On the B5JMS mailing list, Joe Straczynski notes:
On the comics front, incidentally…it was just announced by Marvel that I’m going to be taking over and re-launching the Thor monthly title. Because this is a big mythological show, it’s very much in my wheelhouse, as it were, and it’s really important to make this work. So I’m giving some thought to pulling back on some of the other comics work, notably FF, to make room to give this my full attention.
Which should be great. JMS has done a decent job on FF, but there have been so many other strong writers of them previous to him (Mark Waid, as a notable example) that he hasn’t been able to shine as much. His work there has also been a lot more episodic than profound.
Thor, on the other hand, has a world (or nine) of possibilities — and, honestly, nobody’s done great things with the title since Simonson had it back in … gah, the mid-80s. Should be fun.
I really enjoyed the Jurgens/Romita Jr. run on the title from 1-25, but the Simonson run is still the benchmark.
I remember a taking a family road trip during Simon’s run on Thor. My brother and I had the last issue of the “Surtur Attacks” storyline. We ignored all the other comics in the back seat and just passed that one back and forth between us. I think I still have that old, beat-up copy somewhere (along with a nicer copy in the boxes).
I wonder if we’d have had the same reaction to the “Frog of Thunder” storyline, where Loki turned Thor into a frog? [grin]
That was sort of an … odd phase in the series, to be sure.