Thor Odinson: God of Thunder Appreciation 2020

[Ascended]

Hard to deny cold hard facts

You clearly haven't paid much attention to American politics lately.

Regarding the differences between film and print and Carol and all that......it doesn't bother me in the least that Carol's more powerful in the films than she is in the comics. Not bothered that she has more raw power than Thor either. Different medium, different story, different approach. And considering Carol got her powers from a Infinity Stone (and not in even a "controlled lab experiment" like Wanda) I'd expect her to be, at an absolute minimum, equal to Thor.

Thanos isn't as powerful, but most of the movie characters aren't (except Carol) so that's fine. He still trounced Hulk and out-fought Cap, Tony, and Thor. That's still stupid powerful.

My only complaint about the power levels in film is that Thor's not what he should be. We get small glimpses of it, like in the first Avengers where Thor lightning blasts three leviathans into ash, and of course Infinity War (his best showing). But generally, we get stuff like the first film where the "big fight" ruins nothing more than one street in a small town. Super underwhelming.

[Frontier]

I don't really have a problem with Carol being overpowered per se, but they're probably going to have to be really careful how they scale her powerlevel moving forward.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

I don't really have a problem with Carol being overpowered per se, but they're probably going to have to be really careful how they scale her powerlevel moving forward.

My problem is Marvel editors telling writers to make 616 Carol OP at the expense of Hulk and Thor.

[Wall-Crawler]

They'll probably cherry pick moments from the classic Lee/Kirby run where Odin was harsh to Thor. Also moments from Matt Fraction's run.

Even in Stan Lee's run, Odin was never really a jerk for the sole reason of being a jerk, he only ever wanted for Thor to be better and asume his role as a ruler of Asgard instead of Midgard's protector. As for Fraction, he is the one who retconned Odin's entire personality, Aaron just doubled it.

[Wall-Crawler]

Man, if you guys want to read an Avengers run where Thor is handled perfectly and is the go-to powerhouse of the team in every single arc, go and read Busiek's Avengers.

Now he understands Thor's role in the team.

Busiek and Hickman handled Thor perfectly as part of the Avengers, in fact, this quarantine I've found myself reading some classic Avengers arcs, and Thor is treated pretty well 90% of the time, always the powerhouse of the team, wish he could go back to that role.

[Frontier]

Man, if you guys want to read an Avengers run where Thor is handled perfectly and is the go-to powerhouse of the team in every single arc, go and read Busiek's Avengers.

Now he understands Thor's role in the team.

Busiek and Hickman handled Thor perfectly as part of the Avengers, in fact, this quarantine I've found myself reading some classic Avengers arcs, and Thor is treated pretty well 90% of the time, always the powerhouse of the team, wish he could go back to that role.

Yeah, I honestly don't get why Aaron handles Thor the way he does in his Avengers run.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

Man, if you guys want to read an Avengers run where Thor is handled perfectly and is the go-to powerhouse of the team in every single arc, go and read Busiek's Avengers.

Now he understands Thor's role in the team.

Busiek and Hickman handled Thor perfectly as part of the Avengers, in fact, this quarantine I've found myself reading some classic Avengers arcs, and Thor is treated pretty well 90% of the time, always the powerhouse of the team, wish he could go back to that role.

''Ultron! We would have words with thee.''

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

Yeah, I honestly don't get why Aaron handles Thor the way he does in his Avengers run.

Maybe he gets a kick out of trolling Thor fans?

[Cronus]

Man, if you guys want to read an Avengers run where Thor is handled perfectly and is the go-to powerhouse of the team in every single arc, go and read Busiek's Avengers.

Now he understands Thor's role in the team.

Busiek and Hickman handled Thor perfectly as part of the Avengers, in fact, this quarantine I've found myself reading some classic Avengers arcs, and Thor is treated pretty well 90% of the time, always the powerhouse of the team, wish he could go back to that role.

Do you agree on Busiek's interpretation that Thor cant withstand bullet fire?

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

Do you agree on Busiek's interpretation that Thor cant withstand bullet fire?

When did that happened?

Btw i'll take the worst Busiek story over Bendis and Aaron any day. Busiek's a saint. He understands superheroes better than most writers.

[Kurt Busiek]

When did that happened?

Never in my run.

But Lee and Kirby portrayed Thor as vulnerable to bullets and blades, as did Len Wein, Walter Simonson and others. Far less so to broad impact damage, explosions and ray guns. Or at least, they had Thor speak and act as if he were vulnerable to bullets and blades, and I'm willing to take him at his word.

When I started writing AVENGERS, I read through every appearance of Thor, and took notes on his interactions with guns, and while they were inconsistent, the majority of the evidence suggested he was vulnerable to bullets and blades. Energy exposure, though, seemed to fall into the "lord of the living lightning" area, and didn't bother him very much.

When I answered someone's question about it online, some Thor fans freaked at the idea that Thor had been protecting himself from bullets with his hammer all those years for a reason, but I figured he knew what he was doing. Some of them seem to think that if Thor is vulnerable to bullets, then it would be easy to kill him, just like it's easy to kill Captain America, Spider-Man or all those other characters who've been shot at for years without dying, but I have rather more respect for Thor's combat skill than that.

