When I heard that Marvel was going to swap out Thor Odinson for a female Thor, I was half curious and half annoyed. Was this going to be a half-assed attempt at being patronizing? Or is this just time for the torch of Thor to be passed on and it happens to go to a woman? I subscribed after a good friend of mine said the first issue was really, really good.
And it’s true; for the most part, the new comic series featuring the new Thor (not Thorina or Thoress, she is the new Thor in name, powers, hair color, speech, everything) has been rather good. They did not reveal the identity of the new Thor until now, issue #8, so there has been quite a bit of speculation as to who she could be. Even Odinson (the former Thor) has set out to figure out who it could possibly be, and he has a list of women he believes could be worthy to wield Mjolnir.
I at first, like Odinson, thought it was his mother, Freyja. She was with him on the moon, by Mjolnir, she has blonde hair, and she’s not thrilled about the All-Father returning from gallivanting around the universe and demanding she go back into the kitchen. By all accounts, it makes sense that she is the one to pick up the hammer, as who else could possibly breathe on the moon?
Well, it wasn’t her, which naturally led me to ask two questions:
- Why was this chick on the moon?
- How could she be on the moon?
I have an answer to the latter, I think, but I have no idea why exactly she was there unless she was seeking out Mjolnir.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. In issue #7, the authors led you to believe that SHIELD Agent Rosalind Solomon picked up the hammer. They showed her arriving on the moon, they showed her reciting the worst line in the history of comics, and that includes anything that came out Wolverine’s mouth, and then let the reader connect the dots from there.
It’s this page alone that makes me so happy it is not Roz.
Odinson, however, was not wrong with his list. He did guess the new Thor correctly, but he was led astray as the readers all were, and we were led away quite brilliantly. In fact, Odinson doesn’t learn who Thor is at all thanks to Roz’s intervention. New Thor flies away to her home in Asgardia, takes off her helmet so show that the new Thor is…
Unless you’ve kept up with Thor comics, as I have not, you most likely have no idea why Jane Foster is sick. I wouldn’t have known what was going at all with her if Odinson hadn’t visited her sickbed in Asgardia. She has refused all magical treatment for her breast cancer, and chemo doesn’t seem to be going well. If what she says is true, she really is dying, knows she is dying, but knows she must carry on as Thor.
Thanks to Roz’s horrific line, at least we know how she was able to be on the moon, but I have no idea how she got there or why she was there. But perhaps that is not important.
What is important is that the entire Marvel universe is about to change. In a story arc called Secret Wars, all timelines and dimensions of the Marvel characters will come to an end. Marvel has announced which series will get canceled and which will continue. The female Thor is set on the continuing list. So the fact that Jane Foster is dying makes me wonder if
- They’re keeping her as dying so they can kill her off if girl-Thor doesn’t go over well with fans; and
- If fans do embrace her, they can always say Thor’s magic or the magic of the hammer cured her.
All of it is incredibly weak and spineless, but what can I say; that’s kind of what and how comic books do. They always leave themselves an out if things don’t go over well, and it’s usually with killing off a character. Or, if people are mad about that, bring the character back to life. To make me even more irate, they’ll keep the character alive “in a different timeline/dimension.”
Or hey, maybe Jane will just keep dying for years. That’s always a possibility, and it’s not below Marvel’s or any other comic publisher’s standards.
I am keeping my subscription because the comic series is as good as it is perplexing. I am curious what the writers will decide about Jane’s disease, what Odinson will do when (or even if) he finds out, and how Thor will take part in the upcoming all-girl Avengers team, A-Force. Oh yeah, I’ve already subscribed to that too. Most everyone is dying in the Secret Wars except for the women…I guess they are the stronger of the species.
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