Ranking Thor’s First 10 Villains By Power

Thor is one of Marvel Comics’ earliest introduced heroes, a character based on the Norse mythological figure. Like many of Marvel’s earliest heroes, he didn’t debut in his own comic book series, but was instead a hero who was introduced as the new lead hero in the anthology series Journey Into Mystery. This was a comic book that premiered in 1952 as a horror and sci-fi series that predated Marvel itself. This all changed in 1962 when Thor made his first appearance in Journey Into Mystery #83. It only took 12 issues for Thor to fight 10 different villains, although almost none of them became memorable.

From his first real villain to his own brother Loki, here is a look at the first 10 villains Thor fought in his comics, ranked by power.

10) Lawrence Zaxton (Journey Into Mystery #95)

The 10th villain that Thor ever battled was also his weakest. Professor Lawrence Zaxton was a colleague of Donald Blake, and the two had worked together when Blake built an android, and Zaxton showed it off at a convention. However, when Zaxton caused it to malfunction to make Blake look bad, Thor showed up to eliminate it before anyone got hurt.

Zaxton then turned evil when he kidnapped Jane Foster to try to force Blake to help him create a duplicator machine. Zaxton himself wasn’t powerful at all, but he did create a clone of Thor and had it fight for him, although since it was a clone, and not an actual god, it never had a chance against Thor, and Zaxton ended up dying in the end when he fell from a bridge.

9) Thatcher’s Mob (Journey Into Mystery #89)

In Journey Into Mystery #89, a mob boss named Andrew “Thug” Thatcher showed up with a bullet wound, and his men pulled guns and forced Donald Blake and Jane Foster to help give him medical care. He had just escaped from the police, and he was on the run when he showed up for medical treatment.

On his own, Thug Thatcher is not that powerful. However, with the men who work for him and are willing to kill for him, he is powerful, as are most Marvel crime lords. However, this is the God of Thunder that they are fighting, and when they threaten to kill Jane Foster, none of these mobsters stood a chance against Thor.

9) Executioner (Santiago Rivera) (Journey Into Mystery #84)

This is not Skurge the Executioner. Instead, this is a man named Santiago Rvera, the leader of a Communist faction in a European country, who wanted to hurt the peasants and hold everyone down but those he deemed worthy. His goal is to keep the regular people too ill to ever become a threat to his rule. However, when he sends bomber planes to destroy ships bringing doctors and medication, it gets Thor’s attention.

When the Executioner sent his soldiers to kill the doctors, Thor showed up to defend them. A Communist nation, they set their sights on Jane Foster, which caused Thor to fight even harder. However, when the Communists realized that the Executioner was stealing from the nation, they executed him via a firing squad. It was a weird time in comics, an American-based superhero (albeit a god) going to a foreign land and attacking their military, but this was how things were written at the time.

8) The Soviet Union (Journey Into Mystery #87)

While it may seem hard to believe, one of the first 10 villains that Thor had to fight was the Soviet Union, the actual Communist state. This was published in 1962, at the height of Cold War fears and the Communist Scare. This was part of the entire fear of Russia trying to compromise Americans, and the storyline here saw five U.S. scientists seemingly defecting to the Soviet Union.

Donald Blake offers to go undercover and “defect” as well. When he gets to the Soviet Union, he learns that these scientists were hypnotized and forced to work with the Communists, and Blake ended up turning into Thor to fight the Soviet Armed Forces and rescue the scientists. Like the Executioner, this was another case of Thor getting involved in political affairs.

7) Sandu (Journey Into Mystery #91)

By himself, Sandu is not that overly powerful. However, in Journey Into Mystery #91, the fortune teller was working with Loki, which made him even more dangerous. Before Loki, Sandu was a basic fortune teller who used his abilities to rob the people at the traveling carnival where he worked. However, Loki knew there was evil inside of Sandu and got involved.

Loki used his magic to give Sandu mental powers a thousand times more powerful than his own, and he planned to use Sandu to go after Thor. With his new powers, Sandu was able to go on a crime spree that culminated with him lifting the United Nations building from the ground. He actually got the upper hand when he transported him away with Mjolnir, but when he tried to lift it, it short-circuited his mental powers.

