Marvel has made Thor female.

Ooh, I don't know about that. Not as many people buy them as buy video games or go to the movies, sure, but there's still a pretty sizable audience of people buying comics every month.

@ajamafalous: that's fair. She didn't replace him but it was a very calculated, to me, way of creating a character and attaching it to an established character. But the way I see it, it's just another comic book gimmick and for all we know, it could end up being really cool. I think the only complaint I have is that it was announced on The View, which reeks of pandering to a certain audience. But the actual idea? Could be cool and I want to see it play out before passing judgment.

@pie: If you don't have anything to add to a discussion, don't post in it.

I'm sure that at some level, this is a calculated move by Marvel. On the other hand, my inner Ranma 1/2 fan finds this a fun twist and I'd hope that some real fun is had with it, for however long it lasts.

Ohhhh, ok that sounds perfectly fine and could even end up being awesome. If it was thor himself turning into a woman via magic, science, alternate realities, whatever that'd be really really dumb.

Why would that be dumb?

I'm sure Marvel or any other major publisher doesn't do something like this without a very large amount of calculation.

I think Loki was only a female for the Secret Invasion and Siege storylines, which took maybe two years? I'd bet something similar for Thor (although this isn't really Thor transforming into a female, but whatever), although I'd be surprised if they kept him female in the comics at the time of his next major movie appearance. So maybe by next summer he'll be back in his old role.

As I mentioned previously, Loki did precisely that a few years back. It only upset people who were really looking to be upset by something; it actually wound up being pretty interesting.

Because he's an established character with an established personality, so if it was by his choice it'd be really poor writing and out of character. If it was some wacky hijinks caused by a bad guy or an accident then they'd just be silly and stupid. So its either bad writing or being forced into becoming a woman, which is just in bad taste and comes off as kinda silly.

So, just out of general principle, then? There's no way that they could pull it off that would be well-written and entertaining?

If you really want "established characters with established personalities" to remain consistent across multiple writing and editing teams over a timespan of decades, then comic books are almost certainly not the form of entertainment for you. Retcons and deaths and amalgamation characters and people losing their minds and threatening to destroy the multiverse, etc., happen all the time in comics. I actually dig it; I like seeing new authors come in with a fresh take on things. If something's really bad, the market responds by not buying it, and things return to some form of stability.

@hailinel: Well sure, anythings possible i suppose, but it's comic books i wouldn't have high hopes for that is all. Just seems like a slippery slope, but thats not the case apparently. We got some new lady taking Thors hammer and powers, then calling herself Thor? Isn't that just his name? Wasn't he named Thor before he got the hammer? I dunno! i don't follow comics that closely.

This is very, very low on the scale of comic book insanity that runs basically from "Spider-Man's marriage is erased by the devil" to "holy shit have you read anything that DC has done lately"

Q: So what exactly happened to change the old DC Universe to the new one?

A: In Flashpoint #5, we learn that the changes to the DC Universe were caused not by the Reverse-Flash (a.k.a. Eobard Thawne) as Barry Allen suspected, but rather Barry himself. After visiting his late mother’s grave on her birthday, Barry discovered that Reverse-Flash had killed her by traveling back in time. In a fit of grief, Barry went back in time as well to stop Thawne, but ended up accidentally changing history to the World of Flashpoint by “sucked in the entire speed force” which then shattered history “like a bullet through a windshield. This seems odd because somehow Barry’s mother being prevented from dying in the 1980s caused Frankenstein to kill Hitler in the 1940s in Flashpoint: Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown.

Q: Wait, how did it cause Frankenstein to kill Hitler?

A: I have no idea. It also somehow Butterfly Effected into space and stopped Abin Sur from crashing his spaceship with Atrocitus in it, thus negating Hal Jordan’s origin story, so now he isn’t Green Lantern. The effects of time travel here aren’t taking place on a physical scale but symbolic; somehow, Barry Allen’s altering of the past changed the entire timestream in a four-dimensional ripple effect, rather than the simple chaos theory butterfly effect we’re used to thinking of.

I mean, seriously, if Marvel's decision to have a lady Thor take up the hammer seems outlandish to you, I urge you to read up on any of the big DC crossover events of the last decade or so for a sense of what a really mentally unstable editorial team is capable of.

A double post, Rorie? A DOUBLE POST?!

@the_ruiner said:

Worked for Loki. Runs in the family I guess...

I thought they did this to Loki already. Glad to see I wasn't crazy. Anyways it's a comic book, as long as the character is well written does it really matter if they made Thor a women?

@thehumandove: No?

