f13.net

So apparently Thor is gonna get a sex change. Looking pretty good post-op.
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/07/15/marvel-says-a-female-character-will-be-the-new-thor/

Makes no sense.

It's a comic book, welcome to nearly a century of not making sense.

Executive: Grats Steve you been promoted. Larry was fired for moral failings.
Walter: My name is Walter. And who is Larry?
Executive: You are Steve now the you hold Steve's office. Larry was unworthy to be Steve.
Walter: Wouldn't that make me, The Steve? Walter, the Steve. It's a title.
Executive: No, no, it's way too difficult to remember who is currently Director of Manufacturing systems. It's easy to change your name to Steve.
Steve: Easier for whom...  Fuck.

Of fucking course not. What idiot would think they'd radically alter a multi-million dollar franchise movie series because of what the comics did?


Yeah, no, she's a temporary female substitute. Please don't insult our intelligence by making us think the next writer won't completely undo what you have done or that you yourself won't undo it to make a path for the next guy. Comics readers know better by now.

There will be a female Thor in the movies around the same time they also age Steve Rogers into an old man (http://marvel.com/news/comics/2014/7/7/22814/exclusive_an_all-new_captain_america_debuts_this_fall) in the movies.

The original Thor will return to being the Thor we know around the time Thor 3 hits the screens.  If this new Thor is a success, they'll figure out a way to give her a hammer of her own - alternate reality hammer, Beta Ray Bill's weapon, etc...

However, I was wondering if they would have a second Thor in the MCU... I have been wondering if they'll go down the road of having Cap be able to lift Thor's hammer and gain his powers during one of the Avengers movies (established in the comics back in the 80s and made a feature point of several stories over the years).

Guys. This is a very old comic-book trope. Rule 63 characters are just especially popular at the moment.

I mean, here's a partial list:

Spider-Man: replaced by his clone (very complicated) and then much later by Doctor Octopus possessing Peter Parker's body; also alt-universe version Miles Morales
Iron Man: replaced by James Rhodes for a lengthy period and by other Iron Men for shorter durations almost all the way back to the beginning of the comic. Bethany Cabe once wore the armor, but not for long (complaining among other things that it wasn't built for a woman's body)
Doctor Strange: resigned as Sorcerer Supreme, replaced for a little while by Brother Voodoo
Captain America: replaced quite frequently, though so far always by white men. That's about to end--The Falcon is going to take over for a while for him.
Hank Pym: not only does he change his own costume, he gives away costumes (or has them stolen) to lots of other people, including women
Batman: replaced for a goodly while by both Dick Grayson and Azrael
Superman: sort of replaced but not really on occasion.
The Flash: three versions, plus replaced by Jesse Quick and by a future Flash for short time periods
Wonder Woman: replaced on several occasions by other Amazons, most notably Artemis and her mother
Thor: replaced by a different human being during one of the numerous periods where he was dead; replaced by a space alien who looks like a horse; turned into a frog
Martian Manhunter: I got nothing, he's pretty much it

It's like some people love comics but have a six month memory when it comes to them. 

I don't get why people act like someone is arguing with them when essentially everyone says the same darn thing...

Making comic book announcements on The View? I mean, I realize that it ends up getting reported on by Time and WSJ and such, but given that even most comic book readers aren't really going to give a shit, why even bother making this a "big" announcement.

What do the network that airs The View and Marvel have in common?

Also The View has a 99.9999% female viewership.

Nobody giving a shit makes it perfect for The View.

jgsugden:

Threaded conversation. Post after your post is not necessarily talking to you. May be talking to people five posts up. Maybe just being repetitious or throwing the ball through the goal after someone has scored already.

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BsoZT01CIAE2Ogr.png)

No, his point stands.  Everyone in this thread is providing counter-points to, "makes no sense", and conversations in another thread on another forum.  "makes no sense" was actually prescient.

Changing Thor to a woman or a frog does, in fact, make no sense.  Saying, "they do that shit all the time", is not a counter-argument to, "makes no sense", it just makes it worse.

I'm saying it makes no sense but this is the ride everyone got in line for so you either enjoy it or you don't.  Comics are just doing what they have always done by trying to make old characters,in some cases 50 years or more, feel new.   Otherwise known as throwing shit on a wall to see what sticks.

