Thor Odinson, God of Thunder Appreciation 2019

[GodThor]

Yeah, I think Jurgens is a good writer but his run didn't thrill me as much as I hoped it would, certainly not the worst, though. The John Romita Jr. art was the definite plus side.

On the subject of the films I personally felt them underwhelming. The armor/costumes looked really plasticy. I felt Sif was way too skinny. She is supposed to be a goddess. I remember some old stories where the Asgard women would be seen almost towering over the normal humans while the actress looked smaller than some human heroes. The X-Men had just come out in theaters and I was watching the LotRs films and I was thinking it was a matter of time before more Marvel movies were made so naturally I thought of Thor while watching it. I thought to myself, I would love armor similar to this and the general feel. It just did not feel like the world of gods. I also didn't "feel" Hemsworths Thor. He should have been perfect but he just seemed to have fallen flat. Admittedly, I only saw the first one and when I saw the preview for the third I was happy they would bring in humor because I loved Walt Simonson's more humorous scenes in his run but we got more humor that was over the top. I thought we'd get more subtle humor with Grandmaster. I was thinking more Batman and Robin by Joel Schumacer rather than Thor when I saw it. Last but not least I felt it needed to be a half hour longer, a story with this epic scale and this many characters needs a lot more time. Cate Blanchett, however, was brilliant casting. She has the charisma and acting chops to pull it off and the transition from Galadriel to Hela was a natural thing. I would see it just for her. I do still plan on seeing the others, eventually.

Also... no Balder? WTAF???

when Baldur wasn't introduced in the first Thor movie, I immediately knew that Ragnarok will suck (it was a fun was though).

[Frontier]

Hela by Sejic (nebezial)

I love everything about it but the exposed, blue, eyes.

[Daedra]

I love everything about it but the exposed, blue, eyes.

I see green eyes, light green but still.... green

[GigaBalls]

Is it just me or have the writers really got bad at writing Thor lately. It really hit me with a new Avenger's issue when they call for help in the Bowels and they make Thor out to be this dumb brute who doesn't know what a bowel is. They then say stuff like Guts, Belly, etc before he comes crashing in asking if he was in the right place.

That's when it hit me that they have lost touch of what Thor is. The dude is a God, not only his he the son of the God of Wisdom, he received possibly the best education anyone in the galaxy could probably get. He's learned hundreds of languages, trained in nearly every martial arts style in the cosmo, etc. He was educated to be a King. He is not dumb, he is actually far far smarter than a typical human, honestly I would put money that he probably got a better education than even T'Challa.

Thor is supposed to not understand human technology because it is primitive, and he is used to technology thousands of years more advanced. Not because he is stupid. It would be like a computer engineer nowadays getting sent back 300 years in time and being told to build the first steamboat. Just because he's out of his element doesn't mean he's stupid.


I don't know if any writers read this, but it would be great if they stop writing him as a stupid oaf and more just a man out of his element.

[Snoop Dogg]

The joke was just that he didn't know where the mountain's interregation room was.

[GigaBalls]

Yes but how do you make a joke about someone not knowing where the bowels are when they spent 20+ years masquerading as a top notch human doctor.

[GodThor]

he is written badly for over 4 years.

Thor is supposed to not understand human technology because it is primitive, and he is used to technology thousands of years more advanced.

mystical aspect suits him better.

I personally don't want him anywhere near technology.

[Frontier]

Is it just me or have the writers really got bad at writing Thor lately. It really hit me with a new Avenger's issue when they call for help in the Bowels and they make Thor out to be this dumb brute who doesn't know what a bowel is. They then say stuff like Guts, Belly, etc before he comes crashing in asking if he was in the right place.

That's when it hit me that they have lost touch of what Thor is. The dude is a God, not only his he the son of the God of Wisdom, he received possibly the best education anyone in the galaxy could probably get. He's learned hundreds of languages, trained in nearly every martial arts style in the cosmo, etc. He was educated to be a King. He is not dumb, he is actually far far smarter than a typical human, honestly I would put money that he probably got a better education than even T'Challa.

