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Edited by Mrph1 on Jul 29th 2024 at 3:09:00 PM
The name thing is just incredibly awkward thing to legitimize Jane as Thor. The whole thing is very heavy handed especially the aforementioned bit where Thor just straight up stops referring to himself by his own name and only goes by his last name.
Its a bit odder since at the same time Clint and Kate both operate as Hawkeye or Peter and Miles both as Spider-Man so its not like Marvel doesn't have a problem with the whole collective identity thing.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Thor was, as he he has continued to be for years, in a bad place mentally and emotionally.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersInteresting think about that Jason Aaron prolly didn't want anything that could potentially threaten Jane's legitimacy as Thor.
Its prolly why Beta Ray Bill didn't appear in his run barring a short appearance in the Unworthy Thor mini-series as he didn't want to deal with another still-active Thor with his own hammer.
Hell the moment Bill appears he offers Thor his hammer to give him as powers back.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Huh ya know looking back, Aaron prolly killed off Gorr too early.
Considering the anti-God theme of his run it could have been interesting seeing him interact with Jane who was similar beliefs about Gods as well as Bill who by contrast to the 2 of them is fairly neutral about the whole thing.
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."Regarding the whole name thing, I know Avengers Assemble got around that by just naming her "Thunderstrike" instead. And yes, I know that's a different character in the comics and people here don't really like that show. But it is an option.
If Jason Aaron's approach to She-Hulk means anything, he's been running off some truly bizarre idea of Feminist Fantasy looking like an extreme You Go, Girl! storyline, to the point that it makes me doubt he's ever properly consulted any actual women about how to write empowering female characters.
I'd rather Jane with Mjolnir just be herself, but with extra powers. There is literally no need to retain the aspect of her calling herself "Thor" with it, because that's plain old idiotic, even with the justification that it was being done to maintain the mystery of her true identity. The MCU can have her be the new God(dess) of Thunder, and maybe heir to Asgard.
Edited by AlleyOop on Dec 12th 2021 at 12:17:41 PM
I can imagine it will be a similar situation to John Walker where he technically is Captain America but no one really refers to him as Cap but as John Walker.
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Thats a good summation of Aaron's writing, to him the epitome of feminism is girlbosses like James Cameron's whole thing with Sarah Conner.
Edited by slimcoder on Dec 12th 2021 at 8:46:36 AM
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."I haven't read Jason Aaron's stuff, but based on context am I correct in assuming he's one of those sycophantic faux-feminists whose idea of "strong female character" is just projecting his own please-step-on-me fetishes onto them instead of actually making them engaging, nuanced, or even human? Or is that an overly cynical assumption?
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!At least with Walker they never referred to him as the new Steve Rogers. Things like God(dess) of Thunder are fine, especially since Thor Ragnarok established it as a proper title to have.
Honestly there's nothing inherently wrong with female protagonists like Sarah Conner, and she still has her place among feminist heroes so long as other kinds of female protagonists coexist alongside her. The issue is that, compared to Cameron, Aaron went the extra mile to insult anyone who liked the usual approach to She-Hulk, and to also strawman them as all insensitive misogynists or Category Traitors for it, which is beyond unnecessary. There's also a lot of needless Dear Negative Reader regarding his divisive handling of Jane Thor which is just immature.
I understand that there is a need for more female protagonists who are not conventionally attractive or appealing, but it's not really necessary there are better ways to express it than such a hamfisted and mean-spirited Take That, Critics!.
The whole thing feels like a man attempting to cater to his perception of what he thinks Straw Feminists want based on stereotypes filtered at least once through a layer of anti-feminist rhetoric, without actually spending time to canvas the opinions of any feminists in real life, or at best no more than a very Vocal Minority of them, in effect revealing just how out-of-touch he actually is with contemporary feminist goals.
It's revealed that Jennifer Walters secretly always wanted to be an exact Distaff Counterpart of the Hulk who is ugly, strong, and perpetually angry, and that anyone who enjoyed her for being different from the Hulk beforehand is performing misogynist microaggressions on her.