5) Xarten Deviants (Journey Into Mystery #90)

The bad guy in Journey Into Mystery #90 was called The Carbon Copy Man on the cover of the comic, but the actual villains were known as the Carbon Copy Men, who were actually Xarten Deviants. Two of the named villains were Ugarth and Zano, but there were other unnamed Xartans. These aliens arrived with the full intention of conquering Earth. As their name indicates, these Xartans are Deviants because the Celestial visited there long ago and created the race, which eventually became the dominant species on the planet.

Their power is to transform into any living being, and they even take the superpowers of the beings they turn into. Thor ended up beating Ugarth in a fight and threw him into space, and then he tricked the Xartens into turning into trees, and since trees don’t have brains, they can’t change into anything else. Clearly, if Thor is smarter than these invading aliens, they can’t be that big of a threat.

4) Kronans (Korg) (Journey Into Mystery #83)

The villains in Journey Into Mystery #83 are aliens, but they also have one bit of trivia that might surprise some people. These were the first villains that Thor ever fought in Marvel Comics. This comic book had Donald Blake get the power to turn into Thor for the first time. He then finds the aliens known as the Kronans have attacked Earth, and they are the first villains he ever fought as a hero on Earth. They were the ones who scared Donald Blake and sent him running into the mountains to hide when he became Thor.

However, the unknown trivia is that one of the Kronans is Korg, the Thor ally who became famous thanks to Thor: Ragnarok in the movies and Planet Hulk in the comics. The aliens were powerful, but they never expected to face anyone like Thor and ended up fleeing Earth when they realized his powers.

3) Tomorrow Man (Journey Into Mystery #86)

Thor fought a villain known as Zarrko the Tomorrow Man in Journey Into Mystery #86. He was a scientist from the future who hated the idea that the world had slipped into comfort in a peaceful and technologically perfect society. As a result, he decided to build a time machine to go to the past and find a way to get atomic weapons to conquer his future. When there, he fought Thor.

Thor ended up going into the future to stop the Tomorrow Man, and he ended up fighting the futuristic villain, who had technology to match up with Thor. Thor only won when he caused an accident that stripped the Tomorrow Man of his memory. Zarrko wasn’t a one-and-done villain either, as Loki later returned Zarrko’s memory after Odin stripped Thor of half his powers, and the Tomorrow Man proved to be a constant thorn in his side after that.

2) Radioactive Man (Journey Into Mystery #93)

In Journey Into Mystery #93, Thor fought a supervillain known as the Radioactive Man. Once again, this saw Thor battling in a foreign country, this time when he arrived in a war-torn region of India that was under attack from Chinese invaders. When Communist Chinese leaders learned what happened, they demanded their scientists find a way to defeat Thor.

One of these scientists was Chen Lu, and he offered his expertise in radiation to find a way to beat Thor, turning himself into the Radioactive Man. A surprisingly powerful Marvel villain, he is able to absorb radiation and use it for a variety of uses. Next to Loki, there has not been a villain who has been as prolific as the Radioactive Man, who was a founding member of the Masters of Evil and later in the People’s Defense Force, defending his nation.

1) Loki (Journey Into Mystery #85, 88, 92, 94)

There isn’t an original Thor villain more powerful than his own half-brother, Loki. The Ashardian God of Mischief made his Marvel Comics debut in Journey Into Mystery #85, and Odin sent Thor to stop his brother. Before this, Loki was trapped in a tree until someone shed a tear over him, and when it happened, Loki set off to gain revenge against Thor.

To show his true threat, Loki appeared to fight Thor four times before his brother fought his 10th unique villain. Loki’s early powers saw him as a threat, while also showing he could manipulate human villains to do his bidding. Over the years, Loki became even more powerful, showing his intense mastery of magic, and he became Thor’s deadliest villain. He was also so powerful that Thor was the reason the Avengers first had to join forces.

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