If only this forum software provided us with a tool to make it clear to whom we are replying.

We're not allowed to use @

It angers the Trippy God.

If the @ symbol is not appropriate  then the classic phrase  "In response to" helps to clarify the person being responded to. It's just a shame that words are too hard.

WORDS ARE HARD.

Let me put on my tan trenchcoat and get my lazy eye going.....

Just one more question: Then who were you talking to?  Everybody seemed to be in agreement that this is an odd choice with no real long term impact.  The biggest impact you could expect long term would be another Beta-Ray Bill-ish Thor making a guest appearance every 8 years in one of the 8 million Spider-man books or being a member of the South East Bronx Avengers Reserves.  Why did we need to be settled down with a "guys" before telling us what we all seem to already know?

Was a post deleted in there somewhere?

That is what I didn't get.

disappointed Tony didn't ask for pics.  :why_so_serious:

Apparently I got someone banned from the Marvel Heroes fora (for the online game) by baiting him into a racist rant (something about Obama wanting to make everything less white, therefore white female Thor)  :why_so_serious:  I wanted to post the convo here but it got deleted.  :oh_i_see:

That's awesome.

Marvel Comics: FEMALE THOR!
Racist Fan: THANKS OBAMA!

 :why_so_serious:

IT WAS GLORIOUS. I usually don't troll people but he had it coming.  If I gave the link can someone try to find the deleted posts on the internet or does that no longer work?

https://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/113706/thor-as-a-woman/p1 I'm Junassa and the redstater was Servere

Oh but I think i did save one bit:

 by Rob he means Liefeld.So he's saying current artists owe their livelihood to Liefeld.  :why_so_serious:

eta: took a little digging but I found his original post

This is the Google cache version. Unfortunately it was made before the fun started:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/113706/thor-as-a-woman

(http://thesource.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/youtherealmvp.jpg)

Was that you edging him on? I just flagged the post as a troll and moved on with my life.  :why_so_serious:


Dude was crazy.

Yeah it was me. Usually I let that stuff slide but every once in a while I get sick of listening to bagger b.s. and let them have it.

That guy must be having an aneurysm now that they've announced that Falcon will be taking over as Captain America in the comics.

And cap was is avatar.  :grin: 

Hey guis, you know what you want to do when you have an iconic character who has female fans swooning in droves at your really succesful hunky man movies?

Giuve the hammer to a woman with huge huzangas and make her Thor, son of Odin! Say what

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2014/07/15/mjolnir-to-be-taken-up-by-a-female-in-new-thor-series/


(http://gaspull.geeksaresexytech.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Thor_Female-2.jpg)

(http://gaspull.geeksaresexytech.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Thor_Female.jpg)

Holy dumb ideas Moonknight!!

This:

Does not gel with this:

Because that just sounds like Thorita.

Putting aside the gender/race/orientation/hair color/laterality issues in the change ups - I don't like change for the sake of change.  Someone new wielding Mjölnir for a while?  Sure.  Sam as Cap?  That's also be something I could get behind... but at the same time?  It looks like a dumb stunt, especially when everyone knows that it is temporary.  And when statements are made like "there are even more startling surprises to come", I get the idea that this is going to hit many more heroes... The Incredible Teen Hulk, Iron Raccoon, Hawkandroid, Spider-Potatoe...

Putting gender/race/orientation/hair color/laterality issues back on the table, the cumulative situation is offensive to me.  It is as good as stating that non-white non-males can't be popular unless they ride on the coat tails of 'established' white men characters.  That is not a move towards equality - it is bias condescension.  I wouldn't be offended by one character going through these 'recasting' issues... maybe two over a year... but when it becomes so prevalent as to be a stunt... it sends the wrong message to me.  I fully understand that not everybody sees it that way, but I'd rather they maintain the known characters and augment their universe by good writing and greater exposure to non-white and/or non-male existing and new characters that stand on their own.  We've seen before that a well written character with good stories can be universally popular.  We just need to work to make it happen.

I think it's kinda dumb that an effort to appear to be more racially inclusive is basically going to end up in getting rid of one of the few black super heroes.

