REVIEW/PREVIEW: Aaron & Dauterman's "Thor" #1 Delivers "An Awesome Surprise"

[Betty]

As for he being gender neutral... come on. Historically men held authority and women were the subjects of their husbands, this is a belief still perpetuated and enforced in the Middle East where arranged marriages exist and are dependent on dowrys and the possible husband approving the marriage to his proposed bride. You want to acknowledge Norse terms but not modern conventions of practised religions... this is ironic to me. Historically men were extensions of women and in the Biblical text they were so literally, man begat woman from a rib. Men created women. Women were traded as assets with dowries involved, feminism through Emmeline Pankhurst didn't come about until the 20th century, until then women were traded as possessions unless born royal so... you proposition ignores all of recorded historyn aside from folks like Cleopatra and monarch born of divine right via descendant blood claims. So, you can argue this position but the weight of history crushes such weak assertions.

What's your point here? The grammar rule is the grammar rule. Unless you want to talk about women's place in Norse society? Whether or not the real Norse had female warriors is still being debated, but Norse mythology, both the real one and the Marvel version, has plenty of female warriors.

As for the Norse thing, that was because ThunderingHammer said that English grammar was irrelevant because Thor was Norse, and I was saying that not only is the English relevant because the comic is in English, but Norse grammar supports a gender-neutral possibility, too. So either way you want to go with it, nothing bars a woman from picking Mjolnir up based on gender alone.

As for Purdue University... England invented and revises the English language, America doesn't even use written English since they excise the u from words like behaviour and colour, even though America was originally populated by Native Americans and the MesoAmericans, not the Spanish, Irish, Polish, Dutch or other invading settlers who brought their influence to the contintent. Jewish people don't originate from New York historically.

Dialects are a thing. And England accepted the use of "he" as gender-neutral in 1850.

OK, now you people aren't even talking about comic books! You're discussing the dynamics of American English and the origin of freaking language.

I will fight to the death for grammar, Rosebunse, and I will have died a true hero! But I think you're right. We may be getting too off-topic...

[Rosebunse]

Betty, I want you to read what you've posted and tell me how you "may" be getting too off-topic.

Now, that being said, it is a fun off-topic thing LOL At least it's not super weirdly sexist. It's educational!

[ThunderingHammer]

Odin made the enchantment and set the parameters. The idea Nick Fury's gossip surpasses the power of the Asgardian Skyfather who set the parameters and controls them completely is nonsense. The only person that outranked him was murdered by his son when FemLoki ressurected Bor, enchanted and skewed his perception of events and then got murdered by his grandson with the Odinforce. The Odinforce outranked Bor's powers and allowed him to be slain, because three Asgardian lifeforces are stronger than one, and his power allowed him to imprison Cul in Asgardian space.

I get Aaron wrote Original Sin and is writing Thor as long as he wants to but this has been done before with Red Norvell, Eric Masterson, Jake Olsen, Tanarus... substituting Thor is getting old to me. Just write him well and give him worthy opposition to test his limits. Aaron can do it, The God Butcher arc proved that, so this just disappoints me when he's proven capable of doing better with the character.

That last paragraph is exactly how I feel. Maybe that's why I'm so mad and disappointed. I finally felt we had a writer who respected thor. His stories were great. Especially Gorr and all that 3 thor's stuff. Then, we get this. Armless, powerless, homeless looking Thor. What a letdown. And you're right, Aaron is more than capable of creating powerful enough threats so that even a beast like Thor has problems defeating them. Without being depowered.

[TresDias]

That last paragraph is exactly how I feel. Maybe that's why I'm so mad and disappointed. I finally felt we had a writer who respected thor. His stories were great. Especially Gorr and all that 3 thor's stuff. Then, we get this. Armless, powerless, homeless looking Thor. What a letdown. And you're right, Aaron is more than capable of creating powerful enough threats so that even a beast like Thor has problems defeating them. Without being depowered.

I can see that you really love this character. I think you're overreacting too, though.

You're basically taking the stance of a person who calls "It's A Wonderful Life" one of the most depressing movies of all time because of how it tears down George Bailey so completely -- when it's actually one of the most uplifting movies of all time because of that ending. To get there, though, George had to fall, and he had to fall hard.

That's all that is being done here with Thor. You know Aaron is going to have some marvelous return to form that "shows us who Thor is" -- and, yeah, that's been done before. But shit, guys, this is a character who has been in circulation for over 50 years with the concept of being worthy to lift the hammer at the core of the character. Of course that's going to get recycled, the same way you can count on some story about responsibility getting recycled with Spider-Man.

It's a consequence of the themes at the core of these characters and that serialized fiction is, well, serialized.

By the way, do we even know for sure yet that the woman holding Mjolnir is going to insist on being called "Thor"? He's obviously still using that name (here and in "Avengers"), so I'm wondering if all the complaints about her stealing the name are premature.

[Ravin' Ray]

Mod Break

I deleted a slur directed at Aaron and another slur directed at another poster as these crossed the lines of good conduct. Any more such violations will be treated more severely.