Some people have tried to argue physics about an Asgardian god, but given that this is a mythos where Balder is invulnerable to everything but mistletoe because his mom asked everything but mistletoe not to harm him, the rules of science don't play consistently for Asgardians. [Balder, however, later got shot to shit by automatic weapons-fire, though, and it took surgery to save his life. Go figure.]

So I tend to think that Thor was vulnerable to bullets and blades because he was an inspiration to Viking warriors, and if weapons just bounced off him like a tank, that's not very inspiring. So he's actually woundable in a battle, even though it would take much, much more to kill him than it would an ordinary human. He's still got skin in the game, as it were.

But none of this ever made it into any comic I wrote. I treated Thor the way Stan and Jack and Len and Walter had, and never actually injured him, because he's really good at what he does.

I did play a part in the one time, as far as I know, that Thor's actually been injured by a bullet. That was when Christopher Priest called me up and said, "I want to shoot an Avenger in the head, who can I use?" I asked him if he wanted to kill someone, and he said no, he was going to do the "bullet just creased the skull" cliche. I told him that if he didn't want to do that, he could have someone shoot Thor -- the bullet could break the skin and knock him down, but it wouldn't do a thing to the bone underneath and it'd piss him off.

So Priest did that, and has been hiding out from Thor fans ever since, even though Thor was not significantly harmed by the bullet, just momentarily stunned and pissed off.

Since my time, though, Thor has been redefined as bulletproof, as shown clearly in the Straczysnki/Coipel run. So something happened in-between that made it so he doesn't need to use the hammer to protect himself any more. I don't think Thor needs that -- I think he's plenty capable of triumphing over foes of all sorts for centuries without having indestructible skin -- but some people have Superman-envy about Thor, and don't want Superman to be able to do anything that Thor can't approximate. I'd rather he be the best Thor, not a substitute for Superman, but there you go.

In any case, I did think that Thor wasn't bulletproof at the time I wrote him in AVENGERS and GODSTORM, and still think that was true at the time, but Marvel's made him more powerful since.

Pardon the snark, it's Friday afternoon and it's been over 20 years that some Thor fans have been angry that I disagreed with them online.

kdb

[Electricmastro]

Yeah, I honestly don't get why Aaron handles Thor the way he does in his Avengers run.

I got the same feeling from Generations: The Unworthy Thor & The Mighty Thor #1 (2017):

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

Never in my run.

But Lee and Kirby portrayed Thor as vulnerable to bullets and blades, as did Len Wein, Walter Simonson and others. Far less so to broad impact damage, explosions and ray guns. Or at least, they had Thor speak and act as if he were vulnerable to bullets and blades, and I'm willing to take him at his word.

When I started writing AVENGERS, I read through every appearance of Thor, and took notes on his interactions with guns, and while they were inconsistent, the majority of the evidence suggested he was vulnerable to bullets and blades. Energy exposure, though, seemed to fall into the "lord of the living lightning" area, and didn't bother him very much.

When I answered someone's question about it online, some Thor fans freaked at the idea that Thor had been protecting himself from bullets with his hammer all those years for a reason, but I figured he knew what he was doing. Some of them seem to think that if Thor is vulnerable to bullets, then it would be easy to kill him, just like it's easy to kill Captain America, Spider-Man or all those other characters who've been shot at for years without dying, but I have rather more respect for Thor's combat skill than that.

Some people have tried to argue physics about an Asgardian god, but given that this is a mythos where Balder is invulnerable to everything but mistletoe because his mom asked everything but mistletoe not to harm him, the rules of science don't play consistently for Asgardians. [Balder, however, later got shot to shit by automatic weapons-fire, though, and it took surgery to save his life. Go figure.]

So I tend to think that Thor was vulnerable to bullets and blades because he was an inspiration to Viking warriors, and if weapons just bounced off him like a tank, that's not very inspiring. So he's actually woundable in a battle, even though it would take much, much more to kill him than it would an ordinary human. He's still got skin in the game, as it were.

But none of this ever made it into any comic I wrote. I treated Thor the way Stan and Jack and Len and Walter had, and never actually injured him, because he's really good at what he does.

I did play a part in the one time, as far as I know, that Thor's actually been injured by a bullet. That was when Christopher Priest called me up and said, "I want to shoot an Avenger in the head, who can I use?" I asked him if he wanted to kill someone, and he said no, he was going to do the "bullet just creased the skull" cliche. I told him that if he didn't want to do that, he could have someone shoot Thor -- the bullet could break the skin and knock him down, but it wouldn't do a thing to the bone underneath and it'd piss him off.

So Priest did that, and has been hiding out from Thor fans ever since, even though Thor was not significantly harmed by the bullet, just momentarily stunned and pissed off.