Yeah, especially a character that just got a HUGE boost in popularity and notoriety thanks to a gigantic Hollywood blockbuster movie. Why not capitalize on that and put out a Falcon book?

Oh right, Joe Quesada. He really only has a few tricks in that pony.

I hope a super-villain asks for his birth certificate.

The more I think about it the more I want to see what's going to happen. I don't care about change for the sake of change but if this is all Jason Aaron's idea then I wonder how it all fits in. If you read the comics (or just know what's being going on for the last few decades  :why_so_serious:) you know that Thor gets his hammer back.
 

So I guess that would make him... Captain Falcon?

Does comic book Falcon have anything in common with movie Falcon?

They are both named Sam Wilson? Pretty sure comic book version was never in the military, but I think he did volunteer work (unless I'm confusing him with another black friend lulz).

New Thor to go along with new Captain America...who will be black but is actually the old Falcon.

So lets see.  Gay Green Lantern.  Female Thor.  Black Capt. America. :oh_i_see:

http://ww2.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blog.html?b=arts.nationalpost.com/2014/07/17/the-new-captain-america-will-be-black-marvel-reveals-on-the-colbert-report

I'm glad Joe Quesada made an effort to not look like a stereotypical comic book slob on his appearance on Colbert.

The Thor thing is pants on head stupid. The kind of idiotic and obviously going to be reversed stunt that I'd expect from DC. The Captain America change I think makes sense to me. The connection to World War II is just starting to really stretched and while the war has huge relevance to me as my father flew in it, it's ancient history to most people who aren't collecting social security.

On a similar subject, it's a fantastic psychological motivation for a character, but why exactly is Magneto still kicking around?

I know he had been "de-aged" at one point... hell, he's been "killed off" only to find out that wasn't actually Magneto a few months later. I don't know that they've ever given a justification for him still being alive.

I think it's more a matter of new comic book characters never becoming as popular as old established mainstays, who all happened to be white males due to when they were created.

When Wanda Maximof went mad they vaguely suggested that she may have resurrected him, but it was never made explicit.

I'm ok with the idea of "hey, let's diversify of major characters a bit" as long as the writing is good. They way they're trying to explain this though ("this is the one and only Thor, but Thor is still Thor, he just doesn't have the power of Thor and this woman has the hammer now so she has the power of Thor but she's not Lady Thor, she's Thor, and totally the only Thor in the MU") leads me to believe that the writing will be shit.

I've liked Jason Aaron's stuff so far, so I'm not totally on the "this is fuckstupid" bandwagon yet.

I'm all in on this if it's who I think it will be

Y'all are doing exactly what Marvel wants you to do, which is talk up something that is fucking old news in comic books. This is like soap opera fans getting worked up about somebody being revealed as an evil twin.

The gender switch is about the only slightly new part of this, and only slightly. Don't worry, Thor will be a big white man again in a year or two. In the meantime, you might get some good stories or you might not. But please recognize it for what it is, which is just a slight stir of a soup that's been cooking for forty years.

Well... I enjoy talking about comics. It's not like Marvel is somehow tricking me into molesting goats against my better judgement.

The goat swore her name was Thor.

I'm just assuming you're being sarcastic as I have an irrational loathing of Quesada (I don't know the man I just blame him for Bucky and all the Spider-man shenanigans, which may or may not be fair). 

Wolverine was new (late 74) when the Avengers, FF, X-men, Spider-man, Hulk had a decade of history behind them.  Cable, Gambit and Bishop are creations of the 90s and have a steady fandom.  They introduce new characters and they grow when they appeal to an audience.  It is hard to make any character popular, but there is no reason to believe that they can't build new interesting characters without this type of racial/gender arrogance.

"Someone else's creative contribution to our property created a massive boost in a character's popularity. As we are a company who creates fictional works for money, how do we capitalize on that?"

Alternatively: "our customers tastes are changing to include such desires as diverse and inclusive representations in our character pool."

I don't even know why we argue about this. You go to Literature for stories about the realities of someone's race, gender, or political situation and the big picture in an effort not only to understand but to grow as a person through the alternative perspective. You go to comics for watered-down fan wank that gives people what they want, not what they might need -- with the occasional meaningful work.

