Thor Odinson, God of Thunder Appreciation 2019

[JKtheMac]

While I have no issue addressing modern issues, I think it a bit much to rewrite the entire history of a character to act as a strawman for any issue, especially one as sensitive as that. It;s like revealing Hank beat all his girlfriends, every day of the weak.

And as I already kind of pointed out you need to back that claim up, because it’s not apparent to me and I don’t believe it as a claim for one minute. It isn’t fair to just shout straw man without actually demonstrating it. And it isn’t up to anyone else to disprove what hasn’t been demonstrated.

Feel free to open a tread asking if Jane is just a straw man for feminist issues. Or how his Odin is a straw man for toxic masculinity. This doesn’t seem like the best place for that discussion.

[kilderkin]

This is one of the disconnects between writers and a certain group of fandom. Stories are about asking questions, challenging assumptions, seeing where the limits of what we know are. All Aaron was doing was looking at this more closely than previously. He did it in the normal mode of comics, via analogy.

We have a mortal with the hammer, we think we know what that means, but there are ambiguities. Even the way you try and boil it down has ambiguities. Why was that inscription there? What does it mean exactly? If it is magical can it change? If it can what does that mean? If you look like Thor and act like Thor are you in some way Thor? In what ways are you Thor and in what ways are you not?

That is how good writers think. They explore these questions. Instead of giving them closed and uninteresting answers based on what Lee, Simonson or Thomas wrote, they ask the big questions and fashion story around them.

Some of us, as readers and fans of Thor are also like this. We look at the cracks in continuity instead of hand waving them away. We like discontinuity because we are detail oriented and fascinated by how different writers look at things. I like varied and changing approaches to continuity because if you hang around long enough you get that anyway, whether you like it or not. The Tao of comics, go with it, don’t resist. Resisting just leads to dissatisfaction.

It’s like if you are told a familiar story but the details were deliberately changed. There are two things you can do, resist the difference or enjoy the difference. The way to enjoy the difference is to listen carefully and try and understand why the differences are there. If you just spend time pointing out why the original was better you will never understand the story being told, and thereby never appreciate it. Never even be in a position to know if you like it or not.

IMO Some fans resist change because of how fandom often operates. To prove we are fans we need to somehow know the ‘canonical answers’ to these big questions. Then when a story challenges those answers we have a more difficult choice. Either maintain our card carrying fandom status and point out why the writer is wrong, or recognise that the writer is usually one step ahead of all this. They also know the canonical answers and if not their editorial team can guide them. They are not wrong, they are creating new canon.

It's there right at the start from the people who created it

Shall possess the power

Not become

Easy

As for canon being created, sure, that's what publication does

That said, one writer deciding something is so (and I suppose therefore that editorial) is only temporary

It is the sustained history of such a long character that becomes established canon

I'll use a football reference

Form is temporary but class is permanent

A writer doing something in contradiction to prior canon is the exception not the rule, if it's followed on for future works then accepted that changes canon

One writers current version does not

By that logic Odin was himself and Thor at the same time in 1000000bc, but he's never called himself that nor been referred to it as such

Now Thor might not have been born at that time, at least not current Thor, but the Ragnarok cycles suggest he has been around since back then.

Of course sure rewritten canon would correct that in the current run

[JKtheMac]

It's there right at the start from the people who created it
Shall possess the power
Not become
Easy

Yes obviously there is an easy answer. If we stick to the easy answers we loose the possibility of good meaningful story. Look at Simonson. If he had chosen the easy answer, which at that point was “nobody else can lift the hammer” he wouldn’t have had much of a story.

As for canon being created, sure, that's what publication does
That said, one writer deciding something is so (and I suppose therefore that editorial) is only temporary
It is the sustained history of such a long character that becomes established canon

That isn’t the way Thor Canon has worked for most of its existence. Nothing that has been written since JMS has been contradictory, it has built upon canon.

I'll use a football reference
Form is temporary but class is permanent

It’s a truism that only holds true in a very specific context. Pure rhetoric, not actually based on anything other than looking back at success. It is the kind of thing big successful teams say. A truism that supports my assertion that Aaron will not be forgotten because he has been hugely successful.