@rorie said:

Fair point, while readership pales in comparison to the number of people that go out and see The Avengers, you're right that it isn't exactly abysmal. I guess my point is that superhero comics aren't the new cultural force they once were, back in the Silver Age and earlier. So even though Marvel and DC do introduce new female superheroes relatively frequently, the mainstream press is never going to know or care about them.

It's kind of a bummer that despite making efforts to have more diversity in gender and race whenever they write new characters, Marvel and DC basically get no credit for doing so. Thus they have to make bigger moves like going back and (temporarily?) switching the gender of Silver Age characters.

Also, thanks to that link you provided, I'm now aware that the first issue of Vamplets Undead Pet Society sold 2,702 copies last month. Excelsior.

Possibly

Oh boy. Alot of people are responding to me cus i just said temporarily changing Thors gender might be stupid. The idea reminds me of those awful generic sci-fi episode tropes where people switch bodies for an episode or something.

A new lady character taking over for Thor awhile seems like a cool idea, though her using his name seems a bit weird to me.

I meant no offense!

Perfect...That's just fucking great.

Instead of letting Jason Aaron do his thing the editors have to interfere. I'll say this tho, considering Aaron has been experimenting with Time I wonder if this is an alternative time-line. Either ways, I'll give Aaron the benefit of the doubt, he's written amazing stories with thor, this maybe better than I expect it to be.

To be fair, the Marvel editors probably have a huge amount of pressure on them to not only set up the yearly crossover stuff, but also to conform their books to support the aims of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Sometimes they no doubt have to pass some bad news along to their writers and feel pretty crap about it. I know a writer of a DC book resigned after six or ten issues last year over what he thought was too-close editing.

Well, now I'm curious if this is meant to eventually establish a way for Hemsworth to leave the Thor movie series when he wants to. I wonder who I'd cast as a lady Thor in a movie.

Eh, as long as it's not Spider-Man. I'm still recovering from Spider-Man not being Peter Parker for like 30 damn issues.

@rorie: Oh! Uh... In the Thor movies, he has that female friend that fights with him alot. She's awesome in those movies, so she'd be my top pick, plus she's already in the movies so it'd be an easy transition. I'm blanking on her name though.

Lol I think the only time I've really enjoyed Thor outside of the movies was when it was evil, super brutal, no mercy robot Thor working for Osborn's crew, if that counts. This Thor's looking pretty cool. Could be a fun shakeup.

Ok so they decided to make a bold new move by creating Wonder Woman? Female warrior goddess with magical weapon. Will female Thor get a movie before Wonder Woman I wonder? Also if Thor apparently loses his name when he loses the hammer, what is he called now? The prince formerly known as Thor? Will he have a symbol to represent this new identity?

Also, so many better alternatives to Thor if you want to gender balance things. Why not a female Iron Man? A female version of Tony Stark might actually be an interesting subject, a boozing womanizer is 'ok' in our society, but switch genders and how would people react to a woman who sleeps with any hot dude she wants and drinks a lot, might be an interesting discussion involved there and the suit would work for any gender. Though given the new Thor's boob armor, the question is if suddenly all iron man suits would gain boobsocks for no apparent reason.

What? I wasn't. I was comparing... are you just fucking with me? You originally tried to correct me on something that did not require correction. Then I explained why. Now I'm wrong because I didn't say the phrase I used in my explanation in my original statement.

I hate this, this is lame.

Actually, I'm just as confused as you are now.

Sounds kinda lazy and tedious?

Then it sounds like you should take this to a PM rather than argue in this thread.

Sure, why not. I don't have a problem with this, except for her being named Thor. I've had the impression it was his birth name, not a title that could be passed along to someone more worthy.

I do wonder how long it will stick. Seems likely that old Thor will be back in time for the next movie, perhaps earlier depending on how well new Thor is received.

I am so, so glad I dumped all my Marvel subs when they butchered the Ultimates imprint. This is one of the dumbest, most pandering ploys for new readers from them I've seen yet. As a life long comic reader you can imagine that covers a lotof ground. This would have been way better in the UMC line, but as a 616 title? Come on, nothing ever changes in 616. They'll play with this idea for a couple of issues and then big bad Mighty Thor will be back and this will be forgotten about. That's what bothers me about this, not the change itself (considering Ultimate Spider-Man is now a black kid named Miles, and he's a cool dude), but that since it's a 616 title it's such obvious bait it's not worth talking about.

At least over at DC they made a wide, sweeping change and it stuck.

I don't understand the hostility around this. Let Marvel experiment. Don't resist change so much.

Would you feel better about it if they committed to a timeframe for the change? It's odd; the reaction is always that "yeah, like that's going to be a permanent change," which I definitely get considering all the people who bought into the hype about The Death of Superman way back when.

