Two posts in one week? What is
this sorcery? It’s been a while since there’s been a multi-post week but there
has been a lot of good fodder for nerdy conversation in the past few days that’s
just too good to not explore. Of course, the subject at hand stems from
Marvel’s announcement on Tuesday that, come this fall, the character of Thor will be a
woman.
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| Verily, 'tis a lady |
The announcement itself was
fairly light on the details. What better way to drum up attention, interest, and
excitement ahead of next weekend’s
San Diego Comic Con? In the interim, we can
parse out what we do know from what’s been stated and what has been going down
in the current Thor storyline. While
this certainly wouldn’t be the first time the mantle of a given superhero has
passed to a new bearer, the phrasing that Marvel used and the complications
stemming from the makeup of the character himself potentially puts this transition
in a brand new category. So, after mulling this over and reading what the comic
book experts had to say, I think the Thor-as-woman concept boils down to the
following:
The Good: This news serves as primarily as a declaration of
where Marvel, as a company, plans to go in the immediate future; as far as
corporate statements of intention go, this is a pretty positive one. Between
this and
Wednesday's announcement that Falcon (a.k.a. Samuel Wilson) will assuming
the duties of Captain America it’s clear that Marvel
recognizes that diversity in their ‘varsity’ lineup is a good thing. It demonstrates that the company is
at least somewhat aware that the phenomenal success of their extremely
well-planned multimedia campaign has expanded their consumer base and, in order
to keep this base engaged, their characters and storylines need to have
correspondingly broad, modernized appeal. That’s brilliant in its own right but
gets the bonus of seeming even more so given how poorly arch-rival DC has been
handling
similar subject matter as of late. I mean, it doesn’t take much to
outshine DC right now, but good on Marvel for taking that opportunity and
running with it. Woot for strong characters that aren’t all white dudes!
The Bad: I really,
really
wish that the whole post could just end with the above, but that would paint a
pretty inaccurate picture. My first real quibble with Thor-as-woman are the
mechanics that will likely have to be involved in the transition of power. This
all stems from series writer Jason Aaron and
his declaration that the change
will be both permanent and a complete superceding of the existing Thor. While this
was ostensibly done to prove just how dedicated Marvel is to its diversity
goals, it doesn’t make much sense in the context of the character of Thor. As
mentioned above, the plot device of a given super identity or a set of
superpowers transitioning from one individual to another is nothing new to the
world of comics or even Thor’s canon. There have been
at least 14 other instances in which another character has been deemed more ‘worthy’ of
Mjolnir
than Thor and thus were able to wield it. At no point in any of those
situations did the new custodians of the mythic hammer become Thor. They were
able to control the power set of the God of Thunder (since that seems to
manifest in Mjolnir) for a time, but never supplanted Thor himself. For
whatever reason, this mechanic will not apply to the new character.
But those were all temporary transitions. This is a brand new Thor!
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| The new 'unworthy' Thor |
Except Thor is a name, not a
title. There can be a new Captain America because the outgoing Cap will
presumably re-assume his civilian identity as Steve Rogers or become a new
superhero. Marvel has confirmed that Thor isn’t going to die or otherwise
vanish; he’s just no longer worthy. There’s no indication as to what this will
mean for present-Thor who, if the handful of reference images are anything to
do by, may have fallen victim to the ‘must be unblemished’ rules of the
Tuatha DeDanann (because these are comic books and can mix mythologies!), but is still
very much alive. Somehow both the powers and fundamental identity of Thor will
become concentrated in Mjolnir, which, as we’ve discussed, doesn’t make much
sense. This in-vivo transition is unprecedented and it’ll be very interesting
to see how Marvel handles it.
But this has totally happened before! Loki became a woman!
That’s not really the same
though. Loki possessed the bodies of both
Lady Sif and
Scarlet Witch for a time,
then relinquished them when they were no longer useful to him. He’s a
shapeshifter; assuming someone else’s form is just one of his many trickster
abilities.
Ok, then this is just like Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica. No one
wanted that character to be a woman and she turned to be an awesome and integral part of
the series!
This point has been taken up
quite prodigiously, helped along more than little bit by
an endorsement from Joss Whedon. Unfortunately, it’s not actually an apt comparison either. The
reboot of
Battlestar Galactica was
exactly that: a reboot. In order for the woman-as-Thor concept to be equivalent,
Marvel would have to create an alternate timeline or otherwise start over from
the beginning of Thor canon with a new universe in which Thor had always been female.