I write this as someone who earns a pittance writing niche comic books for an audience hungry for one very specific thing. Marvel and DC are mainstream fetish without the sexuality (typically).

HYPE TRAIN COMING THROUGH  :grin:

So, horrible writing it is then!

You don't like Aaron or just the pages I posted?

Aaron's Thor has been pretty great. About as metal as the character has ever been. So I'm pretty much willing to let him try anything he likes for a while.

Long-form serial storytelling with characters who are valuable intellectual property but who have to remain somewhat recognizable to retain value creates some basic restrictions on any writer. You can't really age your characters, you can't really have them grow or change in a permanent way, you can't change the status quo around them too dramatically.

Soap operas have many of the same constraints and limitations. An improbable number of events that should be brutally traumatic and/or life-changing builds up over time, but they have to just be doing the same thing more or less a year or two of storytelling ahead. Events that should change everything about the world the character lives in only are meaningful for a short while.

Serial storytellers with these constraints need a host of tricks to keep going. In soaps, that's stuff like evil twins, amnesia, deaths-that-aren't-deaths, secret pasts that flip a character from good to evil or vice-versa, etc.

In comics, it's stuff like "the hero quits!" (for a little while); "the hero is replaced!" (for a little while); "the hero died!" (it only looked that way); the sidekick/loved one/friend died!" (only looked that way, though the interval of being dead can be a lot longer). "Your major villain died/was defeated for all time! You can have hope that your endless fight might end!" (villain returns; hope is dashed). You use alternate dimensions and time travel to show versions of the characters who have evolved or changed, to escape the constraints of the status quo. After a while, you've seen all the tricks possible.

Superhero movies have been, so far, different. First, because the intervals between stories are a lot longer, and nobody's kept a franchise going for more than three stories so far without rebooting. Second, they have just bypassed some of the staple features of the comic-book stories. Almost all of them have dispensed with the "secret identity" as a fetish right away--the hero is generally known at least to any friends or loved ones almost from the get-go, and usually is known to the public. The villains are disposable, generally dying or being taken out of the story at the conclusion. The status quo in the hero's world actually changes pretty substantially from film to film because each installment of the story needs to feel monumental in some fashion--something needs to move ahead.

The TV show Arrow is an interesting middle ground. A lot changes over a season, and sometimes from episode to episode, but it's being more and more comic-booky in certain respects, most notably in setting up villains who are very likely to return. Doctor Who is an interesting case of serial storytelling where some aspects of the status quo change significantly and others don't.

Comic books are mostly tethered to the characters who provide value and to storytelling that happens monthly and continues forever.

===============

The other thing to realize about Marvel and DC at this point is that for them the comics are mostly a loss-leader at this point. Not so much that they promote the cinematic or televisual versions, though they do that and would do that even if Thor was a woman for a while or Rocket Raccoon gained the power of Hulk. More that both publishers have been told by their parent companies that their job is to keep trying to create new intellectual properties that might eventually have value. New characters, new situations, new versions of old characters. Marvel's strategy for doing that lately has mostly been to hire very interesting writers and artists and let them do their own thing on their own books, with less concern than they had in the past for editorial control. DC's strategy is the opposite: a tight company-wide aesthetic with only a few exceptions.

When one of the only examples you can come up with is a 40 year old character, you might want to reassess your argument. Also I have no idea what point you're trying to make in that last sentence, but Marvel has indeed created a number of new and interesting characters (of various races, gender, and backgrounds). M, Husk, Blink, Rockslide, Mercury, Armor, Blindfold, the Runaways, the Young Avengers, Layla Miller (after Peter David started writing her), Amadeus Cho, The Order, Sentry (his miniseries, before Bendis started writing him), Cammi, Hazmat, The Hood (kinda), the X-Statix, the Warbound, Elsa Bloodstone, Isaiah Bradley, and even as recently as the new Ms. Marvel who got a bunch of press for being Muslim, there are plenty of examples of good new characters and concepts that Marvel has come up with in the last 20 years.

