Timex
3621
In some ways the actual notion of a female Thor isn’t really the problem, but the fact that a seemingly disjoint factor is injected into the story line for seemingly no reason, tends to piss off comic fans.
A similar thing happened with the death/rebirth of superman. The whole arc ended up pissing off a lot of fans for various reasons, not the least of which was that many criticized DC for pulling what was essentially a publicity stunt.
Things like a female Thor are likely to be perceived in a similar light, i would think.
Does it though? What is the disjoint factor? is it really particularly different from the anti-drugs, anti-racism, even anti-tobacco & alcohol messages that have appeared in comics for decades?
As I said in my original post, which I guess you missed, it has nothing to do with changing Thor into a gal - it’s the cringe-worthy, godawful politicized dialogue, which is the reason why this gimmick has already lost half its support.
Busbecq
3624
Are you saying that the culmination of 2nd wave feminist critiques of gender in media is absurd, self-parodying puritanism no one takes seriously and that fatally undermines itself? If so, I agree!
Timex
3625
I think a lot of comic fans found those things corny too. And i have you a pretty prominent example of fans getting pissed by what they felt was a publicity stunt, with the death of superman.
The bottom of female super heroes isn’t new or offensive at all. I would think that the new ms marvel isn’t creating too many waves among comic fans, because various women have already taken up that mantel over the years. A lot of the human characters have had the specific person wearing the mask change, so it can fit.
But i I’m not sure how a female Thor works, given that Thor is an immortal asgardian.
Although, beyond that, i think that in this case part of the backlash is due to it being a fairly blatant example of the kind of rebooting i described above. A lot of folks are saying, “why can’t they just make a new character, instead of making Thor a girl?” And honestly, i can’t think of a rebuttal to that one. They actually already had a “Thor girl” character, which was seemingly the same character as the new female Thor, so that’s weird.
Timex
3626
The Female Thor is a publicity stunt that will almost certainly be reversed by the time the next movie is released. But it’s a publicity stunt that WORKED - sales of the first fem-Thor issue was 130K, and the subsequent issues are the best the Thor comic has done in years. Last month it was still up at 69K
A similar thing happened with the death of superman. Sales spiked, because lots of non fans bought issues thinking it would be collectible. But then, since so many were bought, the chances of them ever being worth anything collapsed, and then sales dropped down.
No, didn’t miss that part – I just assumed you read comics and recognized that cringe-worthy politicized dialog has been a staple of Marvel since forever. If not, I’d recommend the 1980s X-Men; it’s trendy to downplay Clairmont nowadays, but I still think he was a pretty good writer.
And just in case you missed the math, after losing half the “premier” episode audience, the comic is still doing better than it has in a decade, and has double the audience of the mag a year back.
Don’t be ridiculous. There’s lots of great writing in comics, and that’s as wretched as I’ve ever seen.
Well I am not super familiar with the comics, but don’t people who are able to wield Mjolnir transform into Thor? I think different people have been Thor at different times. So one would assume the female version of Thor was one such person. Any marvel comic nerds out there care to comment?
Timex
3630
If that’s true, it could make sense. I’m not really a big fan of Thor, so i don’t know for sure, although i had thought that thor was actually always Thor, since he’s the character rather than a human with an secret identity.
They don’t transform into the son of Odin - they get the power of Thor if they’re worthy. So female Thor was worthy and was granted Thor’s powers. Odin’s son is still around.
Could the feminist message have been written better in such a way that it did not enrage you? I agree it’s heavy handed but that really seems par for the course for comics.
Caveat: I think mainstream comics are almost universally poorly written and I am not a fan of any of them.
Event gimmicks still work, but less and less each time unless they’re backed up by quality, and Thor is dropped the audience it picked up extremely quickly, at a pace that’ll have it under its previous audience in a few months unless that changes.
One of the main reasons that the overall comic audience has dropped so precipitously since the 90s is because of fatigue with crappy gimmicks, reboots and events.
Timex
3634
That would suggest that the female Thor isn’t really the problem, but is merely an example of a larger decline in the comics industry. So it’s not really about political correctness.
Quaro
3635
That Breitbart article… Captain American is becoming black. It’s an attack on comics?
Captain America, too, is changing: he’s becoming black. Changes like this are designed to provoke readers, and they do–not because readers are racist or sexist, but because they understand that certain characteristics are intrinsic to certain characters. James Bond and Captain America are obviously white.
Or maybe the author of that piece clearly doesn’t read comics, isn’t familiar with how often characters are reinvented, even the fact that Captain America was already black like more than 10 years ago. Or it could an SJW conspiracy to destroy comics.
Why is there a demand for female versions of male superheroes, but no demand the other way? I mean, have you ever heard of calls for a male Lara Croft? It makes very little sense, until you learn that comic books, fantasy and sci-fi were taken over years ago by ultra-progressive misandrists who basically hate their own core audiences.
I can’t imagine a male version of Lara Croft. It’s be so out of place in any movie or game franchise. It’s never been done before so it is pretty incomprehensible why nobody has ever called for it. I guess we just have to live with the injustice of a world where the only wisecracking archaeologist-adventurer in fiction is female.
will Wonder Woman turn out to be a tranny? Is the Incredible Hulk only incredible because he endured cruel fat-shaming as a teen but didn’t let his size define him?
… wow.
I adore the headpatting tone here. Yes, dear reader, you are good and righteous. It is a evil plot to make you angry, to trick you into appearing like an enormous sexist. That’s the ticket.
Now, Desslock and Busc critiquing the gender role depictions of comic books is dangerous territory. That’s politicized journalism, right? Or does it not count when the politics being injected come from the right?
Again again we see this nonsensical appeal to the silent majority. Timex’s glib assertion that “comic fans” are the people angry about black Captain America or whatever goes to the same myth, that when creative types in any way deviate from the white male norm they are being FORCED TO by a cabal of SJW powerbrokers. And then what that SJW product is more popular, well, that’s just another trick! It’s gotta to be!
Minor point. That does not include online sales.
Time will tell. It certainly brought a new audience to the title, and I’m sure it drove some established fans away.
Perhaps, but it’s something of a chicken and egg of blame – I think the conventional wisdom in the comics industry is the exact opposite: since they are not finding any new readers, the gimmicks are all that’s keeping comics afloat.
Timex
3640
Joss Whedon made an interesting point about the female Thor, pointing out that the new Battlestar Galactica made Starbuck into a female, and it worked quite well.
But ultimately it depends on the writers actually making a good story. If battlestar Galactica had been bad, then it would have just been a gimmick. But it wasn’t bad, and it worked well into the story, even creating some new dramatic opportunities.
