Journey Into Mystery 86

On The Trail of The Tomorrow Man

by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber & Jack Kirby

"I'm happy to play a part in keeping the free world strong and secure against the forces of tyranny" 

-Thor

The year is 2262. Earth has progressed to the point where they have no need of weapons. War is a foreign concept here. As the people joyfully fly through the air on their hovercrafts, one man is not happy. He is a scientist named Zarrko. Life in this peaceful future has grown too boring for him. Constructing earth's only time travel device, Zarrko prepares to carry out his plan. He uses a time scope device he's invented to view previous eras. Spying on the modern age (1962) he discovers that mankind was using atomic bombs back then.

On a US military testing site, the mighty Thor is helping the military conduct new research. First by outracing an anti-missile missile. Then they start to set off a cobalt bomb right next to him. Thor claims he can bear the brunt of it's blast. As they start to countdown to the explosion, Zarrko in his time machine appears out of nowhere. The soldiers halt the countdown and in the ensuing confusion Zarrko makes off with the cobalt bomb. With a toss of Mjolnir, Thor nicks some of the metal off of the time machine before it can fully dissipate.

Thor tracks down the Tomorrow Man. With an okay from the military, Thor takes the bit of metal from the time machine with him. He flies from the desert to a high mountaintop. Up there he uses his hammer to create a thunderstorm. In the midst of the storm, the thunder god summons his father, all-seeing Odin. Odin's head appears in the sky before his son. Thor asks Odin if he will permit him the ability to breech the barriers of time to follow the intruder Zarrko. Under Odin's command, Thor attaches the shrapnel to Mjolnir and spins it around as a time compass. Odin reminds Thor that the power to travel through the 4th dimension of time is always with him as long as he has that hammer. Thor dissipates.

Appearing in the future time of 2262, Thor quickly has a following among a crowd of onlookers. From them, Thor gets the information he needs. Zarrko returned a month before Thor. Since then, he has lorded over the populace with the cobalt bomb. Thor reassures them that he has a plan to defeat this tyrant. The next day, as Thor approaches Zarrko's castle, the scientist has heard of Thor's arrival. Fuming in his headquarters, Zarrko is unsure of how this man has followed him through time. Zarrko commands his guards to go out and deal with him.

Thor puts his plan into action. As the guards ride out on their hovercrafts, a mysterious figure in a gray robe knocks a tree down in their path. As soon as the guards collide with the tree, Thor leads the robed figure into Zarrko's fortress. When they get inside, Zarrko pulls a lever that drops Thor down into a pit of magnetic mirrors. The mirrors pull and fling Thor all over the chamber. Just then the man in the robe reveals himself. It's Thor.

Thor attacks Zarrko. He smashes his magnetic controller with Mjolnir. With the device in pieces, the man who was disguised as Thor in the mirror chamber is now safe. Zarrko confronts Thor with a gun that will shoot him into another dimension. As Thor is shot into this other dimension, he exhales a breath of hurricane force. This pierces the dimensional veil before it can fully close. Thor emerges to chase down a fleeing Zarrko.

Chasing the Tomorrow Man, Thor ends up in a room with giant robots. The robots are able to snatch Thor's hammer from his grip, leaving the thunder god only one minute to execute a plan before he turns back into Don Blake. As the robots encroach him, Thor starts tearing up the floor underneath. With his tremendous strength, Thor quickly finds what he is after, water pipes. He pulls the pipes apart with his hands, which start to flood the room. The water invades the robots' circuits, causing them to short and malfunction. They release Thor's hammer; without a second to spare Thor holds it aloft.

Thor continues his pursuit of the man from tomorrow. With C-Bomb in hand, Zarrko boards a spaceship and takes off. If he can't enslave the world, he'll destroy it instead. Thor summons a raging storm to stop the spaceship. The spaceship is thrashed in the air, forcing the bomb to dislodge and fall out. Thor races the bomb to the ground, like he raced the missiles at the testing ground earlier. Successfully grabbing it, Thor carefully lowers to the ground. Zarrko's landing is not as sound.

As Zarrko crawls from the wreckage, some EMTs gather him up. His memory, by all accounts, seems to be gone. The people of 2262 praise Thor for saving them from the tyranny of Zarrko. Thor says his farewell and takes the cobalt bomb back to 1962. A short time later, as Don Blake, he approaches his nurse Jane Foster. She is reading the newspaper covering Thor's recovery of the bomb. She wishes Don could be less dull and more like Thor. Don wonders if she'll ever figure it out.


Notes:

Here we have the first of many alternate future earths. This one will later be designated as Earth-6297. The earth we are most familiar with in the Marvel Universe is Earth-616. These designations generally (but not always) correspond with the date the comic was published. Earth-616 = 1961, June - Fantastic Four #1's release date. Earth-6297 = 1962, September. (I'm not sure where the 7 comes from, unless it was the exact date of the 7th when it was released.)

More Firsts: appearance of Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man. Mostly a Thor villain. He doesn't show up a whole lot. Also our first major appearance of Odin. He will show up a whole lot. We learn that Thor's hammer has the power to travel through time.

General Cameo ?: This Thor story could be considered the first Marvel crossover. Without going by name, there is a military general (second panel posted, general on the right side) at the testing grounds with Thor who looks a whole lot like General "Thunderbolt" Ross from the Hulk comics. Now given they don't mention him by name, we can't say for certain that this is the first evidence of a shared universe between the titles. But it would make sense if it was a cameo by him.

Attempting to analyze deeper: This story is mostly about Thor's opposition to tyranny, as stated by the quote at the top and his need to stop Zarrko. There's also a motif that shows up about racing against time; Thor races against the missiles at the testing site. He races against Zarrko to get the bomb back. He loses his hammer against the robots and has his race against his own humanity. Then he races the bomb itself before it can hit the ground.

The List

1. Amazing Fantasy (Spider-Man) #15
2. Fantastic Four #1
3. Fantastic Four #4
4. Incredible Hulk #1
5. Fantastic Four #5
6. Amazing Adult Fantasy (X-Men) #14
7. Fantastic Four #6
8. Journey into Mysetry (Thor) #85
9. Journey into Mystery (Thor) #83
10. Fantastic Four #2
11. Journey into Mystery (Thor) #86
12. Tales to Astonish (Ant-Man) #36
13. Tales to Astonish (Ant-Man) #35
14. Journey into Mystery (Thor) #84
15. Tales to Astonish (Ant-Man) #27
16. Fantastic Four #3
17. Incredible Hulk #2
18. Fantastic Four #7
19. Incredible Hulk #3
20. Strange Tales #101

Next Time: The Human Torch is put in a battle of wits when he faces The Wizard.