Today in awesome: Feminist Thor has electrified the series’s comics sales

When Marvel announced that it was rebooting the Norse god Thor as a Norse goddess, “purist” comics fans tripped over themselves trying to explain why this wouldn’t work. Well, eat your words, salty fanboys: Not only is the new, feminist Thor doing just fine, since the series’ reboot, issues have been consistently outselling old Thor issues, not by margins of tens, but tens of thousands.

There’s currently no demographic data on who’s buying what issues, but consider this: Marvel was 2014’s top-selling comics publisher, and Thor #1 was among the industry’s top 10 issues, period. That, despite the fact that Thor hasn’t been on the big screen since 2013, and this summer’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron is still featuring Chris Hemsworth in the Avengers line-up. (Worth noting: Thor’s troublemaking brother Loki has also been written as a woman before, though there’s nothing wrong with Tom Hiddleston in the part.)

Yes, DC has a strong stable of female characters like Batgirl, Harley Quinn, Supergirl, and of course, Wonder Woman, but its recent blockbuster offerings have been verrry iffy on the female representation. And yes, they’re bringing Wonder Woman to moviegoers before Marvel rolls out a lady-led superhero film, but they’re making a feminist icon a supporting character in 2016’s Batman vs. Superman first. Meanwhile, Marvel’s been making high profile efforts to diversify its comics offerings across all boards. Ideally, that should be enough on its own, but it’s great to see that fan dollars are also supporting their efforts — now, let’s get these women to a movie theater near you.

Want to read more comics featuring female superheroes? Check out these other lady-headlining Marvel titles:

Black Widow

Captain Marvel

Elektra

Ms. Marvel

Silk

She-Hulk

Spider-Gwen

If you’re looking for women in ensembles, Fantastic Four, the A-Team (all lady Avengers), Young Avengers (with America Chavez, Kate Bishop, and sometimes-girl Loki), Runaways, and X-Men all feature huge casts with plenty of butt-kicking ladies. Now go forth and read!

(Images via here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)