Since my time, though, Thor has been redefined as bulletproof, as shown clearly in the Straczysnki/Coipel run. So something happened in-between that made it so he doesn't need to use the hammer to protect himself any more. I don't think Thor needs that -- I think he's plenty capable of triumphing over foes of all sorts for centuries without having indestructible skin -- but some people have Superman-envy about Thor, and don't want Superman to be able to do anything that Thor can't approximate. I'd rather he be the best Thor, not a substitute for Superman, but there you go.

In any case, I did think that Thor wasn't bulletproof at the time I wrote him in AVENGERS and GODSTORM, and still think that was true at the time, but Marvel's made him more powerful since.

Pardon the snark, it's Friday afternoon and it's been over 20 years that some Thor fans have been angry that I disagreed with them online.

kdb

It's always interesting reading about the opinions and history of writers.

I agree with the Superman/Thor comparisons, i admit of being guilty of fetishizing the power levels of my favorite characters (Broly Syndrome i call that), but i'd rather have Thor be his own character instead of being a Superman pastiche like Gladiator and Hyperion.

[Ichijinijisanji]

Never in my run.

But Lee and Kirby portrayed Thor as vulnerable to bullets and blades, as did Len Wein, Walter Simonson and others. Far less so to broad impact damage, explosions and ray guns. Or at least, they had Thor speak and act as if he were vulnerable to bullets and blades, and I'm willing to take him at his word.

When I started writing AVENGERS, I read through every appearance of Thor, and took notes on his interactions with guns, and while they were inconsistent, the majority of the evidence suggested he was vulnerable to bullets and blades. Energy exposure, though, seemed to fall into the "lord of the living lightning" area, and didn't bother him very much.

When I answered someone's question about it online, some Thor fans freaked at the idea that Thor had been protecting himself from bullets with his hammer all those years for a reason, but I figured he knew what he was doing. Some of them seem to think that if Thor is vulnerable to bullets, then it would be easy to kill him, just like it's easy to kill Captain America, Spider-Man or all those other characters who've been shot at for years without dying, but I have rather more respect for Thor's combat skill than that.

Some people have tried to argue physics about an Asgardian god, but given that this is a mythos where Balder is invulnerable to everything but mistletoe because his mom asked everything but mistletoe not to harm him, the rules of science don't play consistently for Asgardians. [Balder, however, later got shot to shit by automatic weapons-fire, though, and it took surgery to save his life. Go figure.]

So I tend to think that Thor was vulnerable to bullets and blades because he was an inspiration to Viking warriors, and if weapons just bounced off him like a tank, that's not very inspiring. So he's actually woundable in a battle, even though it would take much, much more to kill him than it would an ordinary human. He's still got skin in the game, as it were.

But none of this ever made it into any comic I wrote. I treated Thor the way Stan and Jack and Len and Walter had, and never actually injured him, because he's really good at what he does.

I did play a part in the one time, as far as I know, that Thor's actually been injured by a bullet. That was when Christopher Priest called me up and said, "I want to shoot an Avenger in the head, who can I use?" I asked him if he wanted to kill someone, and he said no, he was going to do the "bullet just creased the skull" cliche. I told him that if he didn't want to do that, he could have someone shoot Thor -- the bullet could break the skin and knock him down, but it wouldn't do a thing to the bone underneath and it'd piss him off.

So Priest did that, and has been hiding out from Thor fans ever since, even though Thor was not significantly harmed by the bullet, just momentarily stunned and pissed off.

Since my time, though, Thor has been redefined as bulletproof, as shown clearly in the Straczysnki/Coipel run. So something happened in-between that made it so he doesn't need to use the hammer to protect himself any more. I don't think Thor needs that -- I think he's plenty capable of triumphing over foes of all sorts for centuries without having indestructible skin -- but some people have Superman-envy about Thor, and don't want Superman to be able to do anything that Thor can't approximate. I'd rather he be the best Thor, not a substitute for Superman, but there you go.

In any case, I did think that Thor wasn't bulletproof at the time I wrote him in AVENGERS and GODSTORM, and still think that was true at the time, but Marvel's made him more powerful since.

Pardon the snark, it's Friday afternoon and it's been over 20 years that some Thor fans have been angry that I disagreed with them online.

kdb

I think you had thor say he could be injured by bullets in your run, though you didn't show it?
I can't remember if it was your run or not

Plus it's kind of like the wonder-woman syndrome. She can ungodly amounts of punishment, but some writers do portray her as vulnerable to bullets, hence her bracers.

However, while some writers like lee had thor run from gunners, it can also be said that thor using his hammer could be a way to minimize ricochet guiding his bullets appropriately or in a more controlled fashion than just letting them bounce off unpredictably

[Kurt Busiek]

I think you had thor say he could be injured by bullets in your run, though you didn't show it?
I can't remember if it was your run or not

I don't think I even had him say it.

But Stan did. Len did. Walter and Tom (deFalco) established that Asgardians (and others of their environs) were vulnerable to gunfire, and Walt's Thor called a bunch of ordinary spears fired at him "deadly," and defended himself from them.

Thor's comics history is full of times when he behaves or speaks in a way that suggests that either bullets and blades are dangerous to him, or that he's very, very mixed up. I don't think he's mixed up.

kdb