Thor, Scientist of Thunder

[arbre_rieur]

Years ago, Marvel published a series of one-shots with a quirky premise: These were comics purportedly published within the Marvel Universe, the comics that the people living in the Marvel Universe read. I hadn't thought about them for a long time, but wizardru's recent entry on the line's X-Men one-shot reminded me.

Each of the one-shots took the concept in a somewhat different direction. The Thor one-shot is premised on the idea that most people in the Marvel Universe don't believe he's really a god. So, naturally, Thor comic books in the Marvel Universe are about a hero who uses technology to pretend to be a magic deity.



The story begins with Thor thwarting a gang of would-be muggers.



Thor flies back to his holographically disguised HQ, where his supporting cast is waiting. Team Thor is a three-person operation, as it turns out: 1) Don Jolson, a.k.a. Thor, 2) Uru, a woman who serves the Oracle/BATMAN BEYOND's Bruce Wayne role as the behind-the-scenes partner who monitors the hero from a computer, and 3) Owen Jolson, Don's father and the original Thor. There's also a surprise visitor on this day: Don's twin brother Len, back from a long absence.

Everyone's concerned because the Mjolnir technology's been acting wonky recently. It almost killed one of the muggers earlier.









The Destroyer goes after Thor, whose tech malfunctions as a result of the scrambler Len snuck onto the hammer. Still, he manages to triumph in the end and uncover his brother's treachery.





And, of course, there's a letter column.



Writing by Ty Templeton, pencils by Derec Aucoin

Comments

[darkknightjrk]

So in the Marvel Universe, no one believes Thor is a god and his comics have him as a human with technology as an act?

...

And Thor hasn't bashed through the wall of their offices to prove them wrong...why?

Now that I think about it--in the 616, they already deal with alien invasions and the like already. Why would they assume that a Norse God is so out of the realm of possibility?

*sigh* More confirmation that the citizens of the 616 are MORONS.

[arbre_rieur]

Just as in the real world, there are swarms of idiots who cling to their belief in magic, psychics, and the paranormal despite all evidence to the contrary, in the Marvel Universe, there are idiots who steadfastly refuse to believe in those things despite all the evidence that they in fact do exist.

[darkknightjrk]

Heheh--now that I think about it, I think it would be a fun, say, one-off Avengers story, to have some off-shoot of our world's Paranormal Investigations show that's always on SyFy and have them try to disprove the powers of all the Avengers. :D

[bariman]

I bet the in-universe version of the Mythbusters superhero special would be interesting.

[liara_shadowsong]

O_O I really, really want to see that. I mean, MythBusters is awesome in general, but a superhero special in a world with superheroes? Can you just imagine them trying to figure out how Spiderman wall-crawls, or how Thor's hammer works, or figure out if Captain America's abilities really qualify as "peak of human perfection" or if they fall slightly into the realm of outright superhuman (as in, all those things together are statistically unlikely to the point of near-absurdity, I'm sure, but can each alone be accomplished without superpowers?). They might end up giving up, for that matter.

[rainspirit]

That's dangerously close to insulting people's spirituality, dude.

[shadowpsykie]

i agree..

[arbre_rieur]

Fair enough. I shouldn't have said "idiots." I apologize to anyone I offended.

[baihu]

It's already a full-on insult, considering the use of 'idiots' not once, but twice.

Mod Note

[salinea]

For some people (for example Neo-Paganist practitioners), belief in magic, psychics or the paranormal is a religious belief, and we do not tolerate insults towards religious beliefs at Scans Daily.

[crinos]

DC has them too, like Doctor Thirteen.

Not putting Mr. Terrific in that list because, while he is an Atheist, he probably does believe in the supernatural (or at least looks at it from a scientific standpoint). Doc Thirteen is just stupid about it.

[silicondream]

Now that I think about it--in the 616, they already deal with alien invasions and the like already. Why would they assume that a Norse God is so out of the realm of possibility?

I guess they deal with so many alien invasions that, statistically, alien tech seems like the best bet for Thor's powers. Especially given that, in 616, technology can apparently turn an ordinary human into Quasar or the Sentry. It's not like Thor's leagues beyond all the ridiculously powerful mortal heroes running around.

And, really, Marvel Thor doesn't act like the Thor of myth. He doesn't dash around the world answering prayers to fix the weather and heal the sick, he doesn't accept human sacrifices or murder most of his opponents, and he doesn't wear traditional Norse clothing--most of the time he doesn't even have a beard. He acts like, well, a modern Western superhero inspired by the mythical Thor.

I mean, if a guy claiming to be Jesus showed up in the real world, but he wore spandex, flew around KOing criminals by turning their blood into wine, and hung out with a team of aliens and mutants and guys in robot suits, wouldn't you have some doubts that he was the real thing?

[bruinsfan]

I don't think people performed human sacrifices to Thor; if I'm not mistaken, Odin was the only Norse god whose worship involved that.

[silicondream]

More sources attest to sacrifices to Odin, but Adam of Bremen reported human sacrifices to Thor in times of disease or famine. Other accounts mention kings being sacrificed to an unspecified deity (probably Thor or Freyr) in the same circumstances.

[vitruvian23]

Well, to be fair, this does seem to have been before Asgard landed on Oklahoma, so pretty much the only Asgardian most people had seen, even on the news, was Thor. An alien or superhuman or tech user masquerading as a god would be a more logical explanation to many than Norse myth being literally true.

Now that there's actually been a war with Asgard, of course, things are a mite different.

[kamino_neko]

If Aliens Then Aesir? Don't think that logic quite works.

Given that they deal with aliens regularly on a regular basis, but the only 'deities' they deal with on anything close to a regular basis are Thor and Hercules, 'these guys who look/act like/claim to be gods are more likely aliens or using alien tech' seems to be the far more likely option.

[gamerguy]

Most of the Handbook series state that none of the normal citizens believe that the Asgardians, etc, are the same gods that walked the Earth in earlier days. They'd simply not consider it; people can wrap their heads around aliens because that's science. Magic is a whole other ball of wax.