By TRENTON JUDD
Columnist
Thor has been a beloved comic book superhero who had a great established story, but this October writer Jason Aaron is giving everything that was Thor, even his name, to a female.
Thor first appeared in “Journey into Mystery No. 83” in August 1962. He was created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. Stan Lee has said that the idea of Thor came to him from the Norse God of Thunder by the same name. Thor has been a key hero in the Marvel universe and he has now been featured in three of Marvel’s films. Based on this, no one needs to fix anything that is not broken, but apparently Thor needs to be female according to Marvel Editor Wil Moss who says, “The new Thor continues Marvel’s proud tradition of strong female characters like Captain Marvel, Storm, Black Widow and more. And this new Thor isn’t a temporary female substitute; she’s now the one and only Thor.”
The big problem with this is that there are already perfect female heroines in the Thor comic books who would make really good stand-alone characters in their own comics, like Lady Sif or the Enchantress. Unfortunately, Marvel is skipping over the opportunity to focus on the background female characters because it is just so much easier to change the gender of an already established hero.
Thor writer Jason Aaron stresses the point that “This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is Thor. This is the Thor of the Marvel Universe. But it’s unlike any Thor we’ve ever seen before.” Things get even more confusing because the original Thor is featured in this new comic, but he has none of his powers. Thor being stripped of his powers is not uncommon because most of his power comes from his hammer and there is an inscription on his hammer that reads, “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall posses the power of Thor.” Only a select few characters in the Marvel universe can actually use the hammer, but the primary user is and has always been Thor. But now Marvel wants to boost female readership, so there is now a woman who is practically becoming Thor for no apparent reason. If this new Thor does become the predominantly featured female of the Marvel comics, will Lady Sif and Enchantress just fade into the background? And what will happen if this new Thor gains more popularity than the already popular female Marvel characters like Black Widow? Will they all just get pushed to the sidelines to make room for more unnecessary changes to already established characters?
This needs to stop and Marvel needs to stick with the continuities that made it famous and got it to where it is today. Perhaps Marvel just needs to take a step back and try re-releasing the first issues of the heroes that have made them famous over the years. In this last year, so many comic books are updating classic stories and revamping origin stories and it is getting very old. What the world of comic books needs right now is to go back to their heroes’ original roots and start from there because our generation is nostalgic for the things we have grown up with. It is time for Marvel to be the leader in taking their superheroes back to their origins.