Everyone and their aunt picking up Thor's hammer

[JudicatorPrime]

Curious, how would everyone propose ensuring that no one but Thor wields Mjolnir in the present and future? Also, should all other Thors be killed off, reworked or otherwise canceled?

I'm really only a fan of Beta Ray Thor, but it's really easy to reimagine him since his lore isn't as Thor-dependent as other characters. But I suspect getting rid of the various Thor proxies could be painful for some fans.

[DrNewGod]

Curious, how would everyone propose ensuring that no one but Thor wields Mjolnir in the present and future? Also, should all other Thors be killed off, reworked or otherwise canceled?

I'm really only a fan of Beta Ray Thor, but it's really easy to reimagine him since his lore isn't as Thor-dependent as other characters. But I suspect getting rid of the various Thor proxies could be painful for some fans.

...and that's the danger of this kind of thing. Both the Flash and - especially - the Green Lantern fanbases have been Balkanized by making the powers and mantle something that gets passed around to different protagonists, especially when it's done simultaneously.
Fans start insisting that Only Their Version Is The One True Worthy One!

[PCN24454]

Curious, how would everyone propose ensuring that no one but Thor wields Mjolnir in the present and future? Also, should all other Thors be killed off, reworked or otherwise canceled?

I'm really only a fan of Beta Ray Thor, but it's really easy to reimagine him since his lore isn't as Thor-dependent as other characters. But I suspect getting rid of the various Thor proxies could be painful for some fans.

Outright getting rid of them sounds like a terrible idea. We would lose more from getting rid of them then we could possibly gain from having them.

From the beginning, the concept of "worthiness" was always contrived similar to how the Punisher is immune to the Ghost Rider's Penance Stare. The idea that there are so few possible wielders even out of 7 billion+ people was always weak to me in the first place.

[Panic]

They should simply do away with the "worthiness" enchantment and just make the enchantment simpler so that (a) only Thor may lift the hammer, and (b) it doesn't grant a duplication of Thor's power's to the user even if someone else were to pick up the hammer. For starters it works against the whole idea of Thor's mixed heritage being necessary so Asgard would have a warrior of Thor's greater-than-average (Asgardian strength) and endurance.

As for the existing duplicates, I think there are only Bill and Jane. They can still exist, as I don't believe in killing-off other people's heroes. Bill's strength comes from super-science anyway, and his hammer was forged for him specifically. He has his own supporting cast (his ship and people), his own mission, basically his own mythology. It doesn't really take away too much from OG Thor.

Jane is pretty much a carbon-copy of Thor that has relied on Thor being written-down to make her look otherwise; it would be better if she got her own supporting cast away from Asgard and developed her own identity rather than usurping someone else's.

[Ichijinijisanji]

That's still doesn't make it any better, it kinda makes it worse that they can just take away Thors essence like that via some machine and give it to someone else, in fact the whole idea of cloning other Avengers was so dumb in the first place.

And again i don't think the enchantment on the hammer should be this easily tricked, especially now that the hammer is pretty much sentient, you can't have someone like Hitler pick it up just because he injected himself with Thors essence, it's really, really dumb.

mjolnir has been tricked in the past similarly, even by wonder-man when he was put in a machine that gave him the "energies" of the other avengers through machines
we don't know the inner workings of the machine, it likely has some crazy tech/magic/cosmic nonsense inside

They should simply do away with the "worthiness" enchantment and just make the enchantment simpler so that (a) only Thor may lift the hammer, and (b) it doesn't grant a duplication of Thor's power's to the user even if someone else were to pick up the hammer. For starters it works against the whole idea of Thor's mixed heritage being necessary so Asgard would have a warrior of Thor's greater-than-average (Asgardian strength) and endurance.

As for the existing duplicates, I think there are only Bill and Jane. They can still exist, as I don't believe in killing-off other people's heroes. Bill's strength comes from super-science anyway, and his hammer was forged for him specifically. He has his own supporting cast (his ship and people), his own mission, basically his own mythology. It doesn't really take away too much from OG Thor.

Jane is pretty much a carbon-copy of Thor that has relied on Thor being written-down to make her look otherwise; it would be better if she got her own supporting cast away from Asgard and developed her own identity rather than usurping someone else's.

this is somewhat how busiek wrote it, only in dire circumstances can you lift the hammer with regards to point a) if you're worthy

with point b) i agree that mjolnir shouldn't replicate the powers completely

[Ultimate Captain America]

For the record, in the original myths there is no such a thing as "being worthy": only Thor can wield the hammer simply because it is that heavy. In fact, he needs to use the Megingdjord belt to double his strength, as well as the Jarngreipr iron gloves. Of course, that works in the myths where Thor is the strongest god of all, but in a superhero universe, with the Thing, Hulk, Namor and an ever-growing number of guys with super-strength? Yes, Jack Kirby needed some other explanation, so he made up the enchantment.

