Why haven't any other Gods caught on other than Thor?

[GodThor]

I never liked MCU's representation of Norse.

Hell I liked the movie Mask more.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

I never liked MCU's representation of Norse.

Hell I liked the movie Mask more.

The Jim Carrey movie didn't show any of the Norse Myths or characters. All it said was that the mask belonged to Loki and has his spirit.

The MCU actually showed you Asgard, the Bifrost, Hellheim, Nidavellir, parts of Svartalfheim, Jotunheim. You got to see Surtus the Fire Giant and his Flaming Sword lay waste to Asgard just like the Prophecy of the Voluspa declared.

Sure it rejigged and refashioned all that, but you actually did get a comprehensive visual reference for huge chunks of the myth.

[GodThor]

The Jim Carrey movie didn't show any of the Norse Myths or characters. All it said was that the mask belonged to Loki and has his spirit.

The MCU actually showed you Asgard, the Bifrost, Hellheim, Nidavellir, parts of Svartalfheim, Jotunheim. You got to see Surtus the Fire Giant and his Flaming Sword lay waste to Asgard just like the Prophecy of the Voluspa declared.

Sure it rejigged and refashioned all that, but you actually did get a comprehensive visual reference for huge chunks of the myth.

yeah, true.

I just never get the feel of it.

it felt bland and too comedic for my taste.

I was mostly bored, especially during TDW.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

yeah, true.

I just never get the feel of it.

it felt bland and too comedic for my taste.

I was mostly bored, especially during TDW.

Don't know if anyone likes TDW. I like parts of that (the Thor-Loki stuff).

Until the MCU you never had a mainstream mass-audience version of the Thor myths. No Jason and the Argonauts, nothing like the Hercules TV shows, no Clash of the Titans, no Disney Cartoon (which might be a blessing or a curse YMMV).

So regardless of how accurate or inaccurate you think it is, you need to give the MCU credit for at least putting something across of the Norse stuff when before there was nothing. I mean literally nothing. In theory now, if you wish or are daring some guy can pitch a script to adapt a True-Life Norse Myth Saga...like say The Children of Loki mixed with Lokasenna and the final stanzas of Voluspa.

[GodThor]

Don't know if anyone likes TDW. I like parts of that (the Thor-Loki stuff).

Until the MCU you never had a mainstream mass-audience version of the Thor myths. No Jason and the Argonauts, nothing like the Hercules TV shows, no Clash of the Titans, no Disney Cartoon (which might be a blessing or a curse YMMV).

So regardless of how accurate or inaccurate you think it is, you need to give the MCU credit for at least putting something across of the Norse stuff when before there was nothing. I mean literally nothing. In theory now, if you wish or are daring some guy can pitch a script to adapt a True-Life Norse Myth Saga...like say The Children of Loki mixed with Lokasenna and the final stanzas of Voluspa.

I guess so.

although translating mythology 100% to the big screen would look ridiculous haha

so I guess it is OK what they tried to do.

it's really subjective whatever you like or not ofc.

[Rosebunse]

Don't know if anyone likes TDW. I like parts of that (the Thor-Loki stuff).

Until the MCU you never had a mainstream mass-audience version of the Thor myths. No Jason and the Argonauts, nothing like the Hercules TV shows, no Clash of the Titans, no Disney Cartoon (which might be a blessing or a curse YMMV).

So regardless of how accurate or inaccurate you think it is, you need to give the MCU credit for at least putting something across of the Norse stuff when before there was nothing. I mean literally nothing. In theory now, if you wish or are daring some guy can pitch a script to adapt a True-Life Norse Myth Saga...like say The Children of Loki mixed with Lokasenna and the final stanzas of Voluspa.

Yeah, and honestly, Marvel's Norse mythology isn't bad, it's just very different. It's very much a product of a time before the internet and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's own want and need to create a more marketable and "Marvel" story.

[PCN24454]

Yeah, and honestly, Marvel's Norse mythology isn't bad, it's just very different. It's very much a product of a time before the internet and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's own want and need to create a more marketable and "Marvel" story.

That being said, I really don’t like Heven cause it feels fanfiction-y even by Marvel standards.

[Rosebunse]

That being said, I really don’t like Heven cause it feels fanfiction-y even by Marvel standards.

I like to think that it's a little weird piece of the 90s that was transported into the modern age.

By which I mean, yeah, it is, but it's still sort of fun.

[Hulkout42]

I thought Hercules had a few good runs both with and without Thor present

[Mike_Murdock]

Yeah, and honestly, Marvel's Norse mythology isn't bad, it's just very different. It's very much a product of a time before the internet and Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's own want and need to create a more marketable and "Marvel" story.

It also gets a lot of broad strokes right. Particularly any story by Roy Thomas who bent over backwards to make things accurate.* He even adapted the Volsung Saga and a red-bearded Thor as a story point.

* I'd actually hesitate to call any Norse myth as we know it "accurate." It's one version as seen through the lens of Christian writers who didn't necessarily appreciate it.

[Rosebunse]

It also gets a lot of broad strokes right. Particularly any story by Roy Thomas who bent over backwards to make things accurate.* He even adapted the Volsung Saga and a red-bearded Thor as a story point.

* I'd actually hesitate to call any Norse myth as we know it "accurate." It's one version as seen through the lens of Christian writers who didn't necessarily appreciate it.

Yeah, Norse myths are pretty weird things. They weren't really written down until the Christians and we know they added their own stuff to them. There's some debate on it Loki is even a real singular character in the original myths.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Yeah, Norse myths are pretty weird things. They weren't really written down until the Christians and we know they added their own stuff to them. There's some debate on it Loki is even a real singular character in the original myths.

