Thor Odinson: God of Thunder Appreciation 2020

[PCN24454]

I always wonder what would've happened if Donald Blake was a real person.

It would've been interesting to see him and Thor in a "Millenium Puzzle" situation.

[Shadowcat]

Anyone know where I can find textless images for covers 4-6 of the current volume?

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

I always wonder what would've happened if Donald Blake was a real person.

It would've been interesting to see him and Thor in a "Millenium Puzzle" situation.

It's time to du-du-du-duel!

[Wall-Crawler]

At least write Thanos as a magnificent bastard schemer and scientist that can outsmart almost everybody and not as a rampaging brute with no planning.

On this I agree, I want Thanos to be portrayed as a genius strategist with great versatility in combat.

[Somecrazyaussie]

Bendis wrote Thanos worse in his final Guardians of the Galaxy issue.

There are good reasons why Bendis Is in my great book of grudges.

I spared myself that torment by avoiding that run like the plague lol. I did read the first few though. However, it was such a contrast to what DnA had done that I realized it wasn't for me an took my leave. I was buying CW 2 and that set up with Thanos was totally OOC and made no sense.

[Somecrazyaussie]

I always wonder what would've happened if Donald Blake was a real person.

It would've been interesting to see him and Thor in a "Millenium Puzzle" situation.

That wouldn't be such a bad idea. Actually, I wouldn't mind that set up. They can share knowledge and you can have Thor as a god detached from humanity and have Blake as the Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

I spared myself that torment by avoiding that run like the plague lol. I did read the first few though. However, it was such a contrast to what DnA had done that I realized it wasn't for me an took my leave. I was buying CW 2 and that set up with Thanos was totally OOC and made no sense.

Trust me, Bendis' run on the guardians in one of the worst comic runs i've ever read.

I will say that I have not read the post-Secret Wars issues at all, but I've read all of the Marvel NOW! series, as well as all the Annihilation and original Guardians of the Galaxy related books, and I can tell you that my biggest problem with the series is two-fold, though both items are closely related. That is, I think Bendis' Guardians of the Galaxy suffers from a total lack of conflict. This lack of conflict means the book feels inconsequential.

In the series, the Guardians are allegedly guarding Earth from threats (despite Earth having a truckload of heroes already), and it seems like instead, aside from utterly failing to notice Thanos coming during Infinity and helping out SWORD during that crossover, they spend most of their time simply recruiting new members who Bendis inevitably does nothing with (Iron Man, Angela, and Captain Marvel being notable examples, with Agent Venom showing up just long enough for them all to get kidnapped in the most interesting part of the whole run, but one that doesn't resolve the second part of my complaint). Sure, the original run added tons of characters left and right, but they were always added in order to resolve a particularly story beat, like Jack Flag with Star-Lord in the Negative Zone, or Moon Dragon and... all that stuff that happens with her. In Bendis' GotG, Captain Marvel joins for literally no reason except he wanted her on his team, for example.

Finally, the Bendys Guardians have no agency on their own. Almost all of Bendis' Guardians stories have the team sitting on a ship and something terrible happens and they have to go fix it. There is no agency on the part of any of the characters, and none of the cast WANT anything. Every character needs to have some reason to be there, and none of them do anymore. As such, the stories feel flat and, again, pointless. The teenage X-Men from the 60's are more heroic and have more agency in the crossover issues than the Guardians do, which is sad, because they're, well, kids.

There's no character growth, no plot in 4 years just random unexplained changes to any of the changes in character personalities.

1) Drax is suddenly turned from brooding space Kratos to dumbass caveman with knives.

2) Rocket Tuns from tactically ingenious blue collar weisenheimer into a blood thirsty blood-knight howling for murder at every turn. (Blam murdered you!)

3) Gamora becomes the woman in distress who needs to be saved every once in awhile instead of being one of the greatest martial artists and assassins in the known universe. Although i'm not very fond of the ''female alien wolverine'' characterisation Giffen and DnA gave her. I prefer Starlin's version of her as a snarky but well meaning martial artist.

4) Star-lord turns into a falstaffian man-child pirate from Sarcastic and remorseful space cop with a cool Death Korps of Krieg style uniform.

5) Thanos is turned from a morally ambiguous magnificent bastard schemer and philosopher into a foolish saturday morning cartoon villain who gets wrecked by street level characters and mid tier characters.

6) Groot is probably the only who hasn't been changed much, and that's only because Bendis had no idea what to really do with him. Well except that he gets destroyed like ALL THE TIME!