It's actually the opposite extreme from the usual Joss Whedon Fetish Fuel disguised as feminism. The Anvilicious aesop is that strong confident women are bad because they might be fodder for the Male Gaze and if you like it too, then you are a sexist pig and that She-Hulk hates you. To make it more obvious, her opponent was a literal embodiment of Internet trolls. It's very childish and reeks of ego-stroking.
Edited by AlleyOop on Dec 12th 2021 at 12:48:32 PM
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Said opponent didn't happen to huff internet gas to become that way, did he?
I can sorta jive with that, Beauty Is Never Tarnished is a dumb trope and it is kinda weird that Bruce gets to be a cool hideous monster while Jen has to be "tall woman in a leotard", but that does sound like a childish (and very performative) extreme.
You cannot firmly grasp the true form of Squidward's technique!Aaron is like Bendis. They can be great in their own lane, but they can also be very nearsighted about woes outside of it, particularly social ones.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."Now that I think about it, I think his runs also had a strong atheist bent cause I read a critique of how he wrote Moon Knight during his Avengers run as more "atheist".
Which reminds me that anti-God/Gods suck hard is a rather prevalent theme in his stories including his Thor run where the main message is basically "God's suck and are uniformly awful and terrible but Jane is awesome, she is the best God there ever was and every God should look up to her as the standard for how they should all act."
"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."The biggest flaw of Aaron's She-Hulk thing is that Ewing was doing the same thing with Harpy over in Immortal Hulk. Except written much better.
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI think most if not all of the avengers hould be worthy of Thor's hammer, they're all noble and accomplish heroes that have done as much to prove themselves worthy as Thor or Captain America have done, but I guess is hard to really argue with full security who should be worthy or not since it has never been made entarely clear and unquestionably what exactly is that makes someone worthy according to Odin, I feel they probably keep it vague so they can pick and chose who's supossedly "worthy" without worrying if they feat the standards that they set.
One can just imagine that after Jane becomes Mighty Thor, that the Guardians start a trivial argument on who they should call Thor or He-thor and She-thor.
Sincerely S Awatching.Pretty sure that even on his best day, no version of Tony Stark would be worthy of Mjolnir.
And I say this not out of hatred of Tony (he and Thor, or rather Donald Blake were good friends on the Avengers, and even knew each other's identities well before any other members of the team), but because Tony's a damned mess even on said best days.
And then you know, there's the two Civil Wars he was involved in.
One Strip! One Strip!So Tony has managed to lift Mjolnir at least twice in the comics. Both under extenuating circumstances
Once in zero gravity to retrieve the hammer from space to bring back to Donald Blake. And once when Mjolnir was letting anyone lift it
Oh and he was fused with Thor for Infinity Warps. I don’t think he had Mjolnir in that. Let’s call it two and a half?
If there was ever an AU or What If or whatever where Tony lifted Mjolnir fair and square five seconds of research didn’t uncover it
Shame because it’d be a good basis for an AU or What If or whatever. I’m imagining one of those trendy post apocalypse and hero X is the last hero alive stories
Edited by Bocaj on Dec 13th 2021 at 1:09:09 PM
Forever liveblogging the AvengersI knew about the second time (since it's one of the aforementioned times when Thor was plagued with ridiculous amounts of self doubt, and Thor was the only one struggling to lift it) and even Tony knew him being able to lift the hammer was all kinds of wrong.
The second one is fascinating. I guess even a god like enchantment can't match gravity....although I recall the Red Hulk did something similar during his early appearances (he was able to use it to hit Thor in the face because they were in low gravity) but people called bullshit.
That might stem from whatever differences there are between the two scenes, and also, the fact that the Red Hulk was really awful when he first showed up.
One Strip! One Strip!
Yeah no one liked the Red Hulk Character Shilling. People called bullshit when he snatched the Silver Surfer's board, they were gonna call bullshit on him grabbing Mjolnir or...basically doing anything else.

And really what would that actually mean in practice? Maybe Jane Foster gains Asgardian physiology and lightning abilities regardless of whether or not she has control of the actual hammer at the moment, but that would just make her a Goddess of Thunder, not literally Thor.
If I recall correctly in the comics it was ultimately Thor that let Jane Foster go around calling herself Thor, it wasn't something intrinsic to wielding the hammer.