It’s been 4 months since Marvel announced the change of Thor from being Asgardian son of Odin to whatever her name is. Its taken me this long to get my anger in check, barely, to write a critique of this pretense of writing strong female characters in the Marvel Universe. No one will argue that there is an abundance of strong female characters in comics. There isn’t. For decades women were simply used as eye-candy or damsels in distress or as punch lines in some very sexist and not funny jokes. That hasn’t changed much, the costumes are still ludicrous, bust sizes way too big and even the most intimidating characters like Amanda Waller have been given recent updates that have served to make them easier on the eye. We in comics are frankly failing the female half of the world population.
In light of this dearth of strong, appropriately dressed and nuanced female characters you would have expected me to join the hullabaloo and praise Marvel for introducing female Thor (to note despite Marvel insisting that she the one and only Thor and not She-Thor or Thorita etc I will refer her as female Thor or She-Thor to not only highlight my disdain for the move but also to emphasize that there is only one Thor and that is brother to Loki). Instead, if you havent already realised, I am patently against the move and think it is a poor attempt at painting a thin veneer at addressing the issue of women in comics. I was amused by Marvel’s claim in their press release of “Marvel’s proud tradition of strong female characters” because frankly I can’t seem them, not even the examples they gave. Maybe Storm.
My chief problems with the move are two-fold and I must admit that my chagrin has been exacerbated by the recent announcement of the all female Ghostbusters reboot. A move not related to Marvel but one enhances my concerns. to begin with,are we saying we cannot write strong female characters and can only do so by changing men to women? Do they not get how counter productive that is in itself – man to woman, the underlying message that for them to be strong or popular mainstream wise etc is if they take the properties of being masculine? Perhaps Marvel’s rationale was that felt insecure about releasing a completely new character without existing support or a fan base and I understand comics have a tendency to be gimmicky and reboot all the time but Thor really ticks me off because there are so many fantastic female characters in Norse mythology and others. If they wished to tap into Thor’s world they could have done so without having to make him into a woman and could have just as easily and with a lot more credibility and good will created a spin-off/tie-in with a great female character instead of simply making Thor into a woman They might have been written as two different and separate characters but I insisting that this ‘new Thor’ is the only Thor and in essence rewriting the series is off-putting. Thank god they didn’t do a complete reboot from year zero.
My second problem and this is a doozy considering the existing Marvel catalogue of female characters who, and I think we can all agree, are generally poorly written and realized. If they truly felt they were addressing the problem of chauvinism in comics the best response would have to have gone back and reboot the countless female characters they already have and rewrite them properly instead of them just damsels in distress or eye candy. We all also agree that the reasons comics have never been that popular with women is that we hardly write storylines that cater to them nor are the characters relatable or believable even in a world were the chief characters fly around, fight constantly, have weird and fantastic powers. In a world based in the suspension of belief and laws of nature we still can’t bring ourselves to believe in the existing female characters. How horrible is that? That in itself is a scathing indictment of comics and not just Marvel. This in itself is symptomatic of the general lack women in the industry itself and the hegemonic male privilege existing that ensures that we fail to see where we are going wrong. And to make it worse, that isn’t going to change if there isn’t at least a proper effort to address and frankly this ‘reboot’ of Thor isn’t it.
Having read the first 2 issues and comments made by the writer, Jason Aaron, who first came up with the concept I have a worry that in time the original Thor will return somewhere down the line and then what we have left is a token gimmicky effort to cater to women and girls in comics. So although the writing so far has been good and the title has garnered interest and been given kudos my fear is that in time when they return to the original they will lose what little momentum this change would have garnered. Plus see point 1 above. Whilst I for one would welcome the return of Thor son of Odin, Asgardian, God of Thunder and protector of Midgard and the nine realms; I am left a little bitter at not only a cynical move by Marvel but also the continued lack of effort to write decent female characters and the lack the of women in the comic industry.
This Way South, This Way Home 