Marvel Announces Thor to be Woman, Texts from Superheroes responds.

[lil_shepherd]

This link leads to the response from 'Texts from Superheroes' to Marvel's announcement that from now on Thor is going to be a woman* in the mainstream comics (616

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Decades ago, when I was seriously reading comics, DC announced that a a member of the Legion of Superheroes would die permanently. It wound up being Proty, the Legion's blob mascot, and a couple of issues later it was replaced with Proty II, who was indistinguishable from the original.

[lil_shepherd]

At one time it was said that the only three major characters to ever really die in mainstream comics were Spidey's Uncle Ben, Bucky Barnes and Jason Todd.

Unfortunately, two of those are now alive and have been for about ten (real) years. *sigh*

[catsittingstill]

Now that you mention it I also suspect that the change won't be permanent. And, under those circumstances, isn't very impressive. We'll see.

[lil_shepherd]

Marvel, it has to be said, have not managed the comics in respect of the movies very well. Thor was dead in the comics when his first movie came out. When 'Iron Man' first appeared it was in the middle of a series of arcs where Tony was more villain than hero, and I think he was deleting his brain between IM1 and 2. When 'Captain America: the First Avenger' was being written, Steve Rogers was no longer carrying the shield. I'm not sure what Hulk was doing at the time both Hulk movies were made, but I bet he was either grey, separated from Banner, or in outer space...

[moonlightmead]

I'm not a great comics reader. I was a Sandman and - particularly - Hellblazer reader, but that was about it. So the splendours and joys that are the comics world's retcons and reboots and purges and resurrections are something I only learned about recently.

From my outside perspective, it sounds bonkers, but I can't work out whether that is a happy bonkers, or an infinitely frustrating bonkers!

[lil_shepherd]

Oh, I'm very on and off with comics. I started reading US comics when I was about 10 (late 50s), collected Marvel from 1962 to about 1975, went cold turkey for ten years (during which time I bought one comic precisely), then made the mistake of buying the first Sandman collection. Started buying Vertigo in a big way, with a huge pull-list at Comics Showcase, then moved into DC for the amazing and wonderful superhero-sitcom 'Justice League International'. (Ina, though she pretends not to be is the big 'Hellblazer', 'Batman' and 'X-Men' fan in this household.) From then on I just picked up collections with a great rep about characters I liked. The Marvel Cinematic Universe dragged me in to comics again (and into 'Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes', an excellent kids cartoon series - the animation is awful but the plotting is good.)

I may give some of the stuff coming up a miss, though.

[themis1]

Female thunder gods are very rare (the Inuits have the strongest claim to one, I believe). The mythology is sky father-earth mother.

Well, that's what went through MY head, followed by, "So, Chris didn't want to sign for another movie, huh?"

[lil_shepherd]

I don't think that's the reason. And Chris is signed up to do (at least) Thor 3 and and Avengers 3

This is part of a publicity stunt rush of blood to the head among the comics editors/writers at Marvel. Disney won't allow them to do anything like this in the films, at least for the next ten years or so

[themis1]

It's a pity they don't actually listen to anybody who talks sense. In fact, the best thing they could have done to increase diversity is to improve the lot of the female characters they already have.

As for the move towards darkness - it's not just Marvel, it's everywhere. Gloom sells. I gave up on the reboot of Battlestar Galactica because it was so grim - but lots of people thought it was much better than the original. I agree the original was hokey but at least it was filled with likeable characters!!