We find out that Bruce Banner's alter ego is actually posing as a robot circus-clown. Why a robot? Well, he has to explain his superhuman strength somehow! The thing that's a bit off about Hulk here in this first issue is that disguising oneself takes a certain level of intelligence that we just haven't seen from him up until this point. To add to that, he looks pretty ridiculous.
We find Hulk in the middle of a Big Top circus juggling act, where he gets noticed by an ant. Sending signals to Ant Man, the ant reports that it had spotted someone powerful. Taking this as a definite sign that they've found the Hulk, Ant Man and Wasp head out to capture him.
After their attempts end in failure, Hulk manages to escape the tent, only to wind up fighting Iron Man. After a single powerful punch, Iron Man's armor is damaged, allowing Hulk to flee once more.
Elsewhere, in Asgard, Thor seeks permission from his father to visit the Isle of Silence to see if Loki is responsible for the strange happenings back on Earth. Thor knows that Loki will be prepared for the visit, and most surely has laid traps along the way.
The first trap is a series of tangled tree roots which attacks Thor in his boat. Almost strangled to death, he is barely able to destroy them by spinning his hammer like a propeller. His next challenge is an erupting volcano that shoots out exploding gas globs capable of defeating any of the gods.
Thor fakes his death, pretending to get caught in an explosion, only to reappear after Loki reveals himself. Thor confronts Loki with pretty solid reasoning, saying that because he's putting up such a fight, Loki OBVIOUSLY did something foul.
Suddenly from the ground beneath, a hand reaches up and grabs Thor's leg. It's a Troll! And as Loki goes on to explain that nothing can break the grip of a Troll, it's actually the most exciting, and unexpected moment of the issue. It continues to build upon the mythos of Asgard and the Marvel Universe in a subtle but grand way. To top it off, more Trolls start appearing, and the whole scene is a bit freaky.
As one would guess however, the Trolls were no match, and Thor uses his hammer to conjure a blinding light that defeats them.
In one last ditch effort to escape, Loki creates several clones of himself so that Thor can not locate him. Again, Thor's hammer is like a Swiss army knife, so Loki never had a chance. After using the "hammer propeller" trick again, the clones are sent flying off a cliff while the real Loki lay hanging from a vine.
Thor's final hammer trick is to magnetize it and attach it to Loki like a set of godly handcuffs. Loki's caught! Mission accomplished!
Back on Earth, Iron Man is still chasing Hulk, despite his damaged battery unit. He tracks the green monster to a automotive factory in Detroit, and the two of them wreck more havoc on the facility than they do on each other.
When it seems as though the two might actually inflict permanent damage on each other, Thor appears with Loki in tow. He explains to them that he was the cause of everything going amiss, as they had all originally suspected.
Once again, Loki does something to thwart their attempts to keep him at bay. In a "what will he think of next" moment, Loki makes himself radioactive. He gives them 10 seconds to leave him, so that he can finish his battle alone with Thor. Unfortunately for him, Ant Man and Wasp drop him into a lead-lined tank where Thor will wait for his radioactivity to end, and then taking him back to Asgard.
The story ends with Ant Man suggesting they all unite together. Hulk also joins the team for the sake that he would rather be with them than against them. It's a very rushed moment, and even deciding on a name for themselves requires little thought on their part.
Comics sure have come a long way since then, and It's doubtful if you would ever find this much of a story crammed into a single issue of any Marvel comic within the past 15 years. Instead, a story like this might be spread over a 6 issue arc in order to fully develop the ideas presented. It might be for that reason that I had such a difficult time making it through this story. However, the issue left me with a sense of nostalgia for people who saw this team created back in 1963, and I could see this as a comic people would get their money's worth with numerous rereads - especially before home video. Little did anyone know how much of a legacy it would leave eventually, and what may have been an experimental idea played out quite well in fully fleshing out another corner of the Marvel Universe.
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