Is nothing sacred...Thor is a woman?

[Gaidin]

Get it right, Loki changed species and became a female horse, allowed a stallion to mount him, then gave birth to a horse, which in turn became Odin's steed. Are you proposing that Thor also do that? How extremely bizarre. I can see the public outcry of a world-wide bestiality issue where Thor has horse-sex and gives birth to a foal. How charming.

I said Marvel is playing on that and doing their own thing. Not ripping it off. Stop reading what you want and read what I actually write.

[Knight of Heaven]

OK. Was Loki still Loki while he was a woman? If Thor changes into a woman, then Thor is still Thor. That's NOT what Marvel said at all. The current Thor is displaced by a woman who becomes Thor. That's the problem. It's someone else being Thor when Thor is still alive. Why is that so difficult to understand?

Do you know the meaning of figure of speech?
It seems to me you have more of a problem on how they said it, or anounced it, then to what marvel will actualy go about it story wise.

[RubiconDecision]

You just don't get it. There's been diversity in comic books practically with the first issue of Superman, as it was written by Jews as an allegory. Kal-El as a baby in a rocket is a metaphor for Moses in a basket picked up by the Egyptians.

Female superheroes have been around since 1940. Strong well written comics featuring females and minorities have been around since the sixties.

What Marvel has done is a publicity stunt to make money. It's crap. It not diversity. It's dumb. It's lame. And arguments that it's somehow better are really ridiculous unless you just want to see a female Thor with big boobs. How sad. Instead of creating a new female superhero with an intentional commitment to discuss womens' diverse issues, or be sensitive to a more realistic depiction, or to foster women writers and artists at Marvel, we get a chick with big tits and that's diversity?

[Condottiere 40K]

Yeah, I know about X-Arielle.




Actual Black Widow.

[RubiconDecision]

I mean, if you want to read a comic book series done by women and for women that guys can appreciate as well, then why not read:

1. Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds to start. Written by Gail Simone.

or

2. Persepolis: a tale of a young woman growing up in Iran and dealing with religious fundamentalism in the formerly quite open Western atmosphere of Iran but dealing with the tyrant Shah. Written by Marjane Satrapi and made into an animated feature film.
or



3. Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword: a tale of a young Orthodox Jewish girl who battles trolls. Written by Barry Deutsch so a guy, but definitely written for a female audience, sensitively portrayed, and very readable and praiseworthy too. His website on breaking into comic books can be found here.

Or you can look longingly at big tits models and decide who the female Thor should be, but it's kinda creepy.

[Knight of Heaven]

Persepolis is amazing, and it has been a while since i read birds of prey, but i found it very fun the homage and feature in the Arrow episodes.

What Marvel has done is a publicity stunt to make money. It's crap. It not diversity. It's dumb. It's lame. And arguments that it's somehow better are really ridiculous

I find ridiculous the overeacting rant about this.

When i look at it, i dont see a particular great move for marvel artisticaly speaking, but i would be cautious about this, it isnt realy nothing out of the ordinary, by Marvel standards.

Actualy im more curious about this, then actualy sad, or angry or whataver. Curious is the most honest word for it, curious, to see how they are going to pull it.
Honestly speaking i dont expect anything out of ordinary. Everything i read about it from marvel seems to point that way.
Publicity stunt or not, i actualy think its irrelevant, they have the right to change, create, or recreate their characters, and develop them as they see fit, and that is a thing they always did from day one. I dont see this any diferent, then killing off wolverine and having his son being the new wolverine, or falcon being the new cap, or Morales being the new spidey, or Bucky being the cap... its all part of the comics, they developed, they re-imagine. Sometimes it works allright, sometimes it doesnt.
I also find the whole publicity stunt, and diversity argument a big cliche to be honest. You cant do a thing without coming off as having an agenda behind it, wich it isnt always the master intend behind it.
Im unsure if this will realy result in selling more copies of Thor comics, given the rage is going on. I think on the long run it will sell more if they are actualy decent or good. From that standpoint, i have no problem.

[RubiconDecision]

Sailor Moon will be the new Thor.

Marvel already changed Loki into a woman for a while....

Screw it, i dont care anymore, my body is ready, i wanna see it NOW...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Somehow these images are at odds with an appreciation for Persepolis. The cognitive dissonance is jarring. (It looks the most like boobs).

Wouldn't Domai be more fulfilling than a female Thor, as one could peruse that anytime at one's leisure.

[Knight of Heaven]

Somehow these images are at odds with an appreciation for Persepolis. The cognitive dissonance is jarring. (It looks the most like boobs).