A writer doing something in contradiction to prior canon is the exception not the rule, if it's followed on for future works then accepted that changes canon

Actually it is a rule that only applies when editorial try and stifle creativity. We have lived through several eras when this was true. Indeed I would hazard that you grew up during one of those aberrant eras when a strong editor beloved too much in keeping things the same. I didn’t. I am delighted we are not in one of these eras now, but in a way that is a self fulfilling prophesy because I only got back into comics because we saw the back of this way of thinking. I have never been particularly interested in stories that don’t explore or challenge characters and or ideas.

By that logic Odin was himself and Thor at the same time in 1000000bc, but he's never called himself that nor been referred to it as such.
Now Thor might not have been born at that time, at least not current Thor, but the Ragnarok cycles suggest he has been around since back then.

Of course sure rewritten canon would correct that in the current run

Not sure of your point here. Who didn’t call himself what? Bear in mind there was no inscription back then, no enchantment that transformed or had the potential to do so.

[Overhazard]

I can only speak for myself, but I didn't have a problem with Jane being Thor, I didn't like Odinson being written as a mead-swilling self loathing, sad-sack and Odin being a dumb misogynist. I liked the Jane-Thor years overall, but that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Maybe some older thor readers can elucidate me a bit, I've been reading thor since the JMS years, but I never got the impression that he wrapped so much of his identity in his hammer. That was the impression I got from Aaron.

[Frontier]

I can only speak for myself, but I didn't have a problem with Jane being Thor, I didn't like Odinson being written as a mead-swilling self loathing, sad-sack and Odin being a dumb misogynist. I liked the Jane-Thor years overall, but that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Maybe some older thor readers can elucidate me a bit, I've been reading thor since the JMS years, but I never got the impression that he wrapped so much of his identity in his hammer. That was the impression I got from Aaron.

Yeah...like, I can appreciate what Jane represents as a character and why she needed to be called "Thor" to get the prominent placement she has, and her stories were entertaining, but I just don't appreciate what her era has done to some of the characterization of Thor, Odin, or how it's devalued Thor's own name by making it something that can just be wholesale and efficiently taken by whoever manages to lift the hammer.

[kilderkin]

I can only speak for myself, but I didn't have a problem with Jane being Thor, I didn't like Odinson being written as a mead-swilling self loathing, sad-sack and Odin being a dumb misogynist. I liked the Jane-Thor years overall, but that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Maybe some older thor readers can elucidate me a bit, I've been reading thor since the JMS years, but I never got the impression that he wrapped so much of his identity in his hammer. That was the impression I got from Aaron.

In a lot of agreement

Jane getting to use mjolnir was cool

Thor and odins treatment hasn't been imo

[MindofShadow]

WoR 2 spoilers

spoilers:

whew, odin didn't die to elves. outrage for no reason lol

end of spoilers



spoilers:

RIP valkryie

end of spoilers

[kilderkin]

Yeah...like, I can appreciate what Jane represents as a character and why she needed to be called "Thor" to get the prominent placement she has, and her stories were entertaining, but I just don't appreciate what her era has done to some of the characterization of Thor, Odin, or how it's devalued Thor's own name by making it something that can just be wholesale and efficiently taken by whoever manages to lift the hammer.

Agree about Thor

It's pertinent to me that cap never transform ed when he lifted the hammer, I feel this is an important point to observe

[GodThor]

I can only speak for myself, but I didn't have a problem with Jane being Thor, I didn't like Odinson being written as a mead-swilling self loathing, sad-sack and Odin being a dumb misogynist. I liked the Jane-Thor years overall, but that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Maybe some older thor readers can elucidate me a bit, I've been reading thor since the JMS years, but I never got the impression that he wrapped so much of his identity in his hammer. That was the impression I got from Aaron.

You should check back at least Dan Jurgens run 1998.

You'll fell in love with Thor and you'll see how good Odin was.

Not this fake sexist imposter with no wisdom for a God of Wisdom.

[kilderkin]

Yes obviously there is an easy answer. If we stick to the easy answers we loose the possibility of good meaningful story. Look at Simonson. If he had chosen the easy answer, which at that point was “nobody else can lift the hammer” he wouldn’t have had much of a story.


That isn’t the way Thor Canon has worked for most of its existence. Nothing that has been written since JMS has been contradictory, it has built upon canon.




