Thor in 1967

Thor gets his wish and Jane Foster becomes a goddess, only to botch her test and prove herself unworthy. Foster is quickly stripped of her powers by Odin and is stripped of her memory of Thor, is shunted over to a new office, and gets on with her life for a while. Thor is devastated for about five minutes until the goddess Sif quickly takes Jane Foster’s place. And, with that, we have started the new status quo.

Shuttering this part of the character is fine for now… or it would be fine if the series hadn’t devolved into more MOTW shenanigans. Overall, another disappointing year for this comic. The recipe just doesn’t seem to result in a satisfying product at this point. It’s not quite as bad as 60s X-Men at its worst or most of DC’s output at this time, but woof.

This series has been an excruciating slog thus far. What makes it depressing I’d that there’s an awesome potential gem hidden here that periodically pokes its way to the surface. Thor (the series) lacks a third dimension.

Those three side-story companion characters, Volstagg and err… the others… they’d be just fine in ongoing tertiary roles. Jane Foster didn’t need to disappear either — it’s just that her character arc was drawn in simple primary colors, like most of the series.

I don’t like this constant plot-point of Thor being de-powered either. It’s quite clearly a canard to create challenges to Thor, who would approach physical omnipotence otherwise.

But if you have to constantly weaken your character to make him engaging, then you’ve recognized that there’s something incomplete about your character. This isn’t like a miraclo pill, where superpowers are structurally limited by time. The writers either made the the character too strong, or are not imaginative enough to make use of it.

I’ve been leaving a quick art note at the bottom of most of my Thor posts, and I’ll do it again: Joe Sinnot inked Thor 143… it looks superb.