Wouldn't Domai be more fulfilling than a female Thor, as one could peruse that anytime at one's leisure.

It was a joke btw.... regardless there is a diference between enjoying a thing for what it is, and comparing it to marvel comics wich it isnt a thing to take it serious on principle at all, to a comic like persepolis anyway.

It couldnt be more of a dissonance right there. How can you compare it on even terms is behond me.
It is also short sighted to assume one cant apreciate two completely diferent things.

[RubiconDecision]

It was a joke btw.... regardless there is a diference between enjoying a thing for what it is, and comparing it to marvel comics wich it isnt a thing to take it serious on principle at all, to a comic like persepolis anyway.

It couldnt be more of a dissonance right there. How can you compare it on even terms is behond me.
It is also short sighted to assume one cant apreciate two completely diferent things.

Yep, I took it as a joke on your part, used a smilie that looks like boobs, and then even mentioned the rather famous free and classy nude art site Domai. Lighten up.

[Knight of Heaven]

Yep, I took it as a joke on your part, used a smilie that looks like boobs, and then even mentioned the rather famous free and classy nude art site Domai. Lighten up.

fine fine, lets raise the prestige level on this thread
if you must know this is my favorite comic book character-

[RubiconDecision]

Is Corto popular? I've never heard of it. It began in France, correct?
http://www.corto-thegame.com/en.html


Could a supervillain like Thanos ever be a woman? Maybe, but it would be kind of redundant. His character impressed me almost as much as Galactus.

I've just never felt threatened enough by a woman, though the personification of Death is frequently depicted as a woman. She appears in the Sandman, but not in a fearsome way. In the earliest Avengers, Death is the mistress of Thanos.

I guess my point is that power and fear is personified by males usually, and death would seem to be the strongest, but isn't drawn that way typically.

Thor and Hel's wrestling match. The appearance of Hel would be a welcome addition to a comic book.

Hel, the origin for the Christian Hell (which is abiblical versus Gehenna), is fearsome and terrible and even Thor is concerned, then worried, then fearful in turns.
Marvel weakly did that with Hela.

[Condottiere 40K]

From bodacious




to kawaii.

[RubiconDecision]

Somehow, dwelling too much on breast size and facial symmetry seriously detracts from a female superhero from being relevant within a graphic novel. It presumes a set of standards for men that involve muscles and a superpower or at least a crime fighting ability versus the former which has nothing to do with some manner of opposing injustice. So it's back to a kind of female pecking order based upon attraction.

How is that about diversity or about making something marketable for female consumers? It's honestly reducing female superheros to being a model for a skin rag. It's back to I'd more be more impressed by a graphic novel that treated the abilities and character qualities of a superhero and to have it to be the same for male and female characters.

Pretty sells, I guess, but isn't that extremely shallow? As a father to sons and daughters, that's the opposite of what I teach them. Making some woman valuable only based upon sex appeal is tremendously anachronistic. The ugly but qualified female fighter need not apply if she can't at least fill a C cup.

[Inhuman One]

Well the boobs is obviously where their power is.. the bigger the boobs, the more power they have.. hence why power girl is practicly a porn star.

Should really not be that hard to come up with some good female superheroes though that are realistic.. let's see..

How about a woman that's some form of undead, but needs to drain life to look alive and healthy, slowly rotting away when not draining life?
Hence she'd have moral issues to deal with since she's doing her best to be a good person. She could possibly grow some plants or such to drain the life from that to be presentable when need be since plants are life too. But most of the time she would kind of look like a zombie since her flesh keeps rotting away. It could be quite a young woman, who was quite vain to begin so needs to deal with letting go of that vanity. I mean she doesnt need to drain life to live, just to restore her flesh. She could still live as a skeleton.

Another one could be a big tough woman.. kind of build like Brienne of Tarth, maybe slightly more muscular. Short hair too.
Not caring for her looks at all, but no dumb brute either. Simply just being all business about fighting crime and not caring about the opinions of others. Her power could be something thats really controlled and focused, fitting her proffesional attitude.

And lastly, how about an older woman? someone around sixty five.
She could have been that typical hot girl super fighter in her youth, but those years would be long gone.. it would show a future image of such a person. Maybe she could have children as well who are also superheroes, but she is simply not one to retire.. people her own age could bore her mostly since they didnt lead the life she had. Due to her powers she could still fight very well, and while past her prime she'd have wisdom to compensate for it. I mean whatever some upstart criminals could be trying, she'd have seen it already and be able to casually stop many villains and criminals simply by knowing where she should go and what to do.
She'd also be quite underestimated since she would really look her age and wouldnt be wearing any exiting outfits. She could be dismissed as a weak old lady.