Thor is supposed to not understand human technology because it is primitive, and he is used to technology thousands of years more advanced. Not because he is stupid. It would be like a computer engineer nowadays getting sent back 300 years in time and being told to build the first steamboat. Just because he's out of his element doesn't mean he's stupid.


I don't know if any writers read this, but it would be great if they stop writing him as a stupid oaf and more just a man out of his element.

This reminds me of Thor in Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

He didn't quite get Earth technology or conventions, but he wasn't an idiot. He was clever, wise, and he came off like an Asgardian God in our world.

[The Cool Thatguy]

The joke was just that he didn't know where the mountain's interregation room was.

No, he makes reference to biology several times, or rather, ignorance thereof.

[Panic]

The only part of this I disagree with is ‘old fans and new’. The reality from my experience here is conflict between old fans and other old fans. Some accepting the inevitable change and some just wanting everything to stay the same. This inherent conservatism in tastes that some people express is perhaps more prevalent in older fans but it is still a minority in my opinion. Grumpy fans cluster together naturally. It is human nature to gravitate to those who validate your world view. Internet forums are not where younger fans hang out. Some do but the demographic is skewed in places like this.

People like me, who are older and have come back to comics purely because the current era feels more inclusive and less stifled by the weight of accumulated canon, than anything from the previous three decades, will naturally have more in common with newer fans. We are here for the same reason, the sheer fun of it all. Sometimes I think fandom causes us to forget how to have fun.

But the most telling thing is how people who are positive and accepting of change are challenged forcefully, both directly and indirectly. Not everyone wants to argue. Younger fans are less likely to stand and argue if the person arguing with them has been reading a property for decades. That has to be intimidating.

For people like myself, who have read almost everything, and also embrace change, the rhetorical strategy used by disgruntled fans is immediately apparent. I watch as older fans cherry pick from the past, twist the nature of older stories to support their thesis, downplay the huge variety in the canon, or ignore established parts of canon that are still in play just because they don’t like it (or just haven’t read it recently and have forgotten).

In general long term disgruntled fans tend to cheat in arguments. Pretend that the whole of canon was somehow perfect and simple, and only the new thing is somehow invalid. Some of this may be unconscious bias. Comics have been conservative in their output for so long it is perhaps inevitable that it feels like how things should be for some. For me and it seems the current writers and editors, this inherent conservatism is everything that is wrong with comics.

As far as I can see by what you have posted above, you are attempting to diminish or invalidate the opinions of fans who are not enjoying Aaron's Thor: they just want everything to stay the same, they are actually a minority despite appearing to have numbers, they don't know how to have fun (implication: unlike us well-adjusted people), their arguments are invalid and they use rhetorical tricks to twist the truth... they're cheats. Have I left anything out?

And to be fair I suppose I am not so very different to you: I tend to be wary of posters I feel favour Jane over Thor, because I think they have a conflict of interest. I know I upset charliehustle415 with this, which I really didn't mean to do. I am not looking to intimidate anyone from posting, that really isn't my intention, I just struggle with the concept of big fans of a hero being happy to see him written bellow par for so long. In most appreciation threads, particularly on the X-Boards, it's a major issue for fans when their favourite is being portrayed as stupider, weaker, or less capable than they feel they should be. I think this is the only appreciation thread I've seen where there is a percentage of regulars who seem really happy with that. For a short-term arc it's fine, but long-term is a trend that threatens to become a new paradigm: heroes in Marvel, for better or worse, rely on credibility for popularity, and Thor's is draining away like water out of a bucket with a hole in it.

Back to the "cheating" and empty rhetoric accusations: I won't speak for others in this thread, I can't remember what everyone has said in the past, but I don't believe I have ever claimed that the old canon was perfect or non-contradictory; I've said that in any long-running series like Thor you are going to get contradictions as different writers try to alter things they don't like or that they don't think are working for them. I think, despite what you have said, most people here accept this. Most of the time in the past, however, the writers were clearly trying to make Thor (the character) better, more appealing, more popular. It can be annoying when things written by a new writer clearly contradict the past, but if you like the change and it is not too glaring, if it doesn't undermine important aspects of the character, if it moves the character in a positive direction, then fans will accept it. Odin's got two eyes in early Lee/Kirby; Odin has one eye, having sacrificed the other for wisdom ages ago and it's always been this way. Yeah, we don't need to dwell on that too much. What would be the point? One-eyed Odin is iconic, and everyone is happy with him that way.