It’s a truism that only holds true in a very specific context. Pure rhetoric, not actually based on anything other than looking back at success. It is the kind of thing big successful teams say. A truism that supports my assertion that Aaron will not be forgotten because he has been hugely successful.


Actually it is a rule that only applies when editorial try and stifle creativity. We have lived through several eras when this was true. Indeed I would hazard that you grew up during one of those aberrant eras when a strong editor beloved too much in keeping things the same. I didn’t. I am delighted we are not in one of these eras now, but in a way that is a self fulfilling prophesy because I only got back into comics because we saw the back of this way of thinking. I have never been particularly interested in stories that don’t explore or challenge characters and or ideas.




Not sure of your point here. Who didn’t call himself what? Bear in mind there was no inscription back then, no enchantment that transformed or had the potential to do so.

I could debate the points about canon and changes, especially regarding the origins of the hammer and the mother storm, and it breaking not killing Thor in spite of the life force link, which seems to have been brushed aside, or adding an entire new realm to the nine realms thus changing the structure of the entire mythology, or adding a new brother for Odin, cul being the serpent that kills Thor not the Midgard serpent, I could go on

But really I don't think there's really need for us to debate this further I feel

[kilderkin]

You should check back at least Dan Jurgens run 1998.

You'll fell in love with Thor and you'll see how good Odin was.

Not this fake sexist imposter with no wisdom for a God of Wisdom.

He hasn't been the god of wisdom for Aarons entire run

[JKtheMac]

I can only speak for myself, but I didn't have a problem with Jane being Thor, I didn't like Odinson being written as a mead-swilling self loathing, sad-sack and Odin being a dumb misogynist. I liked the Jane-Thor years overall, but that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Maybe some older thor readers can elucidate me a bit, I've been reading thor since the JMS years, but I never got the impression that he wrapped so much of his identity in his hammer. That was the impression I got from Aaron.

Thor is inexorably linked to his hammer in the myths, it appears to be a symbol of his potency. The short handle is probably innuendo, (not that it is smaller than a normal war hammer-which it is-but because in that proportion it looks more phallic). The way Mjolnir falls into his lap in the wedding is probably a joke. Thor literally gets back his power and his masculinity the moment it stands upright in his lap.

We could argue about how important the hammer is to Thor in the comics, but as he is hardly ever without it throughout canon that is tricky.

He used to have a time limit when he could be without it, just like Jane did. That pretty much tied him to the hammer. Later this element was de-emphasised because Marvel made what for me was a bad decision of ignoring the dual identity. By the time Jurgens picks up Thor, he was very familiar with the way Thor was now more Superman and Christlike than his original version, Jurgens had after-all done work on Superman himself and did so after. He brought back the time limit and made a direct comparison with Christianity (while giving superman a subtle cameo). Effectively he was trying to distance Thor from that Superman/Christian idea.

[JKtheMac]

He hasn't been the god of wisdom for Aarons entire run

I would argue he has hardly ever been the god of wisdom in the entirety of his time at Marvel. It is not really the archetype they have played to. Generally they have humanised him as a father figure to the main character in the book. Sometimes a good father sometimes a dysfunctional father.

[JKtheMac]

I could debate the points about canon and changes, especially regarding the origins of the hammer and the mother storm, and it breaking not killing Thor in spite of the life force link, which seems to have been brushed aside, or adding an entire new realm to the nine realms thus changing the structure of the entire mythology, or adding a new brother for Odin, cul being the serpent that kills Thor not the Midgard serpent, I could go on

But really I don't think there's really need for us to debate this further I feel

Mainly because you know from debating all of these things with me before that we see them all very differently. I agree that we have already had all of those arguments and I don't really want to go back over them either.

Although we didn't really talk about the tenth realm. That one I think we can agree on. It was clearly a fix to fit Angela in. When one of the most famous comic writers hands you one of their characters after a bitter court case with a rival, I guess you try and lever her in somehow. That is more editorial saying "fit this character in somehow".

[GodThor]

He hasn't been the god of wisdom for Aarons entire run

true.

Aaron's Odin is ****.

spoilers:

just read WotR chapter 2 and I saw how pathetic Odin was once again. Thor got stomped by giants. and the best part is, Jane became the All Mother of Asgard. I'm done with Aaron's BS.

end of spoilers