SPOILERS!!!!!!
Perhaps the shocked, butthurt and offended legions who felt that turning Thor into a woman would destroy their view of masculinity as they sounded The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women can rest a bit easier now. Her identity has been revealed and that is a sure sign that Original Man With Penis Thor is coming back soon. In case you are wondering, the story was spoiled many places, as FemmeThor #8 with the above reveal cover is coming out tomorrow, but the official Marvel version of the leak seems to be here at Vulture, where writer Jason Aaron chats and divulges that
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* …Ther is Jane Foster. Which a someone who wasn’t even reading the book, I had to go…well…yeah. Isn’t Lady Thor ALWAYS Jane Foster?
In this case however the reasons within the story are…sad. Jane Foster has breast cancer and transforming into Thor reeves her illness (just as the original thor Don Blakelost his lameness when transforming)…but when turning back to Jane she becomes weakers, and the power is making it worse.
Thematically, what do you think is the significance of having Jane Foster be Thor? Jane’s been a part of Thor’s universe going back almost to the very beginning. She was the initial love interest for Donald Blake, who was Thor’s alter-ego [in early Thor stories]. She was the nurse to his doctor. She’s grown and changed and evolved a lot over the years, become a doctor in her own right. So this to me is not just the next step for her character, but really the next evolution of the core promise that has always been at the heart of Thor’s mythology.
You go back to those very first issues [from the 1960s], and they’re about this disabled doctor, Donald Blake, finding a strange hammer, and when he picks it up, it transforms him into the mighty Thor. That promise of transformation has always been a part of that hammer. Even though we’ve changed the person who’s holding the hammer, it’s very much a Thor story, a story that begins the next step for that promise of transformation.
So you know, this was really a thematic story about long running characters not an evil scheme to render all the men of the US sterile.
a thematic story (replacing the main character) that has been run into the ground. doesn’t matter if their replacing the character with a man, woman , minority, or a popsicle, it’s a storyline that’s been done to death (tho’ I would imagine an equal amount of outrage from the folks that are telling the people pissed about this story to calm down, if a prominent female character was replaced by a male character). a much more interesting storyline would have been (IMHO) jane foster becoming a thor in her own right , much in the way she-hulk, red she-hulk, and lyja did in the hulk series, by not replacing the main character (who always does eventually come back), but by becoming characters that can stand on their own without replacing the main character. if this was the case with jane foster there might be a good chance she would stick around as a thor and maybe we would get some really interesting stories and interactions between her and male thor, but since we got the “replacement” storyline, eventually male thor will come back which means more than likely jane foster will cease being a thor, or maybe not. things are so uncertain right now, who’s knows who is gonna end up in the new marvel continuity once all the secret wars dust settles (and jane foster/thor was in that sneak peek free comic book day avengers comic), tho’ I’m guessing with all the young and rookie characters that will be an “avengers in training” book, while we’ll find other main avengers in other books (you don’t really think marvel is gonna publish only one avengers book a month , do you?).
In other words, Marvel’s “permanent” transformation of Thor into a woman proved to be no more “permanent” than Marvel’s “permanent” transformation of Dr Octopus into Spider-Man. But, any outcome that reveals Marvel as mendacious and fanboys dumb can’t be all bad.
Marvel has a bad habit of taking supporting characters and giving them powers. Jane Foster is now Thor, Flash Thompson is now Venom, Betty Ross is Red She-Hulk, Thunderbolt Ross is Red Hulk, Pepper Potts became Rescue, Rick Jones became A-Bomb…the supporting cast member who was a normal human being used to show how extraordinary the main character was but now they’re just used to become a variation of the main character of a title at Marvel. There’s nothing special in a world where everyone has super powers. Unfortunately, Marvel has become The House of Regurgitated Ideas.
@shawn kane – I’ve also noticed that over the past several years most of the new characters created at marvel are some variation of an established character, not counting inhuman or mutant characters that fall under those titles. I could be wrong, but I wonder if the lack of original new characters that are non-inhuman or non-mutant is that creators are loath to bring an original idea for a character to marvel in that marvel will then completely own that character and if that character then becomes very popular in other media (video games, toys, movies, etc.), they’ll get none of the profits because of the whole “work for hire” deal and the creators have a better chance at profits if they present their creations on their own. again, I could be wrong, I’m not too sure how those situations work at marvel these days, but it would explain a lot of the regurgitation that’s been going on.
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