Cover art by Jack Kirby
Donald Blake may be able to channel the power of Thor but he is still a doctor, sworn to help the sick and injured of the world. Thus when he hears about a revolution in the Latin American country of San Diablo in Journey Into Mystery #84, he cannot simply turn a blind eye toward the conflict. “Because of the fighting, there’s a great shortage of medical help in San Diablo,” Blake and others in attendance at an emergency meeting in New York City are told. “Disease is rampant, and they’ve asked for volunteer doctors.” All around the room, those sitting rise from their seats in acceptance of the request, and Donald Blake is among them.
Despite being a humanitarian mission, traveling to San Diablo is still a dangerous proposition. While one faction in the rebellion is democratic, the other is pro-communist and led by a local warlord known as the Executioner. “But surely there’ll be no trouble for us,” Blake’s assistant Jane Foster, who is accompanying the doctor, wonders aloud onboard the ship carrying them to San Diablo. “We’re just going to help those who are sick.”
Foster couldn’t have been more wrong as the Executioner has sent his air force to sink the ocean liner – as long as the peasants of his country remain ill, he reasons, they will be unable to fight against the pro-communist rebels. Fortunately for his fellow doctors, Donald Blake transforms himself from mere mortal into the Mighty Thor, who quickly disables all the Executioner’s planes while likewise ensuring that the pilots are able to parachute to safety.
In her 1998 book All You Need Is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s, Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman writes that the seeds of the Peace Corp were planted in the early morning hours of October 14, 1960, at the University of Michigan. John F. Kennedy traveled to the campus after his final television debate against presidential opponent Richard Nixon. Although exhausted and without any prepared remarks, he decided to address the ten thousand students awaiting his arrival nonetheless.
“How many of you are willing to spend ten years in Africa or Latin America or Asia working for the United States and working for freedom?” Kennedy asked. “How many of you who are going to be doctors are willing to spend your days in Ghana; technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the foreign service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country will depend the answer whether we as a free country compete.”
Not long after Kennedy’s visit, graduate students Alan and Judy Guskin wrote a letter to the editor of the Michigan Daily student newspaper asking readers to help make the Peace Corps a reality. In response, 250 students and a handful of faculty members formed “Americans Committed to World Responsibility” and began gathering signatures of students willing to volunteer for the Peace Corps as an answer to Kennedy’s questions.
News of the Ann Arbor petitions – by now with over a thousand signatures – eventually reached the Kennedy campaign. Alan and Judy Guskin were invited to personally deliver them to Kennedy during a campaign stop in Toledo, Ohio. A caravan of students made the trip as well, with one of them asking the future president, “How serious are you about a Peace Corps?”
After hearing that his planes were unable to sink the ship containing American medical personnel, the Executioner sentences the commanding officer of the failed mission to death and enlists a new batch of soldiers to carry out his orders. “Listen well,” he tells them. “I want the Yankee doctors prevented from treating the sick peasants. If you fail you also shall face the firing squad!”
By now the ship carrying Donald Blake and his fellow medical practitioners has landed and the group begins making their way through the jungle terrain of San Diablo to the nearest village. They are ambushed by armed rebels, however, hidden on a nearby mountain. Realizing that even Thor would have difficulty locating all of them, Blake uses the power of the Thunder God to unleash an intense lightning storm to literally wash the rebels away.
While they may have escaped the frying pan, the group of humanitarians now find themselves in the fire when they come face-to-face with a battalion of tanks. Once again Blake makes his superhero transformation and Thor is quickly able to dismantle the enemy. When he returns to camp, he discovers that the rebels have captured Jane Foster. “You fight with the strength of a dozen demons,” they tell Thor. “But even you cannot keep us from holding this girl. Unless you leave, she will die.” The Mighty Thor has no choice but to turn around and walk away.
A now President Kennedy was willing to earmark $12 million from contingency funds to get the Peace Corps up-and-running as quickly as possible. He also named his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver as its first director. The subsequent Peace Corps Act – passed later that year – outlined the three main goals of the organization. First, the Peace Corp was to help train needed personnel in the countries in which it served, the second was to promote a better understanding of America in those countries, and lastly, for America to gain a better understanding of foreign nations.
For their efforts, volunteers received a salary “sufficient only to maintain health and meet basic needs. Men and women will be expected to work and live alongside the nationals of the country in which they were stationed – doing the same work, eating the same food, talking the same language.”
Sargent Shriver struck fast – less than a month after the president’s executive order, he issued a directive calling for volunteer training for Tanganyika in two weeks, the Philippines in three, and Nigeria in four. In August, fifty-one Peace Corps volunteers arrived in Ghana. After departing from their plane, they sang the Ghanaian national anthem in the local Twi language for the dignitaries who greeted them at the airport.
By the end of 1961, the Peace Corps had 750 volunteers serving in nine different countries. Two years later, those figures increased to seven thousand volunteers in forty-four countries. In September 1966, Korea became the fiftieth and the number of volunteers peaked at 15,556. The organization’s budget had grown to $114 million by then as well.
While eighty percent of the Peace Corps’ efforts in Africa were geared towards education, in Latin America roughly the same percentage was used for community development projects, including the building of roads, latrines, and schools. Overall, fifty percent of the Peace Corps volunteers worked as teachers, with thirty percent assigned to community development and the remaining twenty percent split between agriculture, health care, and public works.
The doctors may have escaped but the Executioner is pleased to have Jane Foster as prisoner. His enthusiasm quickly turns to anger, however, when his men find Donald Blake prowling around outside of his headquarters. “She’s my nurse,” he tells the Executioner of Foster. “You’ve no right to hold her. Release her at once.” The Executioner is not impressed by Blake’s act of heroism, strips away the doctor’s walking stick – which is used to make his transformation into Thor – and orders Blake to face a firing squad.
Instead of accepting his fate, Donald Blake taunts the Executioner. “You’re a lily-livered coward,” he shouts. “If you weren’t, you’d fight me man to man.” The communist leader takes the bait and approaches Blake with the walking stick still in his hands. The doctor grabs it and strikes it against the wall. The resulting flash of light momentarily blinds the rebels and once they regain their eyesight, they find themselves facing the Mighty Thor.
Just as they are about to attack, an army under the command of the democratic faction within San Diablo appears on the horizon. Taken by surprise, the Executioner orders his men to retreat to a nearby mountain but Thor launches a lightning bolt that causes a dormant volcano to suddenly erupt. Realizing all is lost, the Executioner attempts to flee with the gold he has amassed during the rebellion. Seeing his desertion, his own men open fire.
“He betrayed us,” they shout. “He betrayed our nation. It is the Americans who are truly our friends, not those who plunge us into war.”
Anthony Letizia