You, however, have, iirc, pushed the idea that Thor's continuity has always been a terrible mess, that it has held the strip back, and that Aaron is a white knight rescuing it from its terrible flaws and fixing it into a new and far superior form that makes sense. Well, if you do push this narrative, you are going to get pushed back. Aaron's changes are big, rewrite Thor history, and undermine characters that many of us like. Like writers before him, his changes require previous stories to be discarded or revealed as falsehoods or misdirections. Aaron has made a lot of changes to justify the story he wants to tell, and not just minor tweaks or tidy-ups. His run is probably going to be regarded much like Grant Morrison's X-Men run - a radical new direction for the property that is both popular and reviled. It's still a topic that divides people on the X-Boards even after all this time, and I think the same will be the case for Aaron's run (though Aaron's has much more consistently good art, imo).

We do have a schism in this thread where Aaron's Thor is concerned, and I do not see it being resolved easily. Perhaps if people talk about what they like about the character, and what their favourite moments are it might bridge the divide.

[charliehustle415]

As far as I can see by what you have posted above, you are attempting to diminish or invalidate the opinions of fans who are not enjoying Aaron's Thor: they just want everything to stay the same, they are actually a minority despite appearing to have numbers, they don't know how to have fun (implication: unlike us well-adjusted people), their arguments are invalid and they use rhetorical tricks to twist the truth... they're cheats. Have I left anything out?

And to be fair I suppose I am not so very different to you: I tend to be wary of posters I feel favour Jane over Thor, because I think they have a conflict of interest. I know I upset charliehustle415 with this, which I really didn't mean to do. I am not looking to intimidate anyone from posting, that really isn't my intention, I just struggle with the concept of big fans of a hero being happy to see him written bellow par for so long. In most appreciation threads, particularly on the X-Boards, it's a major issue for fans when their favourite is being portrayed as stupider, weaker, or less capable than they feel they should be. I think this is the only appreciation thread I've seen where there is a percentage of regulars who seem really happy with that. For a short-term arc it's fine, but long-term is a trend that threatens to become a new paradigm: heroes in Marvel, for better or worse, rely on credibility for popularity, and Thor's is draining away like water out of a bucket with a hole in it.

Back to the "cheating" and empty rhetoric accusations: I won't speak for others in this thread, I can't remember what everyone has said in the past, but I don't believe I have ever claimed that the old canon was perfect or non-contradictory; I've said that in any long-running series like Thor you are going to get contradictions as different writers try to alter things they don't like or that they don't think are working for them. I think, despite what you have said, most people here accept this. Most of the time in the past, however, the writers were clearly trying to make Thor (the character) better, more appealing, more popular. It can be annoying when things written by a new writer clearly contradict the past, but if you like the change and it is not too glaring, if it doesn't undermine important aspects of the character, if it moves the character in a positive direction, then fans will accept it. Odin's got two eyes in early Lee/Kirby; Odin has one eye, having sacrificed the other for wisdom ages ago and it's always been this way. Yeah, we don't need to dwell on that too much. What would be the point? One-eyed Odin is iconic, and everyone is happy with him that way.

You, however, have, iirc, pushed the idea that Thor's continuity has always been a terrible mess, that it has held the strip back, and that Aaron is a white knight rescuing it from its terrible flaws and fixing it into a new and far superior form that makes sense. Well, if you do push this narrative, you are going to get pushed back. Aaron's changes are big, rewrite Thor history, and undermine characters that many of us like. Like writers before him, his changes require previous stories to be discarded or revealed as falsehoods or misdirections. Aaron has made a lot of changes to justify the story he wants to tell, and not just minor tweaks or tidy-ups. His run is probably going to be regarded much like Grant Morrison's X-Men run - a radical new direction for the property that is both popular and reviled. It's still a topic that divides people on the X-Boards even after all this time, and I think the same will be the case for Aaron's run (though Aaron's has much more consistently good art, imo).

