Marvel
In case you haven’t heard, Thor is now a girl. In an announcement on The View this morning, it was revealed that a woman will soon be wielding the Mjölnir in the Marvel comics. Naturally, people went nuts over the news. It was, to borrow a phrase from Vice President Joe Biden, a big f*cking deal. But as much as the importance of a new female superhero can’t be understated, the way the news traveled and how it spread might be the more game-changing event.
Think of it this way: This news broke on a daytime talk show. Like, the kind your parents/grandparents are probably tuned in to. View host Whoopi Goldberg actually told Middle America, “Thor, the God of Thunder, he messed up. He is no longer worthy to hold that damn hammer of his. And for the first time in history, that hammer is being held by a woman.” Host Jenny McCarthy also chimed in with “she’s got super-powered boobies!” (That last part is not true. Probably.) After the segment aired, Marvel released a statement from editor Wil Moss, heralding the groundbreaking change: “The new Thor continues Marvel’s proud tradition of strong female characters like Captain Marvel, Storm, Black Widow and more. And this new Thor isn’t a temporary female substitute—she’s now the one and only Thor, and she is worthy!” If ever there was a time to point out that the issue of diversity in comics has hit the mainstream, this is it.
In the last few years, there have been quite a few efforts to make comics not quite so monolithically white/male/straight/gender-normative/etc. In 2012, Green Lantern Alan Scott came out as gay. In 2011, it was announced that mixed-race teenager Miles Morales would be putting on the Spider-Man suit. Batwoman Kate Kane came out of the closet and took on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Barbara Gordon (aka Batgirl) got a transgender roommate. The new Ms. Marvel is a Muslim teenager. And each time a change like this was announced, it made a blip on the radar, but it mostly circulated on newswires and blogs. Sure, Chris Hayes may herald the news of Batgirl’s transgender friend on MSNBC, but that happened after the fact. This time, message is being announced on The View, and Marvel itself is claiming that Thor “aims to speak directly to an audience that long was not the target for superhero comic books in America: women and girls.”
Of course, the fact that the news was on The View probably has a lot to with the fact that both the ABC network on which the show airs and Marvel are owned by Disney. But it’s hard to imagine this announcement feeling relevant to View viewers, say, five years ago. Let alone 10 years ago. But now even people who don’t read Marvel comics have been exposed to two Thor movies and The Avengers and know that Black Widow is the only heroine they’ve seen in that universe so far. (Whether or not they know that there is actually a Thor Girl is neither here nor there.) Basically, it’s now possible to talk about these issues in comics with a non-comic-book-reading audience without getting a confused stare in response. (It’s telling that Goldberg responded to McCarthy’s “super-powered boobies” comment with “she is actually in better proportion than a lot of the female comic superheroes.”)
So, yes, Thor becoming a female character—the comics hit in October and will be written by Jason Aaron with art from Russell Dauterman—is very cool, and is a very big deal. But you know what’s even cooler? The fact that everyone knows it.
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