That's actually not so weird. Norse myths have actually had it better than some other belief systems or deities that are totally lost to us. There are some Middle-Eastern cults and others which we know about only by references from the Romans or the Bible and often in pejorative fashion. You have Zoroastrianism where their holy books are fragment and incomplete because huge chunks are missing and lost. Of course unlike Norse you do have portions of the real article rather than just stuff copied down by later religionists.

The Norse as a mythology just feels more earthy and relatable you know. The gods and characters in that feel more like rounded figures than what you get in other myths. And the fact that these gods are mortal and that they all die kind of gives them a unique claim among established pantheons. It makes them most suited to being adapted to comic book form, since you can show Thor jobbing or taking knocks and it wouldn't be weird compared to the time Loki tricked him to dress as a bride in that one story.

It also gets a lot of broad strokes right. Particularly any story by Roy Thomas who bent over backwards to make things accurate.* He even adapted the Volsung Saga and a red-bearded Thor as a story point.

* I'd actually hesitate to call any Norse myth as we know it "accurate." It's one version as seen through the lens of Christian writers who didn't necessarily appreciate it.

You know the Greek drama we have, stuff by Sophocles, Euripides and so on also made adaptations and changes to the Greek Myths. Norse mythology as far as we know weren't adapted into literature and plays by the Vikings and I feel in a way, that Marvel Comics are finally giving that to Norse Myths. Whether it's Lee-Kirby's Mangog three-parter, where Thor, Asgard, the Warriors Three face of this demon born with the rage of "billions deaths" of a race killed out ages past while Loki grapples with the awesome responsibility of ruling for the first time durng the Odinsleep? Or Skurge holding the gates at Gjallerbru, to me that's the first time poets and artists have done for Norse myth what the Athenians did for their heroes and gods. That might be pretentious but you know so what? Numerically only a small number of people in Athens saw that stuff, no women were allowed to see it, while Marvel comics were open and accessible to all genders and an audience bigger than them.

Norse Myth has always been bigger in popular culture than in high culture. The Greek pantheon can have their vases in expensive museums, and ruins in far away places, Norse myths exist in pages at Marvel that's cheaper than travel fare.

[pageturner]

Well Hercules has certainly caught on in and out of the MU. Ares did ok but does better in DC.

They have dipped into the Egyptian gods a little but no longer seem to make it a priority. Moon knight treats it as more of an aspect of his personalities than a deity.

[JKtheMac]

Let’s not forget Marvel owes a debt to Wagner. They don’t choose the same approach but there are plenty of things that do match. Odin being the main one. Especially his humanity, his inherent stubbornness, and his limitations. But of course Odin is not easy to pin down.

A lot of things we take for granted about Odin for example are actually born out of comparative mythology, which has very little credibility these days. There was also a huge move across Northern Europe of cultural assimilation. Everyone wanted to associate themselves with the cool non-classical mythology from very early times because nobody else had their myths written down in quite the same way. When an entire culture complex of Germanic peoples seek to identify with a small number of documents from the far north west of their wider territories we can only imagine how much is representative of a wider Germanic culture and how much is wishful thinking.

If the Scandinavian sources had been lost we would know next to nothing about the religions of Northern Europe aside from some dubious things the classic writers said, some early Christian writings, a few curses, some hard to date inscriptions, some Christian Era carvings, works like the Lombard family history, or the elusive references in Beowulf.

Was Odin a cultural hero that became worshiped as a god? Was his story about hanging on the world tree especially notable or was it emphasised because of its resonance with Christianity? Consider that we don’t really have a name for the world tree, outside of the fact that Odin hung himself upon it, because Yggdrasil is effectively a poetic name for it meaning the mount or horse of Odin, reminiscent of a kenning we might find in Beowulf. Certainly the idea of hanging on a tree suggests a shamanic practice, but if we only had scraps to work out how Christianity worked we might think Jesus was a Shaman instead of identifying the crucifixion as a form of execution.

Was hanging on the tree and gaining the runes a way of learning writing, emphasising Odin’s role as a poet and writer, or were runes magical, emphasising Odin as a magician. Writing doesn’t seem to be inherently magical in Norse culture, and the suggestion that some runic carvings seem to be magical because they are not words, could be waved away as just decorative or writing practice.

The references of Valhalla and some carvings are often used to associate Odin with war, but does this really make him a war god or does that just mean he was associated with valour? When a culture perhaps venerates a dead king then going to his hall after death may be a way of identifying dead warriors of being worthy of the founding hero’s entourage, not that Odin himself is a god of war in the same way we think of Mars.

In the earliest Icelandic verses, which may or may not represent an older Scandinavian tradition, we have a lot of emphasis on Odin asking various figures questions about creation and the Realms. This could suggest Odin was mostly seen as very wise but not necessarily that he had much to do with the creation myth or was central to how the world worked. Some scholars argue they are not as old as they seem and point to their similarities to Christian Catechism, and so Odin could just be an authoritative person that somebody learning the verses can identify with as they are taught the basics of a dying religion influenced by a growing religion’s methodology.

All in all, the way Marvel treats gods feels quite authentic. By emphasising their humanity and not necessarily seeing them as religious figures, they may be closer to the way Germanic peoples thought of them.

[616MarvelYear is LeapYear]

I think part of the reason is that Thor in Norse Mythology is like a superhero and is the star/focus of a lot of stories.

I think you nailed it.