Today, discover when someone first couldn’t lift Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, specifically because they were “unworthy.”
In “When We First Met”, we spotlight the various characters, phrases, objects or events that eventually became notable parts of comic lore, like the first time someone said, “Avengers Assemble!” or the first appearance of Batman’s giant penny or the first appearance of Alfred Pennyworth or the first time Spider-Man’s face was shown half-Spidey/half-Peter. Stuff like that.
This one ended up being so much more complicated than I originally figured it would be, to the tune of me reading through over a hundred issues of Thor. Blech.
WHY COULDN’T PEOPLE ORIGINALLY LIFT THOR’S HAMMER?
The first thing that you have to understand is that originally, Thor’s whole DEAL was COMPLETELY different than what it ended up being. You see, in the original setup for the character in his first appearance in Journey Into Mystery #83 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Joe Sinnott), it was seriously that a man named Don Blake found Thor’s hammer and, being worthy enough, gained the power of Thor…
We see this later in the first issue where Don Blake decides to basically test his newfound abilities through the scientific method, and one of the things he notes is that the hammer cannot be lifted by anyone BUT Thor because IT IS TOO HEAVY OTHERWISE…
There were various other things that Don noted, but there was nothing involving any sort of specific enchantment saying that some theoretical super strong person couldn’t also lift the hammer…
Two issues later (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Dick Ayers), though, things get crazy as heck, as Thor meets Loki, who is, you know, Thor’s brother, but then who the heck is Thor? Is Don Blake just using the body of Thor without his mind being involved? Is he basically pulling a Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman 1984? Never pull a Steve Trevor in Wonder Woman 1984! As he still sure seems to be talking about Loki as someone else and not HIS brother…
That’s all resolved eventually when the series adjusts and has Thor get his own personality (and eventually we learn that Don Blake and Thor are the same person, but don’t think that you’re going to trick me into opening up THAT complicated as heck can of worms!).
In any event, this issue has the first time that we see other people being unable to lift Thor’s hammer…
Of course, that weakling, Don Blake, can lift it with ease!
That, though, remained the set-up in the early issues, he only deal with the hammer was that it was so heavy that only Thor could lift it. This is why a number of early stories see the hammer lifted in other ways (ways that I will address in the future). One of the craziest stories involving the hammer, though, also first brought “worthiness” into the equation!
WHEN DID “WORTHINESS” FIRST FACTOR INTO THE USE OF THOR’S HAMMER?
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Journey Into Mystery #95 (by Stan Lee, Robert Bernstein and Joe Sinnott), which was a crazy ass issue that involved Don Blake building a super-powerful android and an evil scientist making a duplication machine that resulted in Thor fighting an evil duplicate of himself that, for good measure, also had an extra hammer (because why the heck not, right?)…
I addressed the fact that that same issue was the first time worthiness was factored into things regarding Thor’s hammer…
You see, while the duplicate Thor is holding the hammer, Thor realizes that worthiness plays a role, and thus an evil Thor could NOT wield the power of Thor, and thus, for the first time, worthiness was a part of the deal…
However, it is clear that it was only about using Thor’s POWERS! As obviously the duplicate could lift the hammer, right?
So worthiness was still stripped from the deal when it came to LIFTING the hammer. It only came up when you actually tried to USE the power of the hammer.
Instead, it was now that the enchantment was simply “only Thor could lift up the hammer,” as seen in Avengers #3 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and Paul Reinman)…
and then again in Avengers #4 (by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee and George Roussos)…
This remained the case for years, like in the classic Avengers/Defenders War, we see in Defenders #10 (by Steve Englehart, Sal Buscema and Frank Bolle), Thor tells Hulk that it simply is a matter of no one but Thor being allowed to lift it…
We know worthiness didn’t factor into things because in Thor #179 (Jack Kirby’s final issue on the series), by Kirby, Lee and Vince Colletta, Loki is able to lift the hammer simply by magically switching bodies with Thor…
WHEN WAS SOMEONE FIRST UNABLE TO LIFT THOR’S HAMMER DUE TO BEING “UNWORTHY?”
It wasn’t until 1978’s Avengers Annual #8 (by Roger Slifer, George Perez, Pablo Marcos and Ricardo Villamonte) that worthiness finally factored into things, as Thor is possessed by the villainous Doctor Spectrum and the end result is that Thor, since he was now possessed by someone evil, was no longer worthy of being able to lift the hammer…
That approach has been the one that has been used in the comics ever since, which is that unless there is some magical reason for it (and I didn’t even bother mentioning all of the magical exceptions to other people being able to lift Thor’s hammer), then you have to be worthy to be able to lift Thor’s hammer. That’s probably why you never really see other superheroes even TRY nowadays, as I imagine no one wants to be the one to say, “Superhero X is not worthy of lifting the hammer.” Indeed, it has often been the opposite (more and more heroes have been revealed in recent years as being able to lift the hammer).
If anyone else wants to know about an interesting comic book first, just drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!
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