Short of getting a big movie push like the Guardians of the Galaxy (which is hard since Marvel only puts out two movies a year), none of those characters ever have a chance of becoming anywhere near as iconic as Marvel's top tier characters. Part of it is that there just aren't enough comic readers anymore. The new Ms. Marvel book for instance was fairly well promoted and sells better than a lot of other books although it's only on issue #4, but even that's only somewhere between 30k and 40k readers. Maybe if you introduce a character in Avengers or X-men and 100k people will see them. Most of Marvel's top tier characters are recognized by millions of people. The other issue is that a lot of writers are reluctant to use newer characters, because there's more of sense of ownership of characters than there was back in the old days. A lot of people have been reluctant to use characters like the Runaways or the Young Avengers so they can go long periods of time without exposure until someone is finally willing to do something with them.


Looking at comic book sales levels, I think there may come a time when that's no longer true. So few people read them now, why not have drastic changes stick? Should they really be worried about pissing off the 33,000 people that bought Fantastic Four last month? Is there really value being retained there by keeping things recognizable? One of the liberating things that should come with the fact that nobody gives a shit about actual comic books these days is that you don't really have a whole lot to lose by taking chances. I feel like that's part of the reason you see stuff like Superior Spider-man go on for a few years rather than just being a six-month stunt. This whole conversation show really be part of the thread in the comic sub-forum because people who just watch the movies don't really give a shit about this stuff, but there's speculation that between the Time Runs Out story being hyped up for Avengers right now, and the X-men stuff with the original team being brought to the present day, and all the "time is broken" crap, that Marvel might be heading towards doing a Crisis or New 52 kinda reset. If so I could see them sticking with their new "now with more diversity" Big Three for a long stretch.

Part of it is that the remaining people who buy them are buying them for nostalgic reasons. DC's New 52 was supposed to allow for a cleaner, simpler take on their major characters to invite new audiences to read them, but instead it turned into a bizarre recreation of the comics of the 1990s with lots of bad costumes, faux man-baby grimdark "adult! because someone's arm got cut off and you can see Catwoman's tits" storytelling, etc., because the guys making them are pretty much locked into that moment where Image Comics was the new thing and comics had special holographic collectible covers and all that. I think Marvel's new direction is more likely to get a few buyers who really don't care what Captain America did with the Cosmic Cube back in Issue #174 in 1983, but probably not that many.

You can see how strong the drift is towards constantly returning to the status quo even with non-Marvel/DC lines that aren't trying to defend static characters who are valuable intellectual property. I've been sort of interested in how Busiek's Astro City keeps things coming back to its established baseline, partly because he wants to keep exploring the stories that don't get told about a Marvel/DC style universe. Most of the people who write comics that tell a real story that has an endpoint don't do so inside of strictly or strongly super-hero style universes or settings.

Why?  It is a solid example of exactly what was expressed not to exist.  I was establishing a pattern and didn't bother to point out that the pattern continued on through the X-men runs... they constantly introduce new chartacters and their list of most popular characters features characters from every era of the X-men.
Although some of your examples are really suspect, I agree with your point - and it agrees with my point: They've made some great new characters without relying upon tricks like this that give us 'diverse' versions of the established characters.  I'd love to see diverse new characters.  However, giving us a black Captain America for the sake of giving us a black Captain America is racist.  Giving us a female Thor for the sake of giving us a female Thor is sexist.  You're doing these things because of race / gender issues.  One of these types of things in the natural flow of a story - no problem.  Doing a bunch of these things in a short span for the sake of doing it: Offensive.

They're doing these things because doing them gets free press.  Trying to read some deep social commentary into it is pointless.  They've taken the lesson of Black Heimdal and Latino Spiderman: Controversy is good, and picking a fight with assholes always makes you look like the good guy.

--Dave

^ Well not if everyone can just see it as the cynical publicity stunt it is.

Girls of Thunder?

Goddamnit, that made my balls shrink back up into my body.  :uhrr:

The p.r. bit is; I'm not certain the actual change is, depending on who new Thor is.

Massive spoilers for those who haven't been reading Thor and Loki related titles:

https://forums.marvelheroes.com/discussion/comment/1469264#Comment_1469264

Yeah that line won't win any Eisners lol. I only posted because

Could also be the SHIELD agent that Thor's been hanging out with lately.