We do have a schism in this thread where Aaron's Thor is concerned, and I do not see it being resolved easily. Perhaps if people talk about what they like about the character, and what their favourite moments are it might bridge the divide.

But you have to realize "below par" is a subjective claim. Art by its very nature is subjective meaning that people view it differently, what chapped my hide is that: if someone enjoys Aaron's Thor they have a "conflict of interest" - what conflict of interest? Who is there to have a conflict with?

Some readers of Thor probably never even read Thor prior to Aaron; so you can see how it is unfair to these new readers to make the blanket statement: Aaron fan = faulty fan.

Nevertheless, Panic, I have no ill will towards you I enjoy a vigorous debate just like you because you and I both are huge Thor fans. I'd rather be surrounded by people who disagree with me then ones who don't, how else can one grow.

[JKtheMac]

As far as I can see by what you have posted above, you are attempting to diminish or invalidate the opinions of fans who are not enjoying Aaron's Thor: they just want everything to stay the same, they are actually a minority despite appearing to have numbers, they don't know how to have fun (implication: unlike us well-adjusted people), their arguments are invalid and they use rhetorical tricks to twist the truth... they're cheats. Have I left anything out?

All I can say to that is I don’t recognise that as relating to my opinions and I am sorry if that’s how you hear what I am trying to say. I take great pains to not say these things. I am calling things as I see them and honestly I think you are deliberately misrepresenting me for rhetorical effect.

My point for point will be a little long. So I will have to split it up.

[JKtheMac]

And to be fair I suppose I am not so very different to you: I tend to be wary of posters I feel favour Jane over Thor, because I think they have a conflict of interest.

What does that even mean? ‘Favour Jane over Thor’, ‘conflict of interest’. I struggle to see how it became an issue of one character over another. The text from the comics addressed this very clearly. Jane took up the mantle purely out of a sense of duty, and because she was literally enticed into it. It nearly killed her. At some point, when Mjölnir inevitably returns from its trip around the timestream we may even learn more about that enticement, but none of this was ever about Jane being better than Thor.

However, it is perfectly reasonable that some readers may enjoy the portrayal of a woman with cancer wielding a transformative magical weapon to the more standard representations of Thor we have seen. For me it was a breath of fresh air that reminded me of the very beginning of the Thor legacy. Personally my favourite Thor has always been that Blake / Thor early period, before Marvel decided that they would retcon it and say Blake was just a disguise. Not because these were better stories, early Thor is not particularly sophisticated, but because I have always loved the idea of a mortal turning into a god through mythical magic. So naturally, I was a big fan when a new character was used to tell a similar story.

None of that appeal has anything whatsoever to do with preferring one character over another, but why would anyone feel challenged by that? We have all seen these temporary mantle shifts before, we will see them again.

I know I upset charliehustle415 with this, which I really didn't mean to do. I am not looking to intimidate anyone from posting, that really isn't my intention, I just struggle with the concept of big fans of a hero being happy to see him written bellow par for so long.

Simply because some of us are patient. I don’t say that as a criticism, I am patient to a fault, but I love long stories and rarely want them to hurry up (except in a movie theatre).

The story was fascinating, the themes Aaron developed resonated with me, and I wasn’t in the slightest bit upset with one Thor being weaker because I was reading another Thor. It wasn’t his story it was hers. It was still about the deity of thunder. That’s why Odinson was rarely even in the story. You will no doubt remember when I listed the issues to highlight that far from being portrayed as weak he just wasn’t being portrayed at all most of the time.

In most appreciation threads, particularly on the X-Boards, it's a major issue for fans when their favourite is being portrayed as stupider, weaker, or less capable than they feel they should be. I think this is the only appreciation thread I've seen where there is a percentage of regulars who seem really happy with that. For a short-term arc it's fine, but long-term is a trend that threatens to become a new paradigm: heroes in Marvel, for better or worse, rely on credibility for popularity, and Thor's is draining away like water out of a bucket with a hole in it.