[Condottiere 40K]

[RubiconDecision]

A character like Rorschach really impresses me. He has no superpower, no supreme intellect, only inner rage and some twisted sense of justice. He's not attractive and it's implied he has bad body odor too!

It would be great if a comic writer would be creative like that and make a female character who's so unique and unpolished and just plain raw like Rorscach. Not a beauty queen with DDD breasts and a sleek physique, but a drab, dour, masked kickass killer. But don't mention it to Marvel, they'd just put a woman in Rorschach's outfit and call it even instead of creating a new character.

If you know the story, his character worked in the garment industry, and his mask was some rejected fabric for a woman's dress! He's nothing like a Marvel superhero.

[Knight of Heaven]

Is Corto popular? I've never heard of it. It began in France, correct?

Is corto maltese popular? yes it is, its so Popular that even DC make constant homages to Hugo Pratt creation.
Dark knight Returns, whats the name of the island being atacked by the soviets?

Hugo Pratt was born in La valeta, so Corto is actualy a Maltese sailor hence his name. The thing the comics were translated in alot of languages as well, but lets say it begun in italy, in particular in Malta.
They became more popular In the form of short comics in a franco-belgian publication. There is a strong tradition of comics, in France and in Belgic, and Italy as well. The most knowned comics are probably children comics, like TinTin, and Asterix, but there is a sea of other comics aimed at every age, and maturity.

The character debuted in the serial Una ballata del mare salato (Ballad of the Salt Sea), one of several Pratt stories published in the first edition of the magazine Sgt.Kirk in July.^[1] The story centers around smugglers and pirates in the World War I-era Pacific Islands. In 1970, Pratt moved to France and began a series of short Corto Maltese stories for the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pif gadget, an arrangement lasting four years and producing many 20 page stories. In 1974 he returned to full-length stories, sending Corto to 1918 Siberia in the story Corte sconta detta arcana (Corto Maltese in Siberia), first serialised in the Italian comics magazine Linus.

In 1976, Ballad of the Salt Sea was published in book format and was awarded the prize for best foreign realistic comic album at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.^[2]
Pratt continued to produce new stories over the next two decades, many first appearing in the eponymous comics magazine Corto Maltese, until 1988 when the final story Mu was serialised, ending in June 1989.

Hugo Pratt is actualy a quite Big name of comics worldwide.
Here is some stuff i knew about the character and what it meant, and others i didnt have a clue until now go figure.

Corto Maltese (whose name is possibly derived from the Venetian Corte Maltese - Courtyard of the Maltese, today Corte Contarini del Bovolo, next to Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo) is a laconic sea captain adventuring during the early 20th century (1900-1920s). A "rogue with a heart of gold", he is tolerant and sympathetic to the underdog. Born in Valletta on July 10, 1887, he is a son of a British sailor from Cornwall and a gypsy Andalusian witch and prostitute known as "La Niña de Gibraltar". As a boy growing up in the Jewish quarter of Córdoba, Maltese discovered that he had no fate line on his palm and therefore carved his own with his father's razor, determining that his fate was his to choose. Although maintaining a neutral position, Corto instinctively supports the disadvantaged and oppressed. Corto Maltese's character is based on a famous Polish adventurer, author and explorer Ossendowski, who collaborated with Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, among others.
The character embodies the author's skepticism of national, ideological, and religious assertions. Corto befriends people from all walks of life, including the murderous Russian Rasputin (no relation with the historical figure, apart from physical resemblance and some character traits), British heir Tristan Bantam, Voodoo priestess Gold Mouth and Czech academic Jeremiah Steiner. He also knows and meets various real-life historical figures, including Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Butch Cassidy, James Joyce, Gabriele D'Annunzio, Frederick Rolfe, Joseph Conrad, Sukhbaatar, John Reed, White Russian general Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, Enver Pasha of Turkey and Sergei Semenov, modelled after Grigory Semyonov. His acquaintances treat him with great respect, as when a telephone call to Joseph Stalin frees him from arrest when he is threatened with execution on the border of Turkey and Armenia.
Corto's favourite reading is Utopia by Thomas More, but he never finished it. He also read books by London, Lugones, Stevenson, Melville and Conrad.
Corto Maltese stories range from straight historical adventure to occult dream sequences. He is present when the Red Baron is shot down, helps the Jivaros in South America, and flees Fascists in Venice, but also unwittingly helps Merlin and Oberon to defend Britain and helps Tristan Bantam to visit the lost continent of Mu.
Chronologically, the first Corto Maltese adventure, La giovinezza (The Early Years), happens during the Russo-Japanese War. In other albums he experiences the Great War in several locations, participates in the Russian Civil War after the October Revolution, and appears during the early stages of Fascist Italy. In a separate series by Pratt, Gli Scorpioni del Deserto (The Desert Scorpions) he is described as disappearing in Spain during the Spanish Civil War.

