From the Mouths of the Marvels:

"Maybe Thor's afraid of him. N-not that I blame him! How can anything defeat the Radioactive Man??"

- - Man on the street, page 9

Dude, no wonder you're radioactive! You're swimming in the Hudson River!!!

Thor from Journey Into Mystery #93
June 1963 • 13 pages

Publication Date: April 2, 1963

Letters Page: No letters page was published in this issue

I: Feature Story: "The Mysterious Radio-Active Man!"

Pages: 13

Plot: Stan Lee
Script: Robert Bernstein
Pencils: Jack Kirby
Inks: Dick Ayers
Letters: Ray Holloway

First Appearance/Origin: Radio-Active Man/Chen Lu

Villain: Radio-Active Man, Chinese Red Army

Guest Appearance: Jane Foster

Synopsis: Dr. Blake is advising military personnel involved in defending Indian sovereignty from an oncoming Red Chinese Communist assault. His recommendation? "They need all the medical supplies America can send!" All of a sudden, bombs start falling on the Hindu camp, and he goes into action as Thor. He takes on the Red Army tanks that are firing shells, attaches them all to a long chain, then attaches the chain to his hammer and hurls all the tanks into India. There, the Hindu army can take over the use of the tanks to fight against Communist aggression. Thor then takes his actions against Red Chinese infantry, launching a torrential rainstorm over the troops of General Fu. Fu declares a state of emergency to be called against Thor.

The great leader of the Chinese Communist party declares they must destroy Thor in order to cause dissembling and fear in the forces of democracy. A scientist named Lu Chen steps to the forefront and pledges absolute dedication to invent something that will defeat Thor. The "great one" says there will be the death penalty if they fail to do so. Back at his lab, Lu Chen uses himself as a human guinea pig to test his radioactivity absorption machine. After undergoing the process, he becomes a being of radioactive force, and destroys his laboratory so that nobody else can gain the secrets only he knows.

He tells his superiors of his new powers, and they immediately employ him into service as a great hero of the Communist Party. He is loaded into a submarine's torpedo chamber and then shot into New York harbor, where he immediately sets out to terrorize the city. Police try to shoot him down, but the Radio-Active Man merely melts their bullets in mid-air. He announces on television that he wants to battle Thor. As people wonder when Thor will answer the call, Dr. Don Blake is busy trying to save a life in surgery. He finishes his operation and then sets out to face this new super-villain.

Thor finds the Radio-Active Man, but quickly learns his hammer bounces off a force shield projected by the Chinese villain. His lightning bolts have no effect either! The Radio-Active Man starts to spin a hypnotic field and mentally commands Thor to throw away his hammer. Thor throws it and the hammer flies far away in the distance. Len Chu, the Radio-Active Man, is very upset by this, as it means he has to break a sweat searching for the hammer. While he's gone, sixty seconds elapse and Thor turns back into Don Blake, and loses the hypnotic state he was under. He races back to his office and, much to the amazement of a frantic Jane Foster, spends the time in his private lab to work on a project. Jane is flustered that Dr. Blake can spend his time in such a way when someone like Thor is trying to save the city from the Red Chinese super-villain.

Little does she know that Blake is configuring a "x-ray type device" that will locate on a video-screen where his hammer is. The machine finds the hammer nearly 80 feet at the bottom of the Hudson River. He dives down and almost blacks out but at the last second, Dr. Don Blake grabs hold of the hammer and becomes Thor! He returns to the Radio-Active Man and uses his hammer to create a whirlwind that launches him in the air and backk to Red China, where he comes to a mighty thud in the Chinese mountain wilderness, resulting in an atomic explosion.

--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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