The Mighty Thor Appreciation

[Jarnsaxa]

Here's the Comichron sales chart's top ten for March 2018.
March 2018 Top Ten.jpg

And here's Comixology's sales chart for the week that The Mighty Thor #704 came out. Issue #705 likely did better but I forgot to save the screenshot of the sales chart for that week.
Comic Best Seller 2-21-18.PNG

Here's my point, if you love Jane Foster then don't worry too much about her being gone for very long. Real invulnerability doesn't come from being born on Krypton or eating Idunn's apples, it comes from people buying comic books. Marvel's editor in chief just "canceled" his top-selling book among women and one of his top-selling books period.

And Jane can easily be brought back as early as issue #706. All Odin has to do is say "do you want to be a Valkyrie?" In Norse legend, Odin made worthy women into Valkyrie after they'd died and there's no reason Marvel's Odin can't do that to Jane even if she doesn't want him to. I'm sure Marvel will do a way more complicated story thant that and it will be a year long crossover event that will involve every living thing in the Marvel Universe and there will hundreds of "Return of Jane Foster" comics for us to buy, hopefully all drawn by Russel Dauterman, but there's just no way Marvel will just let one of their top selling characters sit in Valhalla.

A quick point about Mjolnir and Mangog, it took the heat of a sun to forge Mjolnir so our sun likely isn't hot enough to destroy it. In issue #705, Jane threw Mangog into the sun once and he/she/it survived and came back to keep fighting. Thor Odinson hasn't shown he's worthy to weild Mjolnir yet so if Jane does stay dead and the Fenris chains give way because they can't withstand the heat of the sun, who weilds Mjolnir to fight Mangog? Maybe Thor Odinson is worthy again, maybe he's not. The two guys that need to be most concerned with Jane's death are Odin because Mangog is coming back and he has no one that he knows can weild Mjolnir and Marvel Editor In Chief, C.B. Beluski, because he has these guys he answers to called "shareholders" that might actually be more terrifying than anything in the Marvel Universe.

[brettc1]

In one of the visions the doors appear to show a figure inside. It could have been somebody opening them but it seemed more likely to be the doors closing on somebody that had just passed through. In this preview. Which I havn't read only scanned the art. Either interpretations are figuratively possible, as she is indeed being greeted at the door.

It is notable the person at the door isn't a goddess. I am most interested to see if Thor the Goddess of Thunder makes a reappearance without Jane at some point. Certainly Damnation seems to hint this is possible, and the story seems to me to have been be hinting at this possibility from the start.

That would be a deal breaker for me. Jane is Jane. Having another entity as goddess of Thunder would diminish her.

[brettc1]

Here's the Comichron sales chart's top ten for March 2018.
March 2018 Top Ten.jpg

And here's Comixology's sales chart for the week that The Mighty Thor #704 came out. Issue #705 likely did better but I forgot to save the screenshot of the sales chart for that week.
Comic Best Seller 2-21-18.PNG

Here's my point, if you love Jane Foster then don't worry too much about her being gone for very long. Real invulnerability doesn't come from being born on Krypton or eating Idunn's apples, it comes from people buying comic books. Marvel's editor in chief just "canceled" his top-selling book among women and one of his top-selling books period.

And Jane can easily be brought back as early as issue #706. All Odin has to do is say "do you want to be a Valkyrie?" In Norse legend, Odin made worthy women into Valkyrie after they'd died and there's no reason Marvel's Odin can't do that to Jane even if she doesn't want him to. I'm sure Marvel will do a way more complicated story thant that and it will be a year long crossover event that will involve every living thing in the Marvel Universe and there will hundreds of "Return of Jane Foster" comics for us to buy, hopefully all drawn by Russel Dauterman, but there's just no way Marvel will just let one of their top selling characters sit in Valhalla.