Yeah that's Roz. I want it to be her just to add that extra awkwardness between them.  :why_so_serious:

The whole idea of "making a character black for the sake of having a black character" only makes sense if you live in a world where everyone is white by default. Constantly reinventing the same characters is kind of stupid but if you're going to do it anyway, and decades of comics history shows that they are, then some of them should get reinvented as gay black women for no other reason than that some people are gay black women, and being a gay black woman has no bearing on a character's ability to kick ass and shoot lightning. Yeah, publishers and the media are going to make it look like a publicity stunt no matter how cool the authors try to play it, but we'll all get over it eventually. In the long term, restricting oneself to round after round of beefy, white bread assholes to avoid the specter of "race issues" is doing nobody any favors, I promise.

Not to mention that making a new character who is defined not by being an interesting character but by being the lesbian black atheist or whatever is potentially just as bad as saying, "Oh, let's make a black Iron Man for a while". It's really a question of how it's done.

See for confirmation: Extrano, and many others sort of like him.

Ran into this on FB (attributation got lost along the way):

Disney owns Marvel.
Marvel owns Thor.
Thor is the child of a king.
Thor is now a girl.
QED, Thor is a Disney Princess.
 :rimshot:

It all makes sense now.  :ye_gods:

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but there's now a non-zero chance that Natalie Portman will be Thor in Thor 3?

Maybe they will extend the little girl's storyline from Adventures in Babysitting to explain how this all happened?

I watched that movie way too many fucking times as a kid.

Same, but more cuz I loved Elisabeth Shue.

She might have to eat a sandwich in that case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c

OR WOMAN!  :awesome_for_real:

No.  What they are doing here is part of a series of moves.  The moves seem, so far, to be based upon changing gender and race as the highlighted feature.  They are targeting race and gender as a feature upon which to base change.  When you utilize race and gender as a mechanism for decision making, with no significant reason to do so, it is racism/gender bias.
Agreed.  And if one character were to undergo that change, I'd be fine with it as discussed above.  However, when you make those types of changes as a series of actions, it takes on a different quality.  It is a campaign to say something about gender and race.  However, they're doing it in a way that is offensive to me for the reaspons above.  And the proper way to solve that is to introduce non "white bread asshole" characters that can generate a following of their own, rather than making the statement that you need to ride on the coat tails of the white malecharacters to make a non "white male asshole " popular.  You don't fight gender and race bias with a counterforce of gender and race bias.  You fight it by treatening everyone equal and letting them stand on their own merits.

So we had Batman. Then Batman broke his back and then died and both times Dick Grayson became Batman because he was his protege/sidekick for several decades.

Now if only Captain America had a protege/sidekick he'd been teamed with repeatedly for the last forty years, then he could the shield and they wouldn't need some random black guy.

Azrael was Batman's replacement when Batman got his back broken.

Pretty much sums up my opinion of both of these changes. The people doing most of the whining haven't read the books in years anyway, so eff em.

I don't actually mind the change, other than the fact they are sidelining Steve Rogers.  I think if they are doing this, Falcon isn't a bad choice at all as a person to step into the role.

When it comes to my favorite characters, I just prefer them to be not fucked with in general.  The only thing I have against the whole Thor thing is why would the female "Thor" not just have her own name like past people that picked up the hammer?

The idea that someone can become the new Captain America seems perfectly logical to me. They put on the costume and maybe get the nod of approval from the old Cap, or the Goverment or Army or something (because it was the army that proclaimed Steve Rogers as Captain America in the first place I think?) and away you go.

I always thought Thor was an actual person (deity?) so the idea that a different person can become Thor, even if they have his hammer, is a bit harder to make sense of.

I think 90% of the grief about "Thor is changing into a girl" would have been alleviated if they had instead said that Thor loses his hammer and a woman will take up Mjolnir.

Not announcing it on The View would have helped as well. I'm not sure who's genius idea that was, but women are not a single demographic and I'm pretty sure that a venn diagram of "geek girls" and "women who watch the view" would be two circles that don't touch.

But its the Venn diagram of Disney that counts.

