20 times Thor was the best Marvel superhero

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6. When he goes up against Mangog

For most of this list, I’ve been concentrating on the Thor comics from Walt Simonson onward. That’s all well and good, but it’s only fair to turn at least once to the original creators of the Thor character – Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby. Stan Lee and company are considered to be practically comics royalty, and for good reason.

So, let’s go back in time to July 1968, when Thor #154 first came out. In a series of issues, we encounter the terrifying Mangog. It all starts when Ulik, an antagonistic rock troll, releases a mysterious being imprisoned beneath Asgard. Out bursts forth Mangog, a giant monster with a face straight from your nightmares. He is revealed to be the embodied hatred of billions of members of a mysterious alien race. Said aliens once tried to defeat Asgard and have been seemingly destroyed for their attempt.

Mangog, however, has remained. Naturally, he’s pretty angry about the destruction of this alien civilization and seeks revenge against Odin. While Odin himself isn’t interested in fighting Mangog, he does send his son, Thor.

As strong as Thor is, though, he isn’t able to beat Mangog, who’s powered by a seemingly limitless supply of anger. Odin finally has to step in and break the “Odinspell” that created Mangog. He reveals that Mangog was actually a kind of living prison for the enemy aliens. When the aliens are released, Mangog himself seems to fade away.

Of course, a terrifying and almost indestructible villain like Mangog returns later on. He even teams up with the Titan Thanos, who’s been making the rounds in seemingly all the after-credits sequences of every Marvel movie since 2012.