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  1. #1846
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    It’s just terrible. It really is!

    It just feels like he has no grasp on Avengers camaraderie. Then he adds Ghost Rider Reyes who totally sticks out like a sore thumb. Blaze would’ve been fun. He has history. Experience. Maybe he could’ve examined Thor and then judged Mjolnir unworthy of Thor’s hand! I still say that at some point someone will retcon this hammer as a fake. The real Mjolnir having never even been wielded by Foster. That’d be great!

  2. #1847
    Astonishing Member GodThor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by juan678 View Post
    LMAO such a great development for Thor...

    I'm speechless, really.

  3. #1848
    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GodThor View Post
    LMAO such a great development for Thor...

    I'm speechless, really.
    I wasn't really expecting his characterization in Avengers to change that much to be honest.

  4. #1849
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    [QUOTE=Frontier;4443903]I wasn't really expecting his characterization in Avengers to change that much to be honest.[/QUOTE

    Agreed, it has been very different from the Thor book anyways

  5. #1850
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    Quote Originally Posted by 616MarvelYear is LeapYear View Post
    Tales of Asgard back-up
    "Balder the Brave!"

    This flashback tale of the early days of Asgard focuses on Balder the Brave. In this story, he is brought to the court of Odin
    to answer for the fact that during a recent battle against the Storm Giants, Balder deserted his comrades.
    Balder explains that during combat, he saw a bird fall from its nest, so he had left the battle to return the bird to its mother.
    Furious that Balder would abandon a battle for such a deed, Odin orders Balder to face the test of mortal death,

    which Balder agrees to take in spite of the other warriors of Asgard's protests.

    The test requires that Balder stand in front of a line of soldiers who would attempt to kill him without his resistance.
    First Odin orders Tyr, master archer of Asgard, to fire an arrow at Balder.

    The unflinching Balder is saved at the last minute when a hawk swoops out of the sky and stops the arrow from hitting Balder.

    Odin orders Honir to throw a spear at Balder,

    which is stopped by a sudden sprouting of vines from the ground, and again Balder does not flinch.
    Then Odin orders Thor to strike down Balder with his hammer.
    As Thor approaches to strike Balder down, the warrior still does not move, prompting Odin to stop Thor.

    Odin reveals that he summoned the hawk and the plant to save Balder at the last minute of each attack to test his bravery.
    Having passed Odin's test, Odin rewards Balder with the gift of invincibility, and has him hailed as Balder the Brave.

    Script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Vince Colletta
    Man, this is the Odin we want to see.
    Last edited by Wall-Crawler; 07-06-2019 at 07:59 PM.

  6. #1851
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKtheMac View Post
    There are two. Both are controversial. They were at the time and they remain so by those of us that still see his influence. I mean he is a renowned writer who has contributed much to comics, but boy did he set Thor on a strange path. The first was mostly papered over. The second is responsible for a lot of the things so many people here complain about but blame other writers for.

    They are also essential reading if you want to deep dive into why Thor continuity is weird and convoluted. Especially why modern writers think of Odin as a problem character.
    So what are those two consensus ?

    I've read some issues here and there and some story arcs like The Eternals which I personally enjoyed, but I've never actually taken a look at his entire tenure from start to finish.

  7. #1852
    Astonishing Member GodThor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wall-Crawler View Post
    Man, this is the Odin we want to see.
    I really can't remember any memorable Odin moment for the past 4 to 5 years.

    oh yeah, he said that Thor is an actual name.

    that is the smartest thing he said under Aaron.

  8. #1853
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wall-Crawler View Post
    So what are those two consensus ?

    I've read some issues here and there and some story arcs like The Eternals which I personally enjoyed, but I've never actually taken a look at his entire tenure from start to finish.
    The first Thomas' run was my very first Thor comics. I don't know about the consensus (although you can find a pretty nice summary here), but the more time passes, the less I like that run. It had some good ideas and concepts here and there, but it's obvious he wasn't very invested. He even didn't like the character. Gerry Conway said something in that regard, and Thomas himself replied that Conway hadn't been wrong. So, Thomas did what he has been doing the best throughout his career: he told (or adapted) other people's stories, connecting the dots between them, making bridges, making continuity. First it was about Ragnarok, then about The Eternals, then Der Ring des Nibelungen. The Kirby's Eternals stuff was fully absorbed into the Marvel universe in that endeavor, with the excuse that, if Thomas didn't do it, someone else would. (Incidentally, Thomas was responsible for integration of the Fourth World stuff into the DC universe. The suggestion that DC should do something about the Kirby's world and characters was his. Or so the story goes.) But I am one of those people who think the Kirby's creations work better in their own context than as a decoration of sorts (or, even worse, an excuse) for the rest of the Big Two's universes. If you are not one of those, you may have a gentler view of the contribution of those stories to Marvel comics in general.

    But, to be fair, Thomas didn't get to finish that story. Gruenwald and Macchio did. So, I don't know what his plans were, if he had any. Regardless, that story had one of the most rushed and unspectacular endings in the history of all endings.