I avoid most appreciation threads. I resist hanging around the X-Boards even though they would be my natural home. I am not a fan of modern fandom and especially not a fan of the kind of fandom that many appreciation threads attract. Thor on the other hand. I have such a strong connection to the character from multiple perspectives. I will happily reread even the most terrible Thor stories to get a glimpse of how writers treat him and what themes are developed.

I could happily talk exclusively about Thor comics forever more. It is a great regret to me that he isn’t one of the biggest characters in comics because for me he should be huge. There is a simple reason he isn’t as big as Spider-Man. He doesn’t resonate in the same way. So when a new Thor comes along and does resonate I see that as a cause for celebration. Jane as Thor highlights what was wrong with Thor and what Thor could be.

I can appreciate that some fans do honestly believe that a character’s performance against specific threats somehow impacts the way the wider community sees a character. But I think that is a rather trivial concern. Surely here, in an appreciation thread, we all know that Thor is powerful character that can survive a little soul searching and depowering. I am not at all worried about his popularity, given how successful this run has been. In the future people will read the whole arc. We all know Thor will end up on top before Aaron lays down his pen.

Back to the "cheating" and empty rhetoric accusations: I won't speak for others in this thread, I can't remember what everyone has said in the past, but I don't believe I have ever claimed that the old canon was perfect or non-contradictory; I've said that in any long-running series like Thor you are going to get contradictions as different writers try to alter things they don't like or that they don't think are working for them. I think, despite what you have said, most people here accept this.

I would like to believe most did. However it seems they don’t from where I stand. Over and over people default back to a very surface level notion of Thor comics. As I said, some of it is probably unconscious, some of it may just be poor memory or just not having read everything. Not everyone enjoys digging through old comics to tease out the inconsistencies but that happens to be one of my favourite things, because I am fascinated by how these symbols change and adapt over time. I have returned to some of my least favourite comics over and over to examine what was going on, so I guess inevitably this gives me a slightly different perspective. I am the guy that examines the diamond for the flaws. The flaws are what make it unique.

Most of the time in the past, however, the writers were clearly trying to make Thor (the character) better, more appealing, more popular. It can be annoying when things written by a new writer clearly contradict the past, but if you like the change and it is not too glaring, if it doesn't undermine important aspects of the character, if it moves the character in a positive direction, then fans will accept it. Odin's got two eyes in early Lee/Kirby; Odin has one eye, having sacrificed the other for wisdom ages ago and it's always been this way. Yeah, we don't need to dwell on that too much. What would be the point? One-eyed Odin is iconic, and everyone is happy with him that way.

Whereas, that’s exactly the kind of thing I enjoy. It is similar to the way myths work. There is no one true Odin. Academics have spent decades debating what Odin’s sacrifice really represented in Norse culture before Christianity. They even debate whether Odin is truly a god in the same way we think of Greek gods for example.

You, however, have, iirc, pushed the idea that Thor's continuity has always been a terrible mess, that it has held the strip back, and that Aaron is a white knight rescuing it from its terrible flaws and fixing it into a new and far superior form that makes sense.

That isn’t quite how I would put it. Yes I do believe Thor continuity is a total mess. It is immediately evident to anyone that looks for such things. I don’t necessarily worry about it being a mess, but I do use this point to counter the argument that Thor was somehow just fine until ‘the current accursed writer’ whoever that may be at the time.

It isn’t that I see Aaron as a white knight, so much as I desperately want somebody to tidy up Thor in a way that actually makes sense, because currently I don’t think he does. Aaron has gone some way to fixing a few things, and the direction he is going in feels like it will leave Thor in a healthier place than how he found it. My hope is once he is finished we will be able to say in a clear way, what Thor comics are about. I am not convinced there have been many eras in the character’s history where we have been able to answer that in a compelling and positive manner.

