Thor in Marvel Comics

Speaking with The Jack Kirby Collector, Timm opened up about why he liked drawing so many characters that are created by Jack Kirby wailing on Thor. This stems from a preference that Kevin Alteri, the director that Timm was working with at the time, had when it came to the character.

Bruce Timm prefers the New Gods to Thor

New Gods, drawn by Alex Ross

Timm and Alteri got into a debate about who was the better inker for Jack Kirby, which spiraled into the conversation that led Bruce Timm to pit so many characters made by Kirby against Thor. He said:

“Kevin Alteri, the director, was going on at one point saying how he thought that Thor was the peak of Jack’s career. I was like, “Yeah, Thor is really, really good, but there’s something really great about those New Gods comics.” Kevin was like, “New Gods is nothing compared to Thor. They’re not really as good.””

Timm would go on to exclusively draw other Kirby characters like the Silver Surfer and Orion going ham on Thor, which sort of became a running meme for the creator. The creator continued:

On one hand, yeah, they’re not quite as perfect as the Thor comics but they’re great to look at. You can’t beat that Royer inking! He’s like, “Nah, the Colletta stuff is the best.” He was actually saying that. So I did this one drawing of Orion beating up on Thor, and I inked Thor “Colletta style” and I inked Orion “Royer style,” and that was the first drawing I did.

It is heartwarming to see that even comic book legends engage in everyday fandom stuff like normal fanboys do. But Timm also made it clear that he actually does not have a thing against Thor.

Bruce Timm actually enjoys Thor Comics

Chris Hemsworth as Thor

Bruce Timm clarified in the same interview that he does not have anything against Thor, and said that he actually enjoys Thor comics a lot.

While there are a lot of similarities between Orion and Thor (so much so that the characters were fused together to create Thorion for the Amalgam Universe), one can see how Timm’s adoration for one set of characters could bleed into that of another when it came to Jack Kirby’s work. Timm said:

“I basically ended up doing a whole series of all these other Kirby characters beating up on Thor because that was Kevin’s favorite character. That’s all it was about; I have nothing against Thor. I love the Thor comics.”

Thor as a character holds many of the hallmarks of characters that Jack Kirby loved depicting in his work. His work with New Gods, Inhumans, Eternals, and Thor has a similar thread that goes through them, something that shines through in the stories that he tells, like a series of tropes that he loved coming back to again and again.