While we haven’t gotten much from Marvel, we do know that the upcoming
transition doesn’t involve a whole-hog reboot because the present male Thor is
still alive alongside female Thor. The only other way to make the Starbuck argument
work is if the reboot had included the original male Starbuck who then trained or
otherwise somehow gave his skills to the female Starbuck. Speaking of that…
There’s a distinct risk that the
Thor-as-woman concept could be just another example of a female character
inheriting or otherwise owing all her power/prestige to a man, which pretty much
undermines the whole point. Now
we’ve talked at length the futility of getting
all worked up over something that, for our purposes as consumers, doesn’t exist
yet. There is a very good chance that the new Thor will be a current female
character (
Maxima and
Angela are likely picks) who simply will add Thor’s power
set to her own, which would render my earlier fear moot. However, if Marvel
chooses to have a non-powered woman take on Thor’s abilities then this exercise
would pretty much be for naught. The idea behind embracing gender diversity as
it appears in comics is to have a female character who is strong and capable in
her own right, not because she has those things given to her by a male
character. (Note: I use female in the last sentence only because, to the best
of my knowledge, unfortunately no plans exist at this time for a trans or
otherwise non-cis gendered character.)
The Ugly: Most of the items in The Bad are there simply because
they aren’t logically consistent or because they have the potential to
counteract the entire Thor-as-woman endeavor. The things in the Ugly, however,
are concrete and definitive in their disappointing qualities.
First up is the costume that the
new Thor will be wearing. I’ll admit that I groaned aloud when I saw that it’s
yet another set of boob armor. Aside from being needlessly sexual, it’s
fundamentally nonfunctional and
would probably get the wearer injured or killed.
But don’t you get it? The breastplate is a hammer…THE hammer (or an axe)! See, the
little opening in the middle is the handle and the boobs are the head!
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| That poor, vulnerable sternum |
<<blinks>> I didn’t
believe that explanation when it first came out,
but it’s all too real and now I'm sorry that you can't unsee it.
Seriously Marvel? This is the one arena where
DC is actually sort of ahead of you. Yes, you still have to cater to your primary demographic, and yes, she
might be an alien and thus not constrained by the limits of the human form, but
there are plenty of ways to draw armor that is both reasonably utilitarian and
attractive…or at least not hypersexualized.
Which brings me to the last, most
irksome, point: how the news of woman-as-Thor was broken. Marvel didn’t reach
out to any of the quality outlets that are dedicated to comics news nor did it try
to utilize a middle ground like MTV (which covers a surprising amount of nerdy
content, especially
on its website). It chose to make the announcement on
the
View. Now, this isn’t to besmirch
the View or its watchers but, when you think
of places to get news about comics or geeky topics in general, you probably
wouldn’t think of
the View. It’s understandable that Marvel wants to expand its
brand and reinforce the idea that comics are mainstream by making the
announcement on a popular TV show, but there are a lot of popular TV shows. There
are a fair number of very popular TV shows whose primary demographic consists
of women that aren’t quite so chock full of controversy and female stereotypes as
the View. The selection of
the
View as the vehicle for this announcement smacked of a decision-making body
that wasn’t really in touch with the population they were hoping to reach. It
seemed like:
Producer #1: We need to tell this
to a bunch of women. How can we reach a bunch of women?
Producer #2: Maybe a TV show! What
do women watch on TV?
<<looks around the room full of male
producers>>
Producer #3: I think women watch
the View. My mom loves that show!
My intent here is not,
as Rob Bricken of i09 put it, to devolve into
Comic Book Guy or
raging fangirl. I
deeply appreciate that a major publisher of comics is making the effort to
appeal to all its readers and applaud them for that. It’s just that this effort
seems kind of cheap, like a set of semi-formed ideas bolted on to an existing character
in order to drive up sales and get people into a frenzy before
SDCC/the release
of
Guardians of the Galaxy. I
sincerely and truly hope that I’m wrong in that impression.
What would have been excellent is
if Marvel created a brand new character or ‘promoted’ an existing female superhero
to have new, badass powers. Since that doesn’t seem to be the case, we’ll just
have to sit back and see what the new Thor can do. Hopefully she’ll have no
problem putting these fears to rest.