By the way, no, not even in myths Thor manages to be the only one that ever lifted the hammer. One of the stories is that of Thor and Thrym, a giant king from Jotunheim, who managed to steal the hammer. And there's also the dwarf Sindri, who drew the hammer out of the forge, he clearly could lift it as well.

[Snoop Dogg]

what if we give the hammer a password, you can only lift it if you type in the password and only thor knows it, and also the password is "my neck, my back, thunder and lightning cracks"

[Ichijinijisanji]

what if we give the hammer a password, you can only lift it if you type in the password and only thor knows it, and also the password is "my neck, my back, thunder and lightning cracks"

Yes, mjolnir does have a secret "real name" that you can use to summon it




then in avengers annual 19 we see thor sing out a rune spell that causes mjolnir to return to him again




this was later referenced in PAD's captain marvel where an old rick jones lifts the hammer by whispering its true name



imagine saying something completely outrageous and comics are like "yeah that's canon"

[Intothevoid]

mjolnir has been tricked in the past similarly, even by wonder-man when he was put in a machine that gave him the "energies" of the other avengers through machines
we don't know the inner workings of the machine, it likely has some crazy tech/magic/cosmic nonsense inside

It has been tricked plenty of times in the past through various means, one of the dumbest ones is probably people wielding it freely in zero gravity, but all of that is still rather dumb IMO, you shouldn't be able to trick an enchantment.

[Ichijinijisanji]

It has been tricked plenty of times in the past through various means, one of the dumbest ones is probably people wielding it freely in zero gravity, but all of that is still rather dumb IMO, you shouldn't be able to trick an enchantment.

magic and binding spells having loopholes or counters are as old as when they've written stories around this

and wielding something is again different from moving it. Though i think it's interaction in deep space should be somewhat different than is shown. In space there's always gravity, in some tiny fraction from the closest most massive body. I think mjolnir should act as a compass, making its calculations and aligning itself and "falling" towards the highest intensity of this micro to nanogravity at an extremely slow pace.

One of these weaknesses, like being fooled by thor's essence, is one odin himself seems to have "built in", in case mjolnir were needed to be used and thor wasn't around

of course, as pointed up by me, mjolnir does have a "real name" acting as a password that is little known trivia, so he can override it if he wants with that

[Intothevoid]

magic and binding spells having loopholes or counters are as old as when they've written stories around this

and wielding something is again different from moving it. Though i think it's interaction in deep space should be somewhat different than is shown. In space there's always gravity, in some tiny fraction from the closest most massive body. I think mjolnir should act as a compass, making its calculations and aligning itself and "falling" towards the highest intensity of this micro to nanogravity at an extremely slow pace.

One of these weaknesses, like being fooled by thor's essence, is one odin himself seems to have "built in", in case mjolnir were needed to be used and thor wasn't around

of course, as pointed up by me, mjolnir does have a "real name" acting as a password that is little known trivia, so he can override it if he wants with that

Yes, they are still very dumb loopholes IMO.

Not only that but Mljonir shouldn't depend on gravity at all, you shouldn't be able to move it even in zero gravity in any direction.

Thors essence is probably the dumbest one, anyone no matter how unworthy they are can wield it just by being injected with Thors essence, this was a pretty dumb decision from Odin. The whole point of the hammer is for the ones that are worthy to wield it, what is the point of Odin putting a loophole there himself so others could wield if Thor isn't there lol, I mean not only does Thor carry the hammer pretty much at all times, you defeat the whole point of someone needing to be worthy to wield it in the first place.

That's also another really dumb idea by the writers... a literal password... on a magical enchanted hammer... Once again creating silly loopholes, luckily the password thing is mostly a forgotten idea.

[Thor-El]

I'm curious about what is Donny Cates doing with Don Blake. He has been hinting some weirdness with the hammer getting heavier and harder to lift for Thor and now he is bringing Don Blake in a corrupted state. The hammer's original enchantment as far as I know started with Blake so maybe the corruption of his essence might have to do with some malfunction of the spell and that might explain why so many people besides Thor have been able to lift it.

[Frontier]

you have to be willing to fight, it's about being willing to sacrifice in order to fight justly

But self-doubt and depression can make you unworthy, even if you fit the above requirements.

[Reviresco]

One of the uniqe things about Thor is his hammer and how no one but him could wield it. Then Walt Simonson who had a very memorable Thor run came and made his new character Beta Ray Bill, a mixture of a horse and the Alien creature worthy. Since then Jane Foster, Captain America most notably in the MCU (yeah I know he briefly picked it up before during the Tom DeFalco era but that was a very brief one time thing in Thor's own mag) and the list just keeps getting bigger. Am I the only Thor fan that just gets sick of it?

I saw this last week on Supernatural and I thought it was a dig / commentary on everyone being able to pick up Thor's hammer. ;p

[Ultimate Captain America]

By the way, Tony finally lifted Mjolnir, but he forgot his promise...