Didja Know... The Hallowed History of the Hammer

Didja Know digs into the fun facts, strange stories, and divine details that helped build the hallowed halls of the House of Ideas!

“Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor!”

Call us crazy, call us irresponsible, call us late for dinner, but we rank that iconic inscription among the very pinnacle of pulse-pounding poetry from the length and breadth of Mighty Marvel’s long and storied history…

And that’s why we here at Didja Know Central are head-over-heels—nay, gaga!—over the new wondrous one-shot entitled THOR: THE WORTHY #1!

No riotous reason why to illicit any surprise, Marvelites, ‘cause the bashful yet bombastic book reunites classic creators with cunning characters they’re known to have whipped up an adventure or three for…and they all involve Thor! Simonson on Beta Ray Bill! DeFalco and Frenz on Thunderstrike! Immonen on Sif and Jane Foster!

Wait! What’s that? We feel a Didja Know coming on! Grab a cloud and shine up your rainbow bridges, Asgardians, it’s—dare we? We dare!—Hammer Time!

Didja Know… Beta Ray Bill sports a scary smile on purpose?

According to Bill’s creator, writer-artist Walt Simonson, the amazing alien was designed to look both mighty and monstrous! Why? Clever chap that he is, the legendary Thor-scribe wanted readers to wonder as they wandered through Bill’s early appearances if he was a good guy or a bad guy…and it worked!

Now, as we discovered and well know now, Beta Ray Bill turned out to be not only on the side of the angels, but also worthy enough to wield Mjolnir, Thor’s hunka-hunka hammer, but because Walt gave him a skull-like horseface in THOR (1966) #337, True Believers everywhere got dastardly sense of death and decay from him, which lent the story just the weird vibe its creator desired.

Bill got handed his own hammer eventually—Stormbreaker—but we’ll always remember with frank fondness that incredible moment when the manhandled Mjolnir and added a new wrinkle to Thor’s titanic tapestry.

Didja Know… Thor once merged his mind with a dying architect?

The building builder’s name was Eric Masterson, and the electrifying event shocked everyone who cracked the pages of THOR (1966) #408 back in the day. How did it occur? If memory serves, one of Thor’s freaky, fiendish foes stood responsible…

See, the macabre Mongoose mortally wounded Eric during an adventure and Thor’s big daddy Odin placed his son’s particular persona within the dying dude’s mind, and thus created a kind of hybrid hero. The new Thor set about on marvelous missions of his own until the fateful events of THOR (1966) #458 when the original Thunder God reclaimed his hammer and gave Eric back his own life.

But what became of Mr. Masterson, you ask? As these things usually transpire in an uncanny universe such as Marvel publishes and promotes—he got his own comic! That’s right; as Thunderstrike, Eric swung a mean hammer all his own for a short but sweet while, right up to his untimely demise. But, don’t look so down, Dudley…Eric’s son Kevin’s now walking in his father’s footsteps as Thunderstrike. Who says this ain’t the Marvel Age of Fathers and Sons?

Didja Know… the Lady Sif wears a wig?

Now, hunker down with us in this hole while we spin a yarn about the terrific tresses that sit ‘pon Sif's head—but keep it down, Charlie! We don’t want to get her angry!

Some time after her first go-round in JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY (1952) #102, we learned that Sif was born with blonde hair! What changed? Well, t’was that gnarly God of Mischief Loki that did sheer off Sif’s hair, leaving her with no option save to accept lustrous locks designed and delivered by none other than cosmic dwarves!

Hey, you’ve been so good about all our rambunctious ramblings this time we’re gonna lay a little extra Didja Know on ya at no extra charge, dig? Ready? Here it is: Sif ain’t Balder the Brave’s sister…she’s the singular sibling of that bridge-layer we all know and love name o’ Heimdall. Digest that one now, ducky!

Peruse these eye-poppin' publications with Marvel Unlimited right now! Then visit your local comic shop to read THOR: THE WORTHY #1 on Wednesday, December 4!