A quick point about Mjolnir and Mangog, it took the heat of a sun to forge Mjolnir so our sun likely isn't hot enough to destroy it. In issue #705, Jane threw Mangog into the sun once and he/she/it survived and came back to keep fighting. Thor Odinson hasn't shown he's worthy to weild Mjolnir yet so if Jane does stay dead and the Fenris chains give way because they can't withstand the heat of the sun, who weilds Mjolnir to fight Mangog? Maybe Thor Odinson is worthy again, maybe he's not. The two guys that need to be most concerned with Jane's death are Odin because Mangog is coming back and he has no one that he knows can weild Mjolnir and Marvel Editor In Chief, C.B. Beluski, because he has these guys he answers to called "shareholders" that might actually be more terrifying than anything in the Marvel Universe.

Sigh.

Look, I like Jane as a character but if she comes back then I hope they just keep her as far away from Thor the character, and Mjolnir, as possible.

I'm a Wonder Woman fan for decades, and that has taught me how frustrating it is to see a fave nerfed again and again to make another character look good. And so far Marvel's plan for making Jane shine has also included reducing Thor to virtual impotence.

[Digifiend]

If Jane was resurrected they'd probably give her a new hammer and name her Thunderstrike. That was the Avengers cartoon's solution. She borrowed Mjolnir, proved capable, then handed it back to Thor and was given Stormbreaker.

[Del torro]

If Jane was resurrected they'd probably give her a new hammer and name her Thunderstrike. That was the Avengers cartoon's solution. She borrowed Mjolnir, proved capable, then handed it back to Thor and was given Stormbreaker.

What episodes of Avengers Assemble did Jane appear in? I stopped watching in season 2,but I might check out those episodes and any other episodes where Thor does something cool (if they exist, you can point me in the right direction).

[Digifiend]

Jane debuts at the start of season 4, Avengers: Secret Wars, as a scientist (like in the movies), and gets her powers right at the end of the season.

[JudicatorPrime]

What episodes of Avengers Assemble did Jane appear in? I stopped watching in season 2,but I might check out those episodes and any other episodes where Thor does something cool (if they exist, you can point me in the right direction).

If you have Comcast/Xfinity cable service, I think those episodes are still available using On Demand service. They aired relatively recently.

[Frontier]

What episodes of Avengers Assemble did Jane appear in? I stopped watching in season 2,but I might check out those episodes and any other episodes where Thor does something cool (if they exist, you can point me in the right direction).

Here's the episodes she's in:

As Jane Foster:

"Avengers No More."

"The Once and Future Kang."

"The Return."

"Westland."

"The Wastelands."

As Thor:

"The Wastelands."

"All Things Must End."

[whiterabbit]

If Jane Foster comes back to life despite her physical body dying from cancer then I'm calling bull. Handwaving cancer is just insulting.

[Hypestyle]

what type of fun things are there to do in Valhalla?

[Sutekh]

what type of fun things are there to do in Valhalla?

1) fight each other to the death until there's only one left standing.
2) all get resurrected / healed and party and celebrate and toast the day's champion (last one standing) until you pass out from over-partying.
3) wake up the next day and go back to 1.

After a couple thousand years of that, presumably the average einherjar of Valhalla is one hell of a fighter, used to fighting and dying, utterly fearless and ridiculously inhumanly skilled at war.

(And they probably also have an inhuman tolerance to mead and STDs...)

[JudicatorPrime]

1) fight each other to the death until there's only one left standing.
2) all get resurrected / healed and party and celebrate and toast the day's champion (last one standing) until you pass out from over-partying.
3) wake up the next day and go back to 1.

After a couple thousand years of that, presumably the average einherjar of Valhalla is one hell of a fighter, used to fighting and dying, utterly fearless and ridiculously inhumanly skilled at war.

(And they probably also have an inhuman tolerance to mead and STDs...)

Did they finally add women to the Einherjar other than Jane? It used to be exclusively a male's club. The Valkyrie were another story entirely.

