sees a powerful mind-reader who has enough evil in his heart to exploit for his purposes. Loki augments Sandu's powers a thousand-fold and sits back to see what happens next.

Sandu feels his burgeoning powers and begins to use them for crime. His first major crime is the bank heist, in which he literally lifted the bank off the ground. When Thor began to foil his plans, he teleported the bank to a distant location and robbed it there, sending the innocent people inside the bank back to where they came, their memories wiped of all knowledge of the encounter. Sandu went on to rob trains, loot museums and in such a way to cover his tracks totally. He would steal buildings and rob them of all their contents, and then deposit the remnants of his crimes on the moon!

His next conquests get really wacky: Sandu decides he wants a palace, so he goes and teleports one for his own use. He then decides to levitate the UN building off the ground and demand the delegates there make him "ruler of the Earth." (The delegates remind him that they are only representatives of their countries and do not have the power to satisfy such a demand.) Finally, Thor has a showdown with Sandu, with Loki looking on at his ultimate plan coming to fruition. Sandu teleports huge steel girders from a construction site in the path of Thor, who crashes into them in flight and falls to Earth inside a big ditch. Sandu wraps a huge chain around Thor and then levitates a massive building over the top of him, burying him alive.

Loki is very pleased with this defeat of Thor at the hands of his power-augmented minion, Sandu. As Thor lays in this shallow pit, he calls out to Odin for help, and Odin heeds his call, sending his Valkyries down with the Belt of Strength. With the belt, Thor can now summon incredible power to break his chains and burrow his way out from underneath the building. Thor attacks Sandu, and Loki sends a mental command to the mind-reader to somehow separate Thor from his hammer. Sandu teleports himself and Thor's hammer to another dimension, and time begins to tick away. Thor worries he will lose his powers, and Sandu tries to pick up the hammer, but becomes every more frustrated that he can't do so. He tries and tries, but his huge ego cannot accept that he can't pick up the hammer, until finally he tries to put every ounce of energy and concentration into his task that his brain short circuits! In so doing, he loses all his powers and mental connection with Loki. Now powerless, Sandu is handed over to the police authorities, while Loki is foiled again in his pursuit of revenge against his half-brother Thor!

--synopsis by Gormuu

Issues Reprinted
Thor and Tales of Asgard from
Journey Into Mystery #83-100

Click on cover image to learn more about each issue.

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