Thor, You’ll Be a Woman Soon
Marvel Comics has announced that the next Thor will be a woman and that is freakin’ awesome. The bigwigs at Marvel have specified this isn’t going to be a female character who’s Thor’s female counterpart, but is indeed going to be plain and simple Thor. Male Thor will be dethroned when he is no longer able to pick up his hammer and the female character worthy of the task will be the new Thor.
This is a fantastic move from Marvel to gain a stronger female readership, adding to their eight titles anchored by female leads. And, worry not, the writers aren’t going to alter the style of writing because they’re writing a woman. Writer of the Thor series Jason Aaron said, “It’s not like we threw a dart at a board and said we’re going to change this character and make it a female. This was the natural progression of the story I was telling and that’s been building in Thor history for decades now. I’ve written stories about Canadian mutants who are 150 years old and about aliens in space. It doesn’t matter: I’m clearly not any of those people. But it doesn’t matter the race or gender or where those people are from. It’s all about figuring out that character and telling your story.”
Too often comic book writers talk about how challenging they find working with a female characters, and shifting their narrative approach. Thank the heavens Marvel is up for the “challenge” and wisely sees the merits of having a female superhero.
And another exciting development could be the appearance of a female Thor in a film adaptation. Chris Hemsworth is cool and all, and still has a few more movies in his contract, but I’d definitely be excited to put up my hard-earned dough for a ticket if Thor was played by someone like Katee Sackhoff or perhaps Zoe Saldana. Bring on the new Thor!
