It's probably rainy now, but it was nice enough to go out to my garage and dig for comics today. Did I find what I was looking for? Well, close enough? From 1986, Thor #373, "The Gift of Death" Written by Walt Simonson, art by Sal Buscema.
On his way from Asgard to Midgard (Earth!) Thor is suddenly stricken by a momentary weakness, but shrugs it off: once he arrives in New York, he immediately attempts to use Mjolnir to get to Muspelheim. Odin and Surtur had seemingly fallen into a rift to the fire giant's realm, but Thor finds "the way to Muspelheim is closed!" Not with signs, but some sort of barrier. Glumly, Thor returns to the apartment of his civilian identity, Sigurd Jarlson; which is basically a mattress in the middle of an otherwise empty room. He's regretting not putting in the effort to flesh out his civilian life, and can't bring himself to stay there or visit the Avengers' mansion. The next day, as Sigurd, he visits his old construction boss Jerry, who's thrilled to see him even if it's been like twenty-some issues. After hearing he had just lost his dad, Jerry invites Sigurd home for dinner.
Later, to repay his friend's kindness, Sigurd takes Jerry's kids out for a day in the park, and tells him a story of Thor, getting hoodwinked by his dad for an object lesson about self-reliance. Or a laugh. Tough to say with Odin. But, another story is interrupted by an old friend--Puddlegulp! After a warning from the frog, Thor tries to tell the kids he's an undercover cop: for someone who had Loki for a brother, he's really so bad at lying. The kids don't let him keep digging, though: they know he's Thor! Jerry had thought 'Sigurd' had been Spider-Man at one point, but he's too big, and the kids had snuck a peek at his bag and found Mjolnir. (If one had accidentally kicked his bag, they wouldn't have been able to move that, would they?)
Thor sends the kids home, assuring one that he wasn't going to be killed by the Midgard Serpent...probably. He heads to the sewers, where Puddlegulp said he had heard screaming: Thor had previously met the Morlock Piper, and knew there were others living there. After a bit of ominous foreshadowing from Hela, Thor finds multiple bodies, then X-Factor's Angel, nailed to the wall by the Marauders! Although Thor drives them off, before he can help Angel, he can hear someone coming...
A dark turn there! I had forgotten this was the "Mutant Massacre" crossover, since this was the Marvel 25th anniversary covers month. I dug this issue out for the back cover, which was surprisingly not forthcoming online. I was making another spinner rack that was going to be all of those covers, and there were less than I would've thought. Sure, Spider-Man had four books, but only 29 books had the anniversary border. Limited series, annuals, indexes, creator-owned Epic titles, and the debuting New Universe books did not. But the kids' line Star Comics did, and some of those are the rarest ones today! In fact, a high-end copy of Muppet Babies #10, is possibly worth more than a complete set of New Universe comics. (G.I. Joe Special Missions and Droids were bi-monthly at the time, or they would've had one!)
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