The Mighty Thor #2: The Newton edition

This is the cover to Newton Comics' The Mighty Thor #2:

It originally appeared on the cover of Marvel Comics' Journey Into Mystery #101:

Note the misspelling of Zarrko on the Newton cover.

The story contents are as follows:

The Return of Zarrko, The Tomorrow Man!, originally published in Journey Into Mystery #101, February 1964

Slave of Zarrko, The Tomorrow Man!, originally published in Journey Into Mystery #102, March 1964

The Return of Zarrko, the Tomorrow Man appears to have been reproduced faithfully in the Newton edition. I have compared it to an online scan of the issue, which appears to be from a Marvel Masterworks printing, and apart from omitting the original page numbers and a negligible couple of centimetres cropped from the bottom of the splash page, the only significant editing is the change in the text box in the final panel from the original Next Issue to Part 2.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the printing of Slave of Zarrko, The Tomorrow Man. This instalment is one of the most egregious examples of Newton's tampering with the material.  This is page 2 of the story as it appears in Journey Into Mystery #102:

This is page 2 of the Newton edition:

This page originally appeared on page 2 of the story "Death" Comes to Thor! from the Tales of Asgard backup feature in Journey into Mystery #102. It is inserted into Slave of Zarrko to maintain the page count at the expense of the recap page, which was deemed redundant in the Newton edition given it recapped events of the preceding story. To add insult to injury, the following page contains, in part, the rest of the recap:

Whilst the rationale for omitting the recap is understandable, the solution is a crude and ineffective surgical procedure, and I'm left to wonder what the young intrepid reader in 1976 made of all this. 

The poster in this issue is Hulk and Ka-Zar:

This originally appeared on the cover of Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk #109, and was also published as the cover to Newton Comics' The Incredible Hulk #12:

There are two in-house advertisements for Newton comics in this issue:

The Fantastic Four #14 and Conan the Barbarian #12 are cover-dated February 1976, as is The Mighty Thor #2. The expiry date for the contest is 21 February 1976, one week after the expiry date for the contest in The Mighty Thor #1. Presumably The Mighty Thor #2 was published very early February 1976 - 7 February is the first Saturday in 1976 - but this is just guesswork, and I'm conscious that reading competition expiry dates and publications dates is a fraught exercise in this particular period of Newton Comics.

This issue was advertised in-house:

This is scanned from The Incredible Hulk #15.

This would be the final issue in the series. The Mighty Thor would appear in subsequent Newton comics, including The Mighty Thor Giant 100 Page Annual in March 1977. 

The Mighty Thor #1: The Newton edition

This is the cover to Newton Comics' The Mighty Thor #1:

It is modified from the original cover art to Marvel Comics' Journey Into Mystery #100:

The story contents are as follows:

The Mysterious Mister Hyde!, originally published in Journey into Mystery #99, December 1963

The Master Plan of Mr. Hyde!, originally published in Journey into Mystery #100, January 1964

The splash page to The Mysterious Mister Hyde! (or, the Mighty Thor! Battles... "The Mysterious Mister Hyde!") has been cropped at the bottom, omitting the page number and the job number X-512:

The significant modification to the story occurs on the final page:

The original story ended with a text box in the bottom panel which has been omitted in favour of a brief End Part One advisory:

This panel is scanned from page 236 of my copy of Marvel Masterworks The Mighty Thor from Journey Into Mystery Nos. 83-100, second printing December 1999.

The splash page to The Master Plan of Mr. Hyde has been similarly altered - and I don't mean as per the previous owner of my copy : 

The text box in the original page referred to "Last issue..." - scan courtesy of my Marvel Masterworks:

The poster in this issue is The Incredible Hulk from the cover to Marvel Comics' The Incredible Hulk #107:

This poster was also included in Newton Comics' Captain America #3 and The Invincible Iron Man #1, and the image was also used on the cover of Newton Comics' The Incredible Hulk #10. Indeed, the white patch alongside the H on the poster is where Newton placed their A Great Marvel Collector Classic stamp:

This issue includes in-house advertisements for two other Newton comics:

Newton's Giant Team-Up Annual #1 and Captain America #3 are both cover-dated December 1975.

The Mighty Thor #1 was announced in the December 1975 subscription page, and was scheduled for publication 3 January 1976. The expiry date for the contest in this issue is 14 February 1976. It appears this issue was published either on schedule or shortly thereafter.

The Mighty Thor #1 was advertised in other Newton issues:

There would be one more issue in this series.

The Mighty Thor: The complete Yaffa cover gallery

Here's a cover gallery of my complete series of Yaffa's The Mighty Thor:

 #1, c.October 1977

 #2, c.March 1978

 #3, c.late 1978

#4, c.1980

 #5, c.April 1981

 #6, c.August 1981

 #7, c.October 1981

#8, c.early 1982

#NN, post mid 1982

The first three issues are regular/magazine-sized editions, the rest are digest-sized issues. #'s 7 and 8 are the taller digest-sized editions.

The dates noted above are approximations based on the little data to hand, and a little bit of informed guesswork too. I will update this information as it becomes available.

To the best of my knowledge this is the complete run of the series. There is scope for a #9 tall digest-sized edition to have been published but to this point I have not seen one. 

The unnumbered issue at the end of the gallery is a digest-sized recycled reprint of #1. It is possible that other issues in the series were recycled.

As you can see via the link to #7, 10 years ago I owned a single issue of this series. The rest have been purchased over the last 4 years. They have been substantially more expensive over the last 2 years.

Federal Comics published the next The Mighty Thor series in Australia between 1984-1986.

Update 21 March 2024: My copy of The Mighty Thor #2 is stamped G&G JUN 1978, which suggests the publication date is c.March 1978.