... I was only vaguely aware, e.g., that somewhere along the line Thor (he of the big red beard) had gotten shaved and bleached, and Mjölnir* had gotten transformed from a half-hammer, half-boomerang battle weapon into a smith's metal-bashing implement.
And now, it seems, Thor has, as they said back in the 60s, "gone to Sweden."
Or maybe he didn't go to Sweden and she came back. After all, deities can pretty much assume any form they feel like, right? (Though it's mostly tricksters and philanderers who actually do that sort of thing, and it's usually temporary.)
Apparently, though, this is part of a trend whereby, instead of creating a brand-new superhero with a character appropriate to the person inside the suit, the franchise owners kill off or otherwise retire an existing superhero, and have some new diversically-correct person inherit the costume, role, and character, even though the character was written for someone else entirely.
It's what happens to the process of creative destruction when it's commanded from on high, and the parties responsible are incapable of the "creative" part. If they were creative, they could create new characters, phase them in, and allow the old ones to head off to Commander Goodbye's Superhero Retirement Home.
(And, yes, it bothers me that Frank Gorshin's "Riddler" was once played by John Astin. Astin deserved his own supervillain character on that show, dang it!)
* The spelling checker thinks I mean "Miniskirt." Noooooooooo!
They're changing Thor? To a feminine personage? Oh the horror! Can Ragnarøkkr be far behind?
Posted by: Old AF Sarge | Monday, 16 February 2015 at 10:35
And what are the Æsir's chances, with such changes?
Really, now: the original Thor was very much a working-mans deity. The comic-book version, not so much. And now a permanently-aggrieved feminist? Comes the grand battle, how much use will a chronically-angry person be?
Come to think of it, there are some fine strong female characters to be found in the Icelandic sagas (remembered from many years ago, when I went on a saga-reading binge). Why not adapt one of them, instead of borrowing the name of a male(-ish) character who borrowed the name of a very male deity?
Posted by: Eric Wilner | Monday, 16 February 2015 at 11:45
That would require a bit of study and knowledge of the sagas. The sort who would feminize Thor aren't that keen on research. Or reality for the matter.
Sigh...
Posted by: Old AF Sarge | Monday, 16 February 2015 at 11:52