Finally, after nearly four years, Bendis and Marvel had no choice but to address what went on in the cancerverse with the Original Sin tie-in. Yet, in many ways, the damage of letting the topic slide had already been done. As it hit in the summer of 2014, the explanation turned out the pinnacle of suckitude of this run, especially when Bendis had claimed he had a “great” and long planned story in mind from the moment he began to work on the characters. (tell me lies tell me sweet little lies)

Truthfully, many aspects of this three issue arc did not even line up with the Avengers Assembled arc Bendis had already done. Further, the story did not even line up within itself either. Leaving aside the preposterous lazy notion that Nova (Richard Rider)’s arm could just be sliced off when he had energy shielding capable of protecting him from near limitless damage at super luminal speeds, Richard Rider was shown to die in a place where Bendis already said (and showed) you couldn’t die. Personally, I didn’t need a masterèiece of writing, but something that made a lick of sense would have been nice.

Even more mind-baffling, the three issue comic was severely decompressed, featured numerous spelling and grammar mistakes (Including spelling Richard Rider’s name wrong, like Ryder instead of Rider, and some cases two different ways in the same issue) i felt life the comic wasn’t even edited. Certainly the poor, disjointed quality of the arc contrasted with Bendis early claims that he had done “significant research” (AH!) on the character prior to taking ahold of GOTG.

The worse part of this arc was that the years of friendship and partnership between Peter Quill and Richard Rider was just ended so abruptly and devoid of emotion. Richard Rider was dug up just to throw dirt on his three year old dead body. As the story went on, there was nothing lasting or mysterious about the reveals and answers….the arc was just bad, ill-researched and nonsensical.

Yet, Bendis subsequent writing made matters worse. Not averse to showing thought bubbles in his comics, Bendis gave no lasting reason or noticeable imprint of Richard Rider’s death/ legacy in Peter Quill’s actions or thoughts. In fact, Quill hardly would even mention Rider, or think of him ever again.

To date, I don’t recall Quill ever interacted with the new Nova, Sam Alexander. Again, that makes little sense to me.

Long gone was any sort of notion he was still troubled by the 350k people he had sacrificed to stop a rogue herald of Galactus, the death and dismemberment of his close companion or perhaps even the months and hopeless months of gritty intergalactic war against Annihilus and Ultron.

Nope, this Quill was cool with all that noise. Without the friendship of Rider or his old realistic motivations, the character became a silly gag character who more often made fun of the old model than embraced what had been mysterious and complex about the old Quill. Additionally, with his “daddy issues” as a newfound chief motivation, Quill seemed rather banal and off, especially considering where the character had been. Even worse, Bendis never constructed a logical bridge to show readers how any of the changes got from a point A to point B.

I'm not saying the GOTG has to be a gritty and violent military science fiction like Warhammer 40,000 or having Jim Starlin's brand of trippy existentialism to be good, but they need an author who cares about continuity and knows how to write space operas. Thankfully i think the GOTG are in decent hands with Al Ewing.

[ShaunN]

I think that I am done with Donny Cates and Thor. This story arc was fine, but turning Galactus into a joke - let alone a being who can be defeated by Thor, no matter how much Thor is amped up- is just preposterous. What I find most objectionable about Cates is that he seems to have absolutely no idea how the Marvel hierarchies of power work. This was demonstrated in his "Thanos Wins" series where, absolutely inexplicably, Thanos somehow manages to kill Galactus, the Celestials and every other overwhelmingly powerful Marvel cosmic being yet is no stronger than he usually is. That particular pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick made absolutely no sense. Now we have Thor destroying Galactus - a being whose power functions on a universal scale and as one of the balances of the universe. This is simply incomprehensible nonsense. Cates is not entirely to blame for this stupidity - the editor who is in charge of his work should have been reining him in long ago. Instead, he is allowed to write this nonsense, which seems to ignore all of the established Marvel canon, and now creates a mess that someone will have to retcon later in order to re-establish some semblance of order to the MU and restore respect to the Marvel cosmic beings.

[PlatinumThorns]

How do Thor fans feel about Donny having Thor crossover with Fortnite?

[Hypestyle]

so, considering what happened--

Is Thor going to be consumed with "the hunger" now? I don't think that's going to be a good look.