Well, if you do push this narrative, you are going to get pushed back. Aaron's changes are big, rewrite Thor history, and undermine characters that many of us like. Like writers before him, his changes require previous stories to be discarded or revealed as falsehoods or misdirections.

Actually I don’t believe he has. In general he has built upon the legacy he was handed. He inherited a very dysfunctional Odin who almost abandoned creation so his brother could destroy it. A Blake that is dead and also a magical construct that has been beheaded and is currently dreaming of a better life. An Asgard in ruins. An earthly Asgardia ruled by a weird tripartite Norse goddess that belongs in the fantasies of Robert Graves. A Loki bent out of shape by self referential nonsense. The list goes on and on.

We are slowly seeing the parts put back into place. We have had an exploration of what it means to be Thor, what it means to be a god in a secular society, some examination of Mjölnir which is still going on. We will clearly end up with a Thor that better understands his role in all of this. It is even hinted that Odin will end up as the actual creator of Earth, which canon has always disputed. I strongly suspect Odin will die, but either way, in the process we will have a much deeper understanding of the strange dichotomies of his character over the decades.

[JKtheMac]

Aaron has made a lot of changes to justify the story he wants to tell, and not just minor tweaks or tidy-ups.

Perhaps. That is not how I see things. He wanted to rebuild Thor and inevitably that required change. It is his job to rebuild it in the form of an interesting story. I think he has done that and is still doing that.

His run is probably going to be regarded much like Grant Morrison's X-Men run - a radical new direction for the property that is both popular and reviled. It's still a topic that divides people on the X-Boards even after all this time, and I think the same will be the case for Aaron's run (though Aaron's has much more consistently good art, imo).

Sadly you may be right, but that isn’t a problem. I am a fan of Morrison’s X-Men. There is no accounting for fandom.

We do have a schism in this thread where Aaron's Thor is concerned, and I do not see it being resolved easily. Perhaps if people talk about what they like about the character, and what their favourite moments are it might bridge the divide.

What I try and do is say what I like about it and challenge the things that people claim to be universally true. I honestly don’t mind if people don’t like it. I do mind if they try and undermine it. This is canon. This is the official Marvel Thor comic. It isn’t a game. Marvel clearly also wanted someone to tidy up Thor and to make it more popular.

It is just not true to portray the divide as being between new fans and old fans. There is a whole world of opinion out there, but here, but for a few of us, you could believe that black is white. That only young, new readers like Aaron, because they just don’t understand Thor. I have spent decades seeking to understand Thor and that just seems untenable to me. From what Aaron tells us in interviews he had read less Thor than me, and I don’t imagine he has had an awful lot of time to read everything since, but from my perspective he understands Thor very well. He has a support network at Marvel that can point him to anything he is not clear on, and he has a remit to change things if they make for a better overall story. He can even read these threads if he is feeling particularly masochistic.

[JKtheMac]

Yes but how do you make a joke about someone not knowing where the bowels are when they spent 20+ years masquerading as a top notch human doctor.

Thor was making a comment, not about human anatomy but about a giant celestial corpse. It was not supposed to be taken seriously.

But if we insist, human anatomy would suggest Thor was seeking clarification because he was probably nearer the buttocks and the intestinal tract does indeed pass between them. That’s why Cap specifies ‘the guts’ to make it clear they are not referring to the lower part of the tract that runs from the stomach to the anus. Indeed the guts often refer to the whole of the small and large intestines but generally in casual speech we know Cap — an everyman character — means the abdomen. That is far more analysis than the joke deserves and removes any vestige of intended humour.

Canonically, Thor’s medical knowledge isn’t as clear cut as you make it sound. I can only think of one run off of the top of my head where Thor was able to draw upon the medical knowledge of Blake, and that was Jurgens. A run which had an unfortunate tendency to ignore the previous run and everything Roy Thomas had just asserted about Blake and how he was a real human. There are plenty of ways to hand wave that, given that at the time Jake was indeed much more geninuly just a mask that Thor was wearing, and perhaps allowed Thor a clearer memory of mortal knowledge.