JOHN THOR
Real Name: John Thor
Identity/Class: Normal human (1880s Era)
Occupation: Coal stoker
Group Membership: None
Affiliations: None
Enemies: Captain (named unrevealed) of an unnamed ship
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Mobile on board a steamship across the Atlantic
First Appearance: Mystic#27/3 (February, 1954)
Powers/Abilities: John Thor was a strong and muscular individual.
History:
(Mystic#27/3 ) - Hired as one of three stokers aboard a steamship, John Thor was pushed into hard labor by the cruel and peg-legged captain, who drove his crew hard in order to break the speed record for a steamship crossing. The captain used a whip to force the crew to work harder; Thor saw the Captain brutally whip an exhausted stoker to death and then had to sew up the corpse into a bag before dumping it overboard to lighten the ship's load, and recognized that he'd now have to work longer shifts. Thor protested when the Captain forced him to sew up the other stoker, who had collapsed from overwork, and threw him still alive into the ocean. Thor declared that he could not work a 24-hour shift--the anticipated time to reach port. The captain saw this as mutiny and fiercely whipped the stoker, chaining Thor's leg near the furnace while the stoker was unconscious. Later, Thor stated that there was no more coal to reach harbor, so the mad captain had every bit of spare wood chopped up to use as fuel, even from the ship itself, but this was soon also used up. Enraged and greedy for the prize money, the captain again attacked the stoker, but the whip was instead grabbed by Thor and the captain held in Thor's powerful grip.
(Mystic#27/3 - BTS) - Enraged by the captain's ruthlessness, Thor used the captain himself as the last bit of fuel to get the ship into harbor and unshackled himself.
(Mystic#27/3) - The shipping agent praised the crew on their speed to get into port, going down below to personally congratulate the stoker on making the fuel just last.
Comments: Created by an uncredited writer and artist.
This story was reprinted in Uncanny Tales#4/2 (June, 1974), which is where the images are from.
The cover of Mystic shows a skeleton crawling out of a flaming furnace--a later twist in the tale? (Or just another inaccurate picture of one of the stories inside, which was fairly frequent then?)
Profile by Grendel Prime.
CLARIFICATIONS
:
John Thor has no known connections to:
images:
(without ads)
Uncanny Tales#4/2, p1, pan1 (main image)
Other Appearances: None
Last updated: 12/30/10
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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