I'd much rather Thor travel to different galaxies and planets and being more of a freelance justice fighter against despots (e.g., DC's Mongul, etc.) Go beyond the Kree and Skrull empires.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

I think that I am done with Donny Cates and Thor. This story arc was fine, but turning Galactus into a joke - let alone a being who can be defeated by Thor, no matter how much Thor is amped up- is just preposterous. What I find most objectionable about Cates is that he seems to have absolutely no idea how the Marvel hierarchies of power work. This was demonstrated in his "Thanos Wins" series where, absolutely inexplicably, Thanos somehow manages to kill Galactus, the Celestials and every other overwhelmingly powerful Marvel cosmic being yet is no stronger than he usually is. That particular pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick made absolutely no sense. Now we have Thor destroying Galactus - a being whose power functions on a universal scale and as one of the balances of the universe. This is simply incomprehensible nonsense. Cates is not entirely to blame for this stupidity - the editor who is in charge of his work should have been reining him in long ago. Instead, he is allowed to write this nonsense, which seems to ignore all of the established Marvel canon, and now creates a mess that someone will have to retcon later in order to re-establish some semblance of order to the MU and restore respect to the Marvel cosmic beings.

Editorial discipline was killed by Joe Quesada.

[charliehustle415]

I think that I am done with Donny Cates and Thor. This story arc was fine, but turning Galactus into a joke - let alone a being who can be defeated by Thor, no matter how much Thor is amped up- is just preposterous. What I find most objectionable about Cates is that he seems to have absolutely no idea how the Marvel hierarchies of power work. This was demonstrated in his "Thanos Wins" series where, absolutely inexplicably, Thanos somehow manages to kill Galactus, the Celestials and every other overwhelmingly powerful Marvel cosmic being yet is no stronger than he usually is. That particular pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat trick made absolutely no sense. Now we have Thor destroying Galactus - a being whose power functions on a universal scale and as one of the balances of the universe. This is simply incomprehensible nonsense. Cates is not entirely to blame for this stupidity - the editor who is in charge of his work should have been reining him in long ago. Instead, he is allowed to write this nonsense, which seems to ignore all of the established Marvel canon, and now creates a mess that someone will have to retcon later in order to re-establish some semblance of order to the MU and restore respect to the Marvel cosmic beings.

This is my thinking as well, because Galactus is from the previous Universe where he outlived his version of "god of thunder"

However, I suppose the 616 version of "god of thunder" is much stronger than Galactus; but who knows

[Wall-Crawler]

There's obviously more to Galactus and Black Winter than what we've seen so far, I'm sure they'll come back and this will be solved, this retcon won't last and it'll be undone and explained within the same run, we comic book fans in general are unforgiving, we were praising Cates one issue ago and suddenly one retcon and the board is against him. Let the man finish his story. Besides, the issue is getting remarkable reviews everywhere, this Galactus stuff won't last, there's more to it and to the Black Winter, just enjoy the ride.

[adey040812]

There's obviously more to Galactus and Black Winter than what we've seen so far, I'm sure they'll come back and this will be solved, this retcon won't last and it'll be undone and explained within the same run, we comic book fans in general are unforgiving, we were praising Cates one issue ago and suddenly one retcon and the board is against him. Let the man finish his story. Besides, the issue is getting remarkable reviews everywhere, this Galactus stuff won't last, there's more to it and to the Black Winter, just enjoy the ride.

I agree. I've been having a huge debates with other Thor fans on other boards about this showing. Even though I agree with that the depiction of Galactus should have been better ( I didn't really like how emo he got, that's not like him), and the story probably should have gone on longer to make the final encounter between the three characters more epic, I'm just enjoying Thor actually being a God of Thunder, non-jobber and a very powerful being for a change. Thor fans have been moaning for ages about his showings under Aaron and others, then Cates, who actually likes/loves the character shows him as a complete badass, non-jobber hero and some are still complaining about him. Yes, it is a bit extreme, but as you said, I still think there is a lot more to this first arc than people are probably looking at.


I think another problem with some fans of characters in general is that I think they expect certain characters to operate at an established level all the time, and chararcter X has no chance of beating character Y because of how people perceive them. When I look at this battle Thor has ALWAYS had the potential to reach a completly different level than what he operates on. He's the son of a Skyfather and Elder Goddess, so that must mean something. He has also had the power to absorb massive quantities of energy in the past and redirect them at his foes on a planetary and galaxy level.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand the grieviences of those fans who have an axe to grind about this issue, but, it's about time Thor was given some respect in this category, because he's rarely had it in the last seven years and he still gets shafted by other writers in other books, even now.

Also, we all knew this was only a temporary thing and he would be back to his " normal" levels for the Hammer Falls, Donald Blake and prey arcs.
So, as you said Wall-Crawler, just enjoy the ride. I am.

[Wall-Crawler]

Indeed, very much looking forward to the next arcs.