REVIEW: Thor, #4

[protege]

I would've liked a little more face time between the new Thor and the Avengers; is she going to be joining one of the teams soon? Who's the guy from Roxxon?

[Gladiator7117]

So Asgardians cannot regrow limbs? Odin cannot make Thor's arm come back? I could have sworn Odin was around Galactus level. Maybe I'm missing something here.

[Rogue Star]

So Asgardians cannot regrow limbs? Odin cannot make Thor's arm come back? I could have sworn Odin was around Galactus level. Maybe I'm missing something here.

This was the question burning in my mind.

[Sea Hound]

Tyr Odinson lost his hand to Fenris, and never regrew it, so there's precedent. Odin seems to be all-powerful, except when something actually needs to be done, when he isn't.

[jphamlore]

So Asgardians cannot regrow limbs? Odin cannot make Thor's arm come back? I could have sworn Odin was around Galactus level. Maybe I'm missing something here.

Tyr's sacrifice of a hand to bind the Fenris wolf in the myths would have been a lot less heroic if he could have just regrown it afterwards. And Tyr has been shown in Marvel comics as well.

And of course there is Odin's sacrificed eye.

[lantian1]

Odin's was actually that of a sacrifice

Both Odin's eye and Tyr's hand are well part of myths. Going by what Loki was telling us stories have a big effect on the gods

Thor's is just a war wound. Not written in story as far as we know

Screwbeard on the other hand seems to have had no issue regrowing his hand

I guess him being half elder god it could require his mother to restore his arm

[themortalfist]

The whole arm thing has been bugging me since the start. (There are other things, too, which many have complained about already. My two cents on that is, the stories have been enjoyable, even if I think Aaron has misunderstood what "the power of Thor" means.) Anyway, why/how can Thor lose his arm? It just never made sense, than someone who has squared off with Thanos and the God BUTCHER hadn't lost a limb, but Malekith with a bit of magic can just lop it off? Like, that was easy.

Also, I need to re-read the first few issues of Aaron's run, but doesn't King Thor have the Destroyer's arm, not Screwbeard's arm? So does this lend some credence that at some point Thor (Odinson) gets his arm back (and Mjolnir) as well?

[jphamlore]

Sif apparently lost an arm during Oeming's Ragnarok storyline and that did not grow back either.

[DocSpin]

Well a lot of people, myself included, think Roz Solomon is Thor, so there was already an element of romance there. But I also interpreted it as her not really knowing what to do to comfort him... she wants to hug him because she feels sorry for him, but it doesn't seem like a very super hero type of thing to do, so she goes for the somewhat cliched, but more 'badass' kiss and quip.

The reality of the kiss was not explored. A woman who has taken over Thor's life and hammer? Odinson who has been humiliated as being "unworthy" and lost a limb and at the lowest point of his life. And then this unknown woman randomly decides to kiss him? How could that not be perceived as a completely patronizing gesture by the proud Odinson? Sure we all know that she knows him, but he has no idea who she is. That moment took my out of the story. Why was he not offended?

Loved the issue though!

[markallenchi]

I haven't been following Thor as closely. Did we ever figure out what he did (or heard) to become unworthy?

[peterporker]

But seriously, when you have characters changing their mind in 3 pages, you have to think if it's really the character making the decision, or a writer shoving his ideas down your throat.

Basically, the character doesn't actually exist so it's always the writer that makes the decisions.

[vitruvian]

Basically, the character doesn't actually exist so it's always the writer that makes the decisions.

Yes, but the writer that lets that be apparent, as opposed to writing the character as a person, is a poor one.

[peterporker]

Yes, but the writer that lets that be apparent, as opposed to writing the character as a person, is a poor one.

This is true if you consider Thor (the original one) so dumb that it would need 20 pages to understand that the magical hammer he wielded from centuries it's not under a spell but it really recognizes Thor (the new one) as the legitimate, more whorty wielder. I guess, him having an intimate relation with his hammer, seeing it doing things it didn't with him in thousands years and bypassing him to end in the hand of the new Thor was proof enough to change his mind.

[Marvel_Is]

- How did Thor lose his arm in the first place?

- And, how is Ulik back? Thor destroyed him in Mighty Thor #12 (Fraction's run).

[vitruvian]

This is true if you consider Thor (the original one) so dumb that it would need 20 pages to understand that the magical hammer he wielded from centuries it's not under a spell but it really recognizes Thor (the new one) as the legitimate, more whorty wielder. I guess, him having an intimate relation with his hammer, seeing it doing things it didn't with him in thousands years and bypassing him to end in the hand of the new Thor was proof enough to change his mind.

True, it could have been resolved much more quickly, in just a couple panels. New Thor hands hammer over to old Thor as requested, he's unable to hold it up, new Thor picks it up from where it dropped. The hammer gives its verdict, the end.

But tempers were running high, and there was other stuff to deal with, and it was more fun this way. And if it was a case of idiot plot (defined as, the plot could have been short-circuited by any single character not acting like an idiot), it was not one of the bad ones, as both Thors had good reason not to have all their wits about them. Old Thor is very emotional about losing the hammer and this seeming usurper picking it up, and new Thor is still so very new to all this.

Just because I'm defending good characterization as a hallmark of competent writing, does not mean that I agree this issue was an example of bad characterization or poor writing. I'm just saying that recognizing something is fiction and saying 'the character doesn't actually exist so it's always the writer that makes the decisions' doesn't actually excuse bad characterization, any more than 'well, it's not really magic' excuses a magician letting the audience see the strings or whatever.