I always thought that it was too bad that Valhalla didn't have advanced technological weaponry. I mean after a few thousand years, a weapon of mass destruction would be a welcome change to the folderol.

[JKtheMac]

That would be a deal breaker for me. Jane is Jane. Having another entity as goddess of Thunder would diminish her.

I would anticipate it as a nailed on certainty if it was entirely down to Aaron. I don't think it would be. I think we can guarantee Jane will never be a Valkyrie. That's a significant demotion from Thor and one I don't think Marvel would have any good press with. Simplest way to square the circle is pretty much do what Thor Canon did and ditch the human in favour of the god. Ditch Jane as dead. Have Thor the Goddess of Thunder as an independent entity. This directly plays to the commentary on canon that Aaron love to make and all his fans so love him for

If Jane was resurrected they'd probably give her a new hammer and name her Thunderstrike.

That is not impossible. It has the beauty of ressurecting old IP and maybe selling some back catalogue, but I would be far less interested in this. I don't see why we would need Jane back. She's dead, it was a self sacrifice, it would seem diminishing of the story to bring her back.

[brettc1]

I would anticipate it as a nailed on certainty if it was entirely down to Aaron. I don't think it would be. I think we can guarantee Jane will never be a Valkyrie. That's a significant demotion from Thor and one I don't think Marvel would have any good press with. Simplest way to square the circle is pretty much do what Thor Canon did and ditch the human in favour of the god. Ditch Jane as dead. Have Thor the Goddess of Thunder as an independent entity. This directly play to the commentary on canon that Aaron love to make and all his fans so love him for

That is not impossible. It has the beauty of ressurecting old IP and maybe selling some back catalogue, but I would be far less interested in this. I don't see why we would need Jane back. She's dead, it was a self sacrifice, it would seem diminishing of the story to bring her back.

Less so than saying she was never the one acting the hero in the first place.

The analogy to Blake here is flawed because Blake WAS Thor. JMS' ridiculous notions notwithstanding, Blake was simply Thor with a brain wipe.

The same is the reverse in Jane's case. The woman with the hammer IS Jane. Just like when Captain America picks it up he is still Steve Rogers with the power of Thor.

[Sutekh]

Did they finally add women to the Einherjar other than Jane? It used to be exclusively a male's club. The Valkyrie were another story entirely.

I have no idea, or if Valhalla even exists in the Marvel Universe this week, for that matter!

But, logically, Sif has been a sword-swinging warrior woman for centuries, if not millennia (and other warrior-goddesses like Hildegard have been retconned in over the years), and there's real world evidence that at least *some* 'Viking' women fought alongside the men, it would make sense that the Valkyrie would occasionally, over the centuries, find a woman who died in battle worthy of choosing for Valhalla.

It's also possible that there would be some ethnic diversity up there, as well, as the Valkyrie watch over the battles that the Norse engaged in looking for worthy warriors, and those battles, thanks to Viking raids, extended as far as north Africa and Italy (and, the modern day descendants of those Vikings fighting in Vietnam, Korea, etc.), there could be 'worthy' warriors of various other cultures who impressed this Valkyrie or that, and were offered a ride to Valhalla, which may have sounded like a cool deal compared to their own cultures afterlife-plans for them. And so an einherjar who looks like Hogun the Grim (who doesn't appear to be even a little bit 'Norse') could be a thing.

I always thought that it was too bad that Valhalla didn't have advanced technological weaponry. I mean after a few thousand years, a weapon of mass destruction would be a welcome change to the folderol.

It would make sense, and was certainly the case back in the Kirby/Lee days, when Asgardians had flying ships and beam weapons, but since the Simonson days, when Asgard was portrayed as more mythic (and Skurge using guns was considered a big shocking deal, despite Nifleheim/Hel probably being *packed* with people who used guns in life...), there seems to have been a push to portray Asgard as backwards and frozen for millenia in a medieval state, where bows are about as high-tech as it gets, and people get around on flying goats or whatever.