Thor, Goddess Of Thunder

The second greatest sin of both DC and Marvel Comics is their unfortunate fondness for stunts.

These often take the form of the deaths of popular characters, which alerts mainstream media that hey, someone is still making comic books and by God they're adult because there is murderizing.  Robins are very popular in this regard. But, this being Marvel or DC, the heart rending deaths only last a bit, the characters recover from mortality, and everyone looks away, whistling, pretending it didn't happen.

Then there is the gender swap of popular characters, as evidenced in this collection. Apparently, making a guy character a woman character infuriates a certain amount of the population, who one suspects sit around all day already in a seething froth of anger and this sort of thing is the last thing they need.

As stunts go, this is a win/win for the publisher. By making an iconic male character not be male anymore, they can smile and say how progressive they are. If the aforementioned rage addicts start filling the internet with expletives and exclamation marks, they can shake their head sadly, silently nodding about those people.

Creating female variations of popular male characters is nothing new. Currently, the Spider-Man franchise has several: Spider-Woman (of course), Spider-Gwen, and Silk, just off the top of my head. The Batman family has had two Robins (one of which died, of course, before getting better), Batgirl, and Batwoman. Flash has Jessie Quick. Mary Marvel has pride of place in the Shazam family. And of course in the Superman corner we have the -girl and -woman variations. But none of these replaced the main character, so apparently that's alright.

Personally, I don't care. I just want good stories. I tend to gravitate to female characters, so I have no issue with any of this. I am bothered, though, by how little courage publishers have when it comes to these characters. If a publisher is going to make a change, then stick with it. But they rarely do, be it character deaths or gender changes. Thus, stunts.

Which brings us to this collection.

The Goddess of Thunder collects the first five issues of the 2016 relaunch of Thor. In it, Thor loses his hammer Mjolnir, which no longer wants anything to do with him. Instead, the hammer cosies up to a mysterious woman who transforms into a female Thor when she grabs the mystic weapon.  Which is good, because a bunch of Frost Giants have invaded Earth, and the new Thor's first day on the job is saving the planet from their blue skinned rage.

There's a lot of fun things here, from Thor's cool costume (her helmet reminds me of the old Bulletman doll from the Seventies G.I.Joe line) to just how a normal person learns to speak in the 'thees' and 'thous' of Asgard speak.  The new Thor's joy at her new powers is very refreshing as well.
The story does link back to events before the book, which I hadn't read, but it doesn't really impact on the enjoyment of the story.

The art by Russell Dauterman for the first four issues is wonderful, with gorgeous colours by Matthew Wilson. Really good, eye popping stuff. Some of the sound affects are lost in the art, though, and Mjolnir's new powers sometimes make the panels look a little too busy. Jorge Molina does art and colours for the final issue, and he brings a much warmer feel to the pages. His use of light in a twilight battle in New York was very nice, as was his depiction of starlight in Asgard. Exemplary work.

Jason Aaron is one of my favourite writers, and he doesn't let me down here. When Thor meets an old Marvel villain, she is surprised that she's actually called Thor, and not 'She-Thor' or 'Lady Thunderstrike'. It was a nice moment.

So the new mysterious Thor is a cool character, with a cool costume and a refreshing take on an old classic character. So she's the new Thor, right?

No. This turned out to just be a temporary thing.  Again, stunts are one of the greatest sins the two major comic publishers commit. It's even more sad when the stunt has all the ingredients to have been a solid replacement and well founded continuation of a mythology.

See Doctor Who in two years for more evidence of this.