Every so often, I come across a character that is so weird, so odd, and so ridiculous, that this column practically writes itself. This week’s entry was inspired by my casual YouTube browsing. I found a video from the channel Comic Tropes detailing the a Golden Age hero named Dynamite Thor.
If you want to hear the Comic Tropes guy Chris detailing a couple of Dynamite Thor’s stories, click the link. I’m just here to toss off a quick bio for the character, and I do mean quick since Dynamite Thor only appeared in five stories.
Not every Golden Age comic book publisher got to stick around to the modern day. One such publisher was Fox Features Syndicate. I don’t know much about them, but they don’t exist anymore and it looks like many of their characters were either eventually sold to other, bigger companies or went public domain.
Guess which category Dynamite Thor falls into!
So, if you know your superheroes, you may be wondering if Dynamite Thor has any connection at all to a certain Norse thunder god. The answer there is a resounding “no”. Dymanite Thor appeared in only five issues of an anthology series called Weird Comics, and let’s just say the title fits. Fox Features often just bought stories from various creators and slapped them into this anthology books and called it a day apparently. Dynamite Thor was one such character. And the “Thor” part was actually his real name.
OK, I have played this out long enough. Dynamite Thor, who had no superpowers in his first appearance, was a mine owner named Peter Thor. Because he owned a mine, he had access to a lot of dynamite. And he tended to solve all his problems by tossing lit sticks of dynamite at them.
And somehow these solutions worked.
Now, if you’re waiting for Dynamite Thor’s intense and deeply psychology backstory, well, he doesn’t have any. He has a special superhero costume he wars under his regular clothes that includes a belt full of sticks of dynamite. He also apparently had a good throwing arm. And, starting with his second appearance, he was immune to at least his own explosions.
Oh, and later on, he developed the ability to fly by tossing sticks of dynamite below him. The explosions would keep his body aloft and carry him at high speeds for long distances. There was just a small problem with how his artist drew him when he used that ability.
By the by, no one really seems to know who actually created Dynamite Thor. Fox Features had a name attached to it from someone named Wright Lincoln, but that seems to be an alias, especially as the artistic style of the character changed between stories. But this was a guy who solved every possible problem by blowing things up with dynamite. We probably shouldn’t think too hard about the guy, particularly since I am not sure anyone else did.
That said, I may have to look up these Weird Comics characters. I could probably get a couple months worth of these columns that way.
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