The discussion about language and semantics is interesting but we have to remember that we are talking about Marvel's interpretation of Norse mythology, which took obvious liberties from the original source. The debate about whether "Thor" is exclusively a masculine name, or a title as well, is therefore undermined to a certain extent because now, in the Marvel Universe, it is treated differently from the way it is/was treated in Nordic language and culture. Would this one point distort the Thor/Asgardian mythos to the point of unrecognizability more than say, Odin have a brother Cul, Thor having a sister Aldrif/Angela, and an entire Tenth Realm of Heven once connected to Yggdrasil?

[ImprobableQuestion]

A last-minute prediction from IQ:

This arc of Aaron's story will contain:
-The return of Lauffey (probably even first if the Variant cover of Thor fighting Frost Giants means anything)
-More War of Realms set up, but the actual war won't be until the third act (after Thor Odinson's return)
-This arc will split between Odinson and Thor rather than the 3 Thor's of different eras (though they will show up from time to time)
-The Angelic Host will be afield in the universe, and likely will be approached by Malekith to join his league.

I picture this being the Empire Strikes Back of Aaron's Thor saga. In other words, for all Thor and co. Do to smash giants and protect the realms, Malekith will still come out poised to strike with his Dark League of Realms.

[vitruvian]

That last paragraph is exactly how I feel. Maybe that's why I'm so mad and disappointed. I finally felt we had a writer who respected thor. His stories were great. Especially Gorr and all that 3 thor's stuff. Then, we get this. Armless, powerless, homeless looking Thor. What a letdown. And you're right, Aaron is more than capable of creating powerful enough threats so that even a beast like Thor has problems defeating them. Without being depowered.

The whole whisper thing had just better pay off... because without the reveal, I'm having a difficult time imagining there being any secret Fury could impart to Thor that would render him unworthy. Even the most heinous of crimes that Thor may have somehow forgotten would have had him be unworthy already, just not knowing why, surely.

[MikeMC005]

The whole whisper thing had just better pay off... because without the reveal, I'm having a difficult time imagining there being any secret Fury could impart to Thor that would render him unworthy. Even the most heinous of crimes that Thor may have somehow forgotten would have had him be unworthy already, just not knowing why, surely.

Yeah the whisper better be something insane in order to break Thor down like this where he is having a tantrum on the moon...

[ciscostudent561]

this is really stupid.
Thorson on comic vine stated "I wanna die right now" after the news hit.
well here goes another couple of months of fake Thor.

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

[lcg16]

Well, the woman calls herself "a Thor", at least. The issue itself is honestly more about hammerless Thor and Malekith doing the Empire Strikes Back thing (with a little bit stolen from the Dark World...except no Loki to fake it this time) than the new leading lady, whoever she is. (It looks like they did throw in one false easter egg...at least, seems false.)

Also, she looks a touch scrawny to me for some reason. =S

That said, the hammer being on the moon seems to suggest whoever picked it up can breathe in space without hammer help. (If space breathing is even a power granted by the hammer...)

[VJ.]

this is a belief still perpetuated and enforced in the Middle East where arranged marriages exist and are dependent on dowrys and the possible husband approving the marriage to his proposed bride.

You're confusing arranged marriages for forced ones - there's a big difference.

As for Purdue University... England invented and revises the English language, America doesn't even use written English since they excise the u from words like behaviour and colour,

I'm a Brit, and this is plain silly - the beauty of the English language is that anyone can take it & make it their own. We're not like the French with some sort of British version of l'academie francaise.
Besides, the fact it says "he" on the hammer doesn't matter at all - the preview pages clearly show it changes to "she" when New Thor picks it up anyway.

[Kuwagaton]

They're giving this a massive push. Can you imagine if they cared half this much about an established character like storm?

[Username taken]

Clearly, PIS and induced soft reboots are in play.

As for he being gender neutral... come on. Historically men held authority and women were the subjects of their husbands, this is a belief still perpetuated and enforced in the Middle East where arranged marriages exist and are dependent on dowrys and the possible husband approving the marriage to his proposed bride. You want to acknowledge Norse terms but not modern conventions of practised religions... this is ironic to me. Historically men were extensions of women and in the Biblical text they were so literally, man begat woman from a rib. Men created women. Women were traded as assets with dowries involved, feminism through Emmeline Pankhurst didn't come about until the 20th century, until then women were traded as possessions unless born royal so... you proposition ignores all of recorded historyn aside from folks like Cleopatra and monarch born of divine right via descendant blood claims. So, you can argue this position but the weight of history crushes such weak assertions.

As for Purdue University... England invented and revises the English language, America doesn't even use written English since they excise the u from words like behaviour and colour, even though America was originally populated by Native Americans and the MesoAmericans, not the Spanish, Irish, Polish, Dutch or other invading settlers who brought their influence to the contintent. Jewish people don't originate from New York historically.

Arranged marriages aren't forced marriages. Nor are dowries a characteristic of forced marriages.

I'm partly of African lineage and I can't tell you authoritatively that dowry payments are a big part of the cultural practices and has zero to do with it being forced marriage as most marriages in that area aren't forced.

[MikeMC005]

They're giving this a massive push. Can you imagine if they cared half this much about an established character like storm?

Well Marvel doesn't really care about any of the x-men right now anyway because they hate FOX for continuing to create the terrible movies.

[Michael P]

America doesn't even use written English

Do tell what I've been using to communicate all these years.