    His second run was much worse, although maybe not so much in the terms of craft as it was completely uninteresting and bland (and this is always subjective, but here is a link to the beginning of it). Nevertheless, if someone takes his worst ideas and uses them in their own comics, the blame isn't on Thomas. 'It is continuity!' is not a worthy argument, because everything is continuity nowadays, even the diametrically opposite ideas. We could argue about the meaning of 'the worst' but not about that transfer of blame. Fraction's stories - I would rather called them 'collections of scenes', really - were as full of life and imagination as a script created by AI.
    Last edited by Paradox_Nihil; 07-07-2019 at 04:32 AM.

  9. #1854
    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by GodThor View Post
    I really can't remember any memorable Odin moment for the past 4 to 5 years.

    oh yeah, he said that Thor is an actual name.

    that is the smartest thing he said under Aaron.
    Well, from the current run I can think of Odin moments that are memorable for the wrong reasons.

  10. #1855
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paradox_Nihil View Post
    The first Thomas' run was my very first Thor comics. I don't know about the consensus (although you can find a pretty nice summary here), but the more time passes, the less I like that run. It had some good ideas and concepts here and there, but it's obvious he wasn't very invested. He even didn't like the character. Gerry Conway said something in that regard, and Thomas himself replied that Conway hadn't been wrong. So, Thomas did what he has been doing the best throughout his career: he told (or adapted) other people's stories, connecting the dots between them, making bridges, making continuity. First it was about Ragnarok, then about The Eternals, then Der Ring des Nibelungen. The Kirby's Eternals stuff was fully absorbed into the Marvel universe in that endeavor, with the excuse that, if Thomas didn't do it, someone else would. (Incidentally, Thomas was responsible for integration of the Fourth World stuff into the DC universe. The suggestion that DC should do something about the Kirby's world and characters was his. Or so the story goes.) But I am one of those people who think the Kirby's creations work better in their own context than as a decoration of sorts (or, even worse, an excuse) for the rest of the Big Two's universes. If you are not one of those, you may have a gentler view of the contribution of those stories to Marvel comics in general.

    But, to be fair, Thomas didn't get to finish that story. Gruenwald and Macchio did. So, I don't know what his plans were, if he had any. Regardless, that story had one of the most rushed and unspectacular endings in the history of all endings.

    His second run was much worse, although maybe not so much in the terms of craft as it was completely uninteresting and bland (and this is always subjective, but here is a link to the beginning of it). Nevertheless, if someone takes his worst ideas and uses them in their own comics, the blame isn't on Thomas. 'It is continuity!' is not a worthy argument, because everything is continuity nowadays, even the diametrically opposite ideas. We could argue about the meaning of 'the worst' but not about that transfer of blame. Fraction's stories - I would rather called them 'collections of scenes', really - were as full of life and imagination as a script created by AI.
    I see, thanks for sharing your take.

    What do you think about Tom DeFalco's run ?

  11. #1856
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wall-Crawler View Post
    I see, thanks for sharing your take.

    What do you think about Tom DeFalco's run ?
    I enjoyed this period immensely

  12. #1857
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKtheMac View Post
    Yes, this is the wider issue. Again this to me is part of a disconnect between modern fandom and writers. It is easy to identify themes, the writer is hardly hiding them. Modern fandom has become distracted IMO by learning just enough about stories to recognise the building blocks but not ever learning how they are being used. They often see evidence of the craft but not the art. Look at the growth of ‘trope’ websites, totally obsessed with genre and labelling parts.

    To use an analogy it would be like walking into the Sagrada Familia, with its exposed works and ongoing construction, and labelling all of the different blocks of stone, but never standing back and looking at how the space is being defined, how the building works functionally, how feelings of grandeur are being evoked, in other words missing what the architectural vision was.

    I can imagine somebody looking at all the carved blocks and being convinced there was a deliberate attempt to make the building feel heavy and wrought and yet that’s almost the exact opposite of the vision, which is all about the shape and the space. A feeling of lightness and the effortless support of curves. A building designed upside down by string and weights to utilise gravity. A marriage of science and religion.

    I mean they identified the building blocks, so obviously they know all about how the building works and what it all means right?

    IMO if anyone is interested enough in how stories work to read about themes, or genre and tropes they should keep going. Learning just enough to spoil the experience of reading and not enough to appreciate the art of writing is a halfway house. Either stay a reader or become a proper critic or better still try writing something. Writing taught me more about stories than any text book or lecture ever could.
    I think in some ways we were better off not knowing as much about the creator's personal lives. When the writer was just an (often fake) name on the page and we didn't know if they were Jewish or Christian or atheist or gay or straight or whatever. There was certainly a lot less of assigning motives and agendas and claiming some sort of insight into how the writer's mind works just because we read their book (or watched part of a YouTube video about it, more likely for some fans). I would think there was a lot less of a sort of parallel reading, where a reader engages with the work but is also thinking about the identity of the writer and concocting motives based on that identity. Things like "of course an atheist would write that" or "he's an atheist, he just wants to show how much better humans are than gods" and the like... There are positives to knowing more about the personal lives of creators but I think there are some major negatives too.