See to me the story isn't about the gender of Thor (Because obviously his gender didn't change) but the cheap abuse of the English Language into some sort of feminist win. Which again, is cheap, insulting, pandering and nonsense to anyone with a pulse.

Now turning Asgard in post-gender society that people change gender at their leisure and Thor becoming a women by choice, now that would some thing to talk about.

Yeah, they did that a couple of years ago between Steve getting not-killed at the end of Civil War and coming back.

You're not having much luck with your comic nerdery today, are you?  :grin:

If they are gonna retire Cap then this is the way they do it. Put old Steve in the HQ giving tactical advice and having another guy take over the Shield.

Them saying Thor is replaced by Thor with boobs is totally not the same thing. When Odin killed Yimir he didn't say "Ok I'm Yimir" He still stayed Odin. Captain America is the symbol and the costume, but the individual wearing the title can change. Thor is not a position, being the god of Thunder is the position that the individual Thor holds.

I wouldn't have a problem with someone else taking the position of god of thunder if they want to write a good story of someone doing that. Marvel trying some existential BS to try and generate controversy is just going to make this fall flat on its face, as sometime or other the mask has to drop from "Thor"'s face to reveal Blondie. Unless they will handwave it by saying "this is the Thor of the alternative universe of bad feminism" which would be even more nauseating and would not get them out of the hole in any case.

Look, I'm not trying to antagonize you here because I trust you have good intentions, but the actual consequences of what you're arguing for don't line up with what you seem to value. Let's pretend I have a friend who believes the following things:

a) White people are at risk of having their culture and values eroded by minorities in America, whose power base is constantly increasing. We should make an effort to preserve what we have.
b) The struggles of women and minorities in this country ended years ago. Times are tough for everyone and we have more significant issues to address.
c) America truly is the land of opportunity, where anyone willing to work hard and apply themself has an equal chance at becoming successful.

Do we agree that my friend is full of bullshit? Because if he were to form an opinion on this issue, it would look a lot like yours: "One or two blacks or women are okay in my comics I guess (some of my best friends are black, after all), but for most characters it's wrong and it shouldn't become a trend. It's wrong to use race and gender issues as a means to gain attention; that's just pandering to controversy. If minorities want to see their own people in comics, they're free to go off and make their own comics somewhere else where I won't have to pay attention."

What a lot of people don't really recognize about social change is that it's a process, and the intermediate steps of the process (publishers pushing the "hot button" race issues, -or- darkies gettin' uppity and takin' mah characters) don't typically look like what we want the end result to be (diverse, prejudice-free fairyland). But pushing against those intermediate steps is, in effect, no different from pushing against the end goal. Ultimately, I don't want minorities to have to "ride on the coattails" of white dudes any more than you do. But if that's how the issue has to be forced, I'm all for it. Anything else is just perpetuating the status quo. And the status quo is really good at making well-intentioned people want to perpetuate it, which is why it's the status quo.

Look at it this way, there are three scenarios here:
1) The ideal, in which nobody thinks to even bring up race or gender issues because everyone is equal
2) Female Thor, black Cap, and Muslim Ms Marvel because some bean-counter at Marvel thinks this "diversity" thing could bring in more cash
3) All white dudes, all the time
You're arguing against 2 because it's not as good as 1, but the alternative to 2 isn't 1, it's 3. "Treating everyone equal and letting them stand up on their own merits" isn't a viable transformation strategy in a world where the odds are stacked against minorities from the get-go.

And once again, Lewis' Law is proven correct.

Oh god please don't talk about "social change" when discussing something as stupid as this. It's not even progressive. Oh boy look everyone, a female woman in a comic book, and I bet she won't even have to make anyone a sammich. What a crazy modern world we have in 2014.

At one point in the comic's history, Marvel's Odin WAS the replacement for another Odin.

And in the current book, when we see Future Thor, he's All-Father Thor--the All-Father part having been Odin's title pretty much since Kirby & Lee wrote the book. He even has the eye-patch.

Never make categorical statements about what would be silly in a comic book if they did it, because the odds are they already did it a long time ago.

Oh, I don't disagree with you at all. It's not particularly progressive, and I honestly don't know why this is a bigger deal than any other "dramatic" character change that stays canon for all of 6-12 months before getting rebooted or retconned. That's why I'm okay with derailing the thread into my little soapbox routine, which isn't really about Thor.

