Thor #8

[kojiro]

Agent Roz arrives, and the female Thor leaves.

Comments

[kumahige]

So, she went from love interest/confidant to full fledged replacement? Having read that What If story where she becomes Thordis kicking all kinds of ass, all I gotta say is I am pleased and it makes her scene, trying to confess Thor Odinson who she really is, pretty poignant and moving. To think they had a history together.

Now, on the other hand, when did Jane got Cancer? Last time I saw her she had brown hair but, on the other hand, it lends itself as an interesting comparison to the Lee/Kirby days when Don Blake was a handicapped man wielding the power of Thor.

[silverhammerman]

In issue #13 of Thor series directly before this one, also written by Jason Aaron, Jane Foster showed up with breast cancer and a husband/boyfriend, neither of which, to my knowledge, had been established previously.

Now that I'm looking at her character biography I'm curious whether her ex-husband or her kid will come up at some point, or be quietly retconned into oblivion.

[jekylls_salvation]

I'm not sure how I feel about that aspect of it. Before it seemed like they were trying to write Jane out by giving her a family and cancer. I felt like they couldn't have written her out to a peaceful quiet life because of her history with Thor. She was a part of that, she was closely woven in, I felt she had some sort of right to the burden of something more. I don't feel that way about the husband and kid. I say write them out to a peaceful quiet life and let Jane be a bigger part of Thor. Should be interesting.

[lordultimus]

Called it.

[cainofdreaming]

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only... Secret Wars.

Also, those dead black eyeholes on that helmet always creep me up.

[silverhammerman]

In retrospect, Jane Foster should have been the most obvious candidate (pre-existing character, name recognition from the movies) but still a well told story, and the fact that it didn't seem certain at the time shows Aaron's skill. Now we can only hope that the secret Nick Fury told Thor to turn him into Odinson will pay off as well as this, though I have my doubts that'll happen.

I'm getting shades of Betty Ross turning into Red She-Hulk here, and while I'm not generally someone who likes it when superhero casts all get upgraded until it's so insular that there are no regular people, it's not like anything else was being done with Jane Foster.

[protogarrett]

So what was Thor's secret anyways? The one Fury told him? Did we ever find out what made him unworthy?

[protogarrett]

Also, how did she get to the moon to even grab that hammer?

[silverhammerman]

Haven't been following it myself, but from what I understand that one's mostly implied if you read the series; Asgard is now floating over the moon, not a farm town, and making the trip to the habitable area of the moon (COMICS!) is no great task.

[aperturedreams]

And she was already with the Council of Worlds who regularly end up in Asgard, making it even easier.

[baihu]

You know when they actually tell readers what Fury said, it will never live up to the hype. I kinda like it being left forever ambiguous, always referred to but Thor or Fury never says what it said, leaving readers to argue and theorycraft on forums for all eternity.

The mystery will always be bigger than the truth, and would always 'sound' better in readers' heads than whatever the current crop of writers can give IMO. So let's just leave it at that.

[janegray]

I like this. It's an interesting twist :)

[cyberghostface]

With a reveal like that it kind of makes me wonder why they made her identity such a big deal in the first place.

[icon_uk]

Publicity!

[sagrada]

I never noticed until now that Tor Odinson was wearing tight leather pants. And now that's the only thing I can see. An acceptable trade.

[nyadnar17]

Might want to add more character tags for those hoping to avoid spoilers.


That said I really wonder why they dragged the mystery of who she was out like they did. A lot of people upset at Odinson being replaced would have been a lot more ok with his replacement replacement being an established character.

[locuatico]

I wonder if it is in some way related to secret wars?

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

That'd be my guess. We've only got a few issues before we have to shut the whole comic down temporarily for this Secret Wars thing... instead of using any of the actual plots we've got figured out and make people wonder if they're still canon afterwards, let's just spend a really long time establishing who the character is and write our main stories afterwards.

[cyberghostface]

I wouldn't have added her period. Whenever a character appearance is a spoiler I leave them out of the tags.

[jekylls_salvation]

Yeah I would've actually picked this up if I'd know Jane was doing it. I shunned it because, well for all the reasons, but I'm very invested in Jane. Always afraid they're going to throw her away. But I'd have been very very curious about it. And would've liked to see her burden. Marvel saved me some money with this one.

[thosefew]

So, does this restart the whole Wakanda/cancer thing?

[sagrada]

We could always just assume T'Chaka was overstating his case. Maybe Wakandans have worked out ways to alleviate most of the symptoms/slow the rate of cancerous growths, but can't actually cure the disease. At most it can buy the patient enough time to get other treatments, with only relatively small or fresh cases being really 'fixable' using vibranium-laced science.

Which would be another nice fanon 'fix' of the plot-hole that is Magic Wakandan Science Solves All Cancer. Mar-Vell's dying of a similar illness? T'Challa doesn't say anything because he knows that, besides being an alien, his friend is too far gone for his technology to help.

[chrys]

It's moot now, isn't it? Since Wakanda is gone.

[jekylls_salvation]

So Thor was short for Thordis. Now I feel bad about calling her She-Thor the entire time.

Three cheers for Jane!

[jekylls_salvation]

[starwolf_oakley]

Thor stories over the years have established Jane has an ex-husband and a son. Her ex-husband is Keith Kincaid, who was supposedly Odin's "template" to create Donald Blake. Yeah, I don't get it either.

Hopefully, Keith and her son will be mentioned, but I will understand if they aren't.

[baihu]

As someone who didn't really follow when femThor appeared, I just went with it (I thought the Earth X version was cooler), am I suppose...to be surprised by this revelation?

Like I know Jane Foster as a satellite character, somehow this doesn't seem all that big of a reveal. As Thor said, there's a list of only so much characters a female Thor could be but still be recognizable to the readers. Why wouldn't it logically be the sort-of love interest that's been mentioned for quite some time?

[tigerkaya]

So finally Publicity stunts true identity has been revealed, super I guess. Like Thor's old human form of Donald Blake lifting the hammer it makes sense that Foster now wields the hammer.

[quatoria]

'Publicity stunt'? That seems... a *little* disrespectful.

[tigerkaya]

Well Marvel shouldn't have flaunt her around on every news media and talk show than.

[wizardru]

Why? Are there accepted marketing channels they can use and ones they can't? Thor is currently selling very well by most metrics and it's believed that new female readers are certainly a part of that. Getting out into channels that they normally don't reach but that have audiences that skew outside their normal demographic (like 'The View' or 'The Today Show') is just simple marketing.

If successfully marketing a move designed to land new readers and embracing a more diverse reading audience qualifies as a 'stunt, then let's have more of them, IMHO.'

[tigerkaya]

Hmm your right I'll just call her Jane Foster from now on. Simple as that. Less insulting and more the brutal truth.

[big_daddy_d]

This series has been good but the reveal that it's Jane... that was the first and obvious choice. When it comes to things like that, it's underwhelming in a way that leaves me feeling that making it such a big mystery is a waste of time. At least it wasn't as long as Red Hulk's identity mystery when everyone and their dog knew who it was.

[punisher007]

I called this months ago. It was either going to be her or Roz Solomon, and Aaron was hinting at Roz a little TOO hard. Personally, while I have no issue with this idea, the "mystery" element didn't do it for me. I don't care about the "mystery" or "who is the new Thor?" I care about the new Thor being awesome and having interesting character work done, neither of which has really happened yet since we dragged out a "mystery" that didn't need to be a mystery in the first place.

And I still want to know what Fury said to the OG Thor that made him instantly "unworthy." That's been dragged out for FAR too long as well.