There was film made in 2005 or 2006 totaly recomend if you like good animation, last one that i know at least. There is a series of animated films.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The ballad of the salt sea in particular

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

There was also a TV animated series not long ago if im not mistaken.

[saxdude]

I'm going to ignore that shameful thing you called a rebuttal or whatever to again, just point out:

Marvel comics have been consistantly rebooted and transformed into whatever fad is passing by for decades, Mainstream comics have long since had any credibility in sustaining a story and a consistant caracter arc for this to be anything more than yet another, mysogonistic comic book nerd rant.

A very good argument could be made as to why comic book writers would prefer to genderbend an established character as opposed to make an interesting female hero/villian from the get go, or as to why interesting female characters are axed off or ignored by the general audience.

But as far as the outrage over this goes, it rather speaks volumes about the people whose panties knotted up over such a pointless change, because the problem here clearly seems to be Thor, a fictional character, being a woman, as opposed to there not being good original female characters.

[Mangalore]

...

A very good argument could be made as to why comic book writers would prefer to genderbend an established character as opposed to make an interesting female hero/villian from the get go, or as to why interesting female characters are axed off or ignored by the general audience.
....

Probably the same reason Hollywood is sniffing cocaine and glue out of the belly button of anything remotely looking like brand recognition in a sleazy mini skirt.

[RubiconDecision]

I'm going to ignore that shameful thing you called a rebuttal or whatever to again, just point out:

Marvel comics have been consistantly rebooted and transformed into whatever fad is passing by for decades, Mainstream comics have long since had any credibility in sustaining a story and a consistant caracter arc for this to be anything more than yet another, mysogonistic comic book nerd rant.

A very good argument could be made as to why comic book writers would prefer to genderbend an established character as opposed to make an interesting female hero/villian from the get go, or as to why interesting female characters are axed off or ignored by the general audience.

But as far as the outrage over this goes, it rather speaks volumes about the people whose panties knotted up over such a pointless change, because the problem here clearly seems to be Thor, a fictional character, being a woman, as opposed to there not being good original female characters.

If any posts are rants, that was sure was. The post is indicative and representative of name-calling, which might be effective to the illiterate, but is ineffective to the educated, because misogynistic means a hatred of women. If anything, the vast majority of my posts are about feminism and being an apologist for diverse minority representation that's authentic. That's not replacing a male character with a female. That's not showing females as big boob models. That's not breaking the hero's journey, but creating one tailored for women and to men to help them understand that process in their female peers.

I'm sorry you don't get that. You probably want that, but accomplishing that by a female Thor is not the answer. It's the weakest possible way to accomplish this. Watch the female fan's response to diversity in comics to see a very similar attitude to my own posts.

Black ink tones on an African-American Iron Man are not about diversity. Excellent cultural and historical background of African-American or African culture ,that the writer uses in a comic like Black Panther, is about diversity and happened in the sixties.

Realistic writing by Gail Simone and fostering female artists in the comic industry at DC Comics is about diversity. So too is the Persopolis comic or the Mirka character in her comics. That has nothing to do with big boobs in bustiers and great diversions from the myths.

Hel is one of the most powerful Norse beings and who could easily defeat Thor, but doesn't look like an artificial Elton John glasses wearing buxom model, but does look like an old crone, shabbily dressed, who could without a muscular physique utterly annihilate Thor. The Norse storytellers and writers understood that kind of diversity and in the ancient era, and then written down in the medieval era. So it's entirely within the capacity of writers to discuss these things, to portray these things, to show the power of women in conflict with men and with either on the hero's journey.

That's diversity in literature, and yes, comics can elevate themselves to literary status, and have done so, and won the Eisner and the Hugo. We wouldn't have detective, horror, western, and science fiction novels today without the history of pulp fiction to make them acceptable literature. That's why it's not just a comic book, and the marginal depiction of women in Marvel comics is largely failing to achieve that status, but they're doing a great job of making money from a gullible public by pretending to be diverse with comic books in film.