Ezrast, if I believed those were the only 3 scenarios, I would not have said anything.  I suggested that there is a 4th.

My idea for the right path forward is just that - moving forward.  Not digging into the past and trying to refit it to give it a polished lie.

People *do* embrace well written/acted/embodied characters of different races and genders.  We have a lot of examples of characters that are not WHITE HETEROSEXUAL MEN that have been very popular across a wide base of fans.  The things I tend to notice in these characters is that they're generally not reactionary characters that are some transparent metaphor for race or gender issues.  They're not trying to prove they are worthy of attention from the main stream - they just give us a product worth enjoying.

Now, there are a lot of idiots that have closed themselves off and refuse to consider entertainment featuring anything other than a white male.  Screw 'em.  They're missing out.  Forcing things on them by taking away their favorite toys and replacing them with toys they oppose is not going to enlighten them.  What does enlighten them is seeing others enjoy new toys and having it spawn their interest organically.  People never respond well to being forced... they respond well to persuasion.

Its kinda funny.

Instead of putting work into creating interesting black (minority) characters like Cable, Spawn, Static Shock, etc.

We get "WE NEED NEW READERS, QUICK MAKE WONDER WOMAN ASIAN!!!". How come Thor can't have kids and not pass his hammer down? Tini bop avengers movie and thor god of thunder practically did that. This goes in the same don't read bin as "younger edgier ghost rider and lobo"

Speaking of diversity, I'm really digging the new Ms. Marvel book.  I get a guaranteed couple of side-splitting laughs out of every issue.

It's very good. The newest one has some hilarious stuff when she meets Wolverine.

It's also doing something that very few new comics have managed in like a decade, get brand new readers.

The first issue of Ms. just showed up on Unlimited a few weeks ago and enjoying it so far. In addition to new readers, I'm hearing it's also one of the few books where digital outsells print--presumably because girls don't frequent the comic books store and/or feel comfortable there.

Yep!

Younger folks are probably also more likely to just toss it on their phone then find physical copies.

That's really good to hear that Ms. Marvel is getting new readers. I think the book deserves a good audience.

I read Original Sin: Loki and Thor last week and I really can't wait to see what happens with this new arc, although I have to admit that Loki is far more interesting. I think this is the best Marvel Loki to date (missed kid Loki though so I can't comment on him). I think he's even better than MCU Loki and I can't believe that I wrote that either.  :awesome_for_real:

Though I think he's influenced by the MCU Loki--there's a nice synergy that has allowed him to really become an interesting character in both contexts. Simonson's Loki had glimmerings of a personality beyond "I am evil and nasty" but the post-Siege Loki and how he's been developed is way beyond that.

Read this weeks issues of Thor and OS: Thor and Loki read like preludes to the next big event, one I'm actually interested in.  :awesome_for_real:

As a #1 issue, which one would assume to be the jumping on point for new readers interested in seeing what this female Thor is all about, it reads more like an Original Sin tie-in issue (and I haven't read any of OS) with the new Thor only showing up on the final page. The rest of the book is very exposition heavy and clunky. I'm not sure which Thor is meant to be the start of this book (or if both of them are), but ultimately neither of them is done justice here. One is barely seen and the only spends most of the issue despondent and trying to lift his hammer, and when he finally gives up on that to fight Malekith and some Frost Giants who are attacking an undersea Roxxon facility, he's rapidly dispatched. There's potential in a largely depowered Thor using a large axe as a weapon as an almost Conan-style character, but in this issue at least it's completely wasted.

After all the marketing, and the speculation that they might be trying to interest female readers with this new Thor, I'm just very surprised this is the issue they launched with. Probably perfectly ok for people already following Thor and who read OS but a huge mess from drawing any new readers in.

Honestly I didn't like it for the reasons you mentioned and I've been following the previous run along with OS. Hopefully it gets better.

So what did Thor do to lose the ability to lift the hammer?

Unknown. Apparently in Original Sin Nick Fury whispered something to Thor that caused him to drop the hammer and be unable to pick it back up.

Oh shit.  Fury found out his truename.

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