I didn't argue that they were telling the same stories as they have with Thor Odinson; I said your characterization of Jane was not accurate. In fact, that they are not telling the exact same stories is precisely why books like this have value.
Well, you were the one who confidently claimed that nothing about the previous Thor character was lost, and therefore no one has any reason to miss anything. Do you now retract that claim?
Oh, and here's a simple checklist on deciding if portrayals of males is positive or pejorative, since you avoided having to support your overly broad claim that we're "overflowing with positivity!" with actual evidence:
1. Does any male sacrifice himself (through working a job, or risking/giving up his life) for a woman or family, which portrays him as disposable?
2. Is a father shown as absent/distant, stupid/incompetent with his children?
3. Are criminals more than 50% males?
You'll find almost no stories that pass all three of these, yet strangely no one wonders why there is suddenly so much pushback happening, or why there's a growing epidemic of male suicide (close to 10 times more men take their own lives), etc.
I would be more than happy if everyone could lobby for the stories they wanted. You could give feedback and support the creation of strong female characters whose stories constantly show that women can be even better than men at anything, like femThor or Ellen Ripley or Peggy Carter or Supergirl (though some of those don't stand out from each other enough unfortunately), and everyone else could encourage and support the creative ideas they wanted to see, and some that perhaps even went (gasp!) in a new and different direction.
Honestly though, considering how all "unwanted" attempts (i.e. not "progressive" enough) to create stories in comics (and other media) are currently attacked by silencing, shaming, and blocking tactics, I know that most who claim to want to "improve" culture don't actually want diversity (at least they don't want
intellectual or
political diversity, though they're all for
superficial diversity, which is the exact definition of pandering because it has no depth and is so forgetful). But bad...is bad.
After Earth wasn't bad because of racism.
Pixels wasn't bad because of anti-semitism. Some things just suck, no matter what social narrative you try to push around their lazy, incoherent, derivative, insultingly stupid, boring, insubstantive, and meager offerings.
When a comic offends someone and the publisher actually stands up for the original vision of their writers and creators, then and only then will I consider not using the word pandering. It has nothing to do with taste in art; only integrity.
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