I think it'd be bold for Marvel or DC to promise that major changes like this or Steve Rogers dying, etc., would remain in effect for at least three or five years or something. That would reduce the amount of eyerolling, but then it'd also possibly lock them into changes well after they've proven to be severely unpopular or editorially difficult to resolve.

Okay.

Seems like another comic gimmick, but it could be cool. I don't see why anyone would find this odd, as this seems in line with how much they experiment with time lines and villains becoming heroes and all kinds of craziness. I like the occasional comic; so, sure, bring it on.

(Also, the new female Thor looks kind of awesome)

Or they could´ve have I dunno ,use the Hervor saga as a base and called "she" Thor , Hervor and still be able to use the mjolnir , you know repecting the goddamn culture they use Thor from..... but yeah she looks awesome.

It's funny you bring up Captain America dying because that's the first thing that crossed my mind when I read this news. I was all for killing Steve Rogers. It helped that the introduction of Bucky as the "new" Cap was a really good read (although that probably has more to do with Brubaker than the plot itself). As for your question, I really don't know if saying "hey guys this is going to be around for at least X number of years" would change anything. Marvel has a checkered history with this stuff. They've killed characters only for new writers to bring them back. They've maimed the timeline several times over with retcons and macguffins, they've just completely brutalized the 616 universe and it's, well, crap now.

It'd be nice if these kinds of changes just happened and they'd last. I'm not a fan of editorially mandated changes because it interferes with the story the writers and artists are trying to tell. When you get a ballsy storyline (like killing Cap, or "No More Mutants!" or whatever), it never sticks in the 616 because either long time fans will complain or new writers are all "fuck that I'm bringing Colossus back for the 17th bajillion time!"

As it stands, with the Marvel 616 continuity in particular, nothing ever changes and yet nothing ever sticks. That's part of why I was such a fan of the UMC line. It was a chance to give death permanence, it was a chance to have a unified continuity that didn't feel bolted on, and it was a chance to let the "status quo" of the 616 universe go out the window. For the most part it's done all of this. Characters stay dead and storylines have an air of consequence about them because of it. A female Thor would have worked much better in that environment specifically because nobody would be rolling their eyes and waiting for it to change back.

Personally I'm not a fan of yearly "events" as Marvel employs them. They're blatant cash grabs to try and boost sales and it seems like there's little to no thought put into how they'll "fix" what they break. Somebody inevitably waves a magic wand and all is back to normal. Maybe this is just my prejudice against the 616 continuity, but I got tired of it a long time ago and I can't help but wonder when all of this is finally going to bite Marvel in the ass. I'm hoping it will. Or at least Marvel will follow DC's path in rebooting the universe and sticking to it. These half measures only serve to piss people off and satisfy no one.

There have been worse ideas in comic books. Let's sit back and see what happens, hopefully it's cool. Real-world mythologies changed all the time, anyway.

She looks really cool, at least.

Thor is lame. Especially for being one of the 'big three' for Marvel. I'm glad they are shaking things up. Let's be nice up in here. I made the mistake of reading YouTube comments on a video about this and ho'boy, I've had my share of terribleness tonight.

Plus the design looks GREAT.

DC done gone crazy. Though I will say that given how much alternate realities and time travel feature in comic books, if the events of the 1980's changed, that could lead to a change in some time traveling hijinks where Jack Knight goes back to meet his father in WWII and further changes the course of history. I've always thought it would have been interesting that instead of a huge Crisis, DC just canonized wildly varying character portrayals between editorial teams and writers and retcons as simply the consequences of background timetravel events gone awry.

I thought Thor was his name, not his title.

@evilsbane said:

@rockyraccoon37 said:

This is a new character, they didn't just turn Thor, son of Odin, into a woman. Great quote from Jason Aaron: “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.”

More details at The Mary Sue

And she looks badass:

That design is pretty amazing. Like Seriously one of the coolest looking female superheros ever drawn.

Still has useless boob armour though, nothing says stab me directly in the middle of my chest like iron forged cleavage.

I'm willing to give it a shot. A few good-to-great characters have come from prior Thor experiments, like Beta Ray Bill and Eric Masterson. Hopefully we see some kind of long term awesomeness come from this.

The first thing I thought about when I saw this was I wonder how this will effect the movies with Thor. Then I saw the redesign and womdered why her breasts needed to be sculpted onto her armor.

It's sort of both? As far as I understand it, his spirit became tied to a mortal through the hammer. So, technically, his name is Thor but the person's name doesn't have to be Thor. It isn't ridiculous to imagine that he might have a woman with his spirit from the hammer, but heck, what do I know? It's comics. heh. I think this silliness is why it's not a big deal for them to mix it up like this. Why not? Let creators have fun with it.