Thor the Thunder God has returned to the Marvel comics scene,
complete with his alter ego Donald Blake. This development
might prove interesting, but the first issue was rather odd
because while it showed Thor returning from the dead, it
doesn't really explain how he returns. We see Thor fighting
some generic monsters and claiming Mjolnir. After this bout,
Don Blake shows up in a hotel room.
Interesting, but worth one whole issue? I think not. Other
venues, I submit, exist for retelling the return of the Son of
Odin to Midgard. When I heard Thor was coming back, and I saw
that one of the characters in World War Hulk was one of the very
Saturn rock men Thor had faced in Journey into Mystery #83, I
would have sworn that Thor would be brought back in the middle
of a fight. A call back, if you will to the reveal in the Civil
War. Is it really Thor, Hulk and others would wonder? Reed is
one of the people Hulk is coming for, after all. Surely the
possibility that he could have made another clone would play
to the suspicions of the Marvel heroes.
Additionally, Marvel is pretty high on Ultimates right now, and
the Ultimate Thor has a certain ambiguity as regards whether he
is in fact the Thunderer. Bringing back Thor in this fashion would
allow a certain degree of that tension in the mainstream Marvel U.
At least, it would tie in the return of Thor with the current major
crossover event: World War Hulk and allow Thor to return and immediately
face an old enemy or three (the stone man, Hulk and Hercules.)
Beyond any of this, the conversation between Don Blake and Thor
indicates a sort of bizarre mixture of humanism and theology which
doesn't make any sense. Don Blake, a construct that did not exist
until created by Odin says that gods do not create man, man creates
gods. However, if one accepts the premise that gods in the form of
supernatural deity-type creatures exist, then generally speaking,
the myths say that they do create men, though not in the Norse
myths. On the other hand, the humanist precept that men create gods
typically refers to a notion that man creates the concept of gods.
Not that man somehow creates the sort of efficacious supernatural
entity that is exemplified by Thor.
The Marvel universe is apparently working by a mechanism akin to that
of Discworld, wherein gods are manifestations of the human subconscious
and gain energy from direct worship. The problem with this is that if
gods are merely constructs of humans, then how does Don Blake get
created? How does he get called from the void? It's a nifty line but
it makes no sense.
Thor is one of the more important characters in the Marvel Universe
because if you have Thor, you almost have to account for him in the
larger stories. Hercules is powerful, but lacks charisma, and it's
possible to be a Marvel fan without being aware, in some sense, of
how powerful Herc is. The same for Namor. You can have a company
crossover without inviting them, though World War Hulk has them both,
but Thor and Dr. Strange are both powerful and famous. If they are around,
they have to be involved. I do not know the time line, but if there is a
Thor title on the self, then Thor is around. And if Thor is around, then it
makes more sense for him to return in battle in the crossover, as opposed
to return in the middle of some philosophical debate on the nature of death
and theology in a standalone title. It makes better sense dramatically. It
makes better sense for the history of the character within the Marvel
universe. And it also makes better sense for regaining interest in
Thor.
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6 comments:
I've made it a habit to avoid any comic written by J. Michael Straczynski after being sorely disappointed with his early work on Spider-Man and hearing nothing since then that's made me want to change my policy. It sounds like this comic is more of the same.
Still, good to have Thor back, and hopefully at some point down the road, he'll wind up in the hands of a writer whose work I enjoy.
The real question in the MU (assuming the validity of the 'gods get their power from direct worship', as you posit) is not where Don Blake comes from--Odin existed, and presumably still has some power left from the period when he was actively worshipped. No, the real question is, why are the Norse gods even remotely on a par with the Greco-Roman Gods, who were worshipped by far more people for far longer than the Norse; or, even more ludicrously, that they are on a par with the Hindu gods, who are actively worshipped right now by more people than lived on the Earth during any time the Norse religion was active.
An even better question would be how can can Marvel publish this so soon after Gaiman's Eternals which uses the same gimmick (the gods are scattered amongst humanity and have to be awkoken).
Or that no one bothered to hit JMS upside the head with a MU Handbook that Marvel deity's don't work via the belief=power system that DC ones do.
Or that no one has told him he needs to stop using lines and ideas from Babylon 5 and move on....
Jason, there are Asatru worshipers right now this very minute, though admittedly not very many. The Aesir and Vanir were worshiped in their prime by a very large part of Northern Europe. Granted, there were probably never a billion of them.
Well, the admittedly non-canon Earth X puts the Asgardians under a modified form of the "belief=power" rule. In Kruger's version, the norse pantheons are powerful, extraterrestrial, shape-shifting empaths, who do not necessarily derive their _power_ from their worshipers, but who do derive their _form_ from them.
I believe the Marvel handbook makes the Asgardians out to be independent entities who happen to be able to gain energy through worship. The question is: does that hold true of the other gods as well.
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