    Agreed that it's better to engage with the work as a fan or a critic, or both, but being some of each is the worst possible situation. I think a lot of fans define critic as "someone who reads something and then gives their opinions". There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that (I mean, that's exactly why I'm on a message board, I get that) but it's not actual criticism. I think a lot of fans take on a sort of critical guise without knowing the basics of genuine literary criticism. They throw in a few terms or buzzwords but don't have the foundation, it seems like to me. My best guess is they do this because they think it adds more weight to their opinions. They dress up their opinions just enough to feel justified saying "it was bad" instead of "I didn't like it". I think we'd all be better off if we stopped trying to prove the things we don't like are objectively bad and instead just moved on to something we do like.

  13. #1858
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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel22 View Post
    I think in some ways we were better off not knowing as much about the creator's personal lives. When the writer was just an (often fake) name on the page and we didn't know if they were Jewish or Christian or atheist or gay or straight or whatever. There was certainly a lot less of assigning motives and agendas and claiming some sort of insight into how the writer's mind works just because we read their book (or watched part of a YouTube video about it, more likely for some fans). I would think there was a lot less of a sort of parallel reading, where a reader engages with the work but is also thinking about the identity of the writer and concocting motives based on that identity. Things like "of course an atheist would write that" or "he's an atheist, he just wants to show how much better humans are than gods" and the like... There are positives to knowing more about the personal lives of creators but I think there are some major negatives too.

    Agreed that it's better to engage with the work as a fan or a critic, or both, but being some of each is the worst possible situation. I think a lot of fans define critic as "someone who reads something and then gives their opinions". There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing that (I mean, that's exactly why I'm on a message board, I get that) but it's not actual criticism. I think a lot of fans take on a sort of critical guise without knowing the basics of genuine literary criticism. They throw in a few terms or buzzwords but don't have the foundation, it seems like to me. My best guess is they do this because they think it adds more weight to their opinions. They dress up their opinions just enough to feel justified saying "it was bad" instead of "I didn't like it". I think we'd all be better off if we stopped trying to prove the things we don't like are objectively bad and instead just moved on to something we do like.
    That would be nice IF they weren’t destroying what we typically enjoyed. I’m not going to “move on” and let others wreak havoc on my favorite character without at least making their experience somewhat uncomfortable. It sounds bad, but when you’re dismissive of our actual, valid arguments by saying “oh you’re not literary geniuses” I cease to care. I’ve followed Thor for over twenty years and I’m supposed to stand aside and happily enjoy a “new take” that a bunch of fickle band-wagoners seem to have taken a liking to as the flavor of the month? Nah!

    I’ve written a pretty well read fiction (17,000 plus reads) on another forum, (and some in another language), as well as some fictions with Marvel characters that others enjoyed because I kept true to the character.

    So, I would be careful in labeling others as inept. Some of us actually write things people enjoy unlike others here that seek to silence us with their elite opinions then attack us for simply mimicking their actions. I mean, we can’t say Aaron and his story “suck” but you can tell us our intelligence is lacking?

    Either way, I think this thread has veered off its course. This is a THOR ODINSON thread. All talk of Foster, unless it is to express how much more a classic take on THOR is superior to her, should be banned. There’s a Valkyrie thread for her now that she’s stolen yet another name.....
    Last edited by THORPERION; 07-09-2019 at 11:05 PM.

  14. #1859
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    Quote Originally Posted by Daniel22 View Post
    I think we'd all be better off if we stopped trying to prove the things we don't like are objectively bad and instead just moved on to something we do like.
    Yep. That’s my entire thesis here. Stop trying to assert things as objectively bad. Especially when it amounts to nothing. Marvel are not listening, the fans that like it just get insulted, and the writer is being actively insulted for being a professional and doing the job they were paid for, within the limits they have been set.
    “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.” ― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  15. #1860
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    Quote Originally Posted by THORPERION View Post
    mean, we can’t say Aaron and his story “suck”
    Well that is plainly an insult so generally no. Most people would consider that not acceptable to their face.

    but you can tell us our intelligence is lacking?
    Nobody said this here.

    Either way, I think this thread has veered off its course. This is a THOR ODINSON thread. All talk of Foster, unless it is to express how much more a classic take on THOR is superior to her, should be banned. There’s a Valkyrie thread for her now that she’s stolen yet another name.....
    Absolutely not. Jane Foster WAS Thor for a while, and as such there are plenty of times it is appropriate to talk about her here. Nobody here is particularly interested in proving she was the “best Thor” anyway. But, contextually we can’t ignore her in a thread about Thor. Especially when the reason we bring her up is to defend the writer from accusations of bias or ‘preaching atheism’.
    “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.” ― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

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