By the Bristling Beard of Odin! The Thor Thread - Part 2

[Tao43]

WHOA now THAT'S a different Mjolnir!

What Mjolnir is this you speak of? Did I miss something?

 

[BoredGuy]

this one? :

Is the incantation always oriented in that direction?... It would bother the s**t outta me if I was Thor to see it upside down whenever I was holding it.
Or does it only appear when it's on the ground?
Or maybe... does it auto-flip, iPad-style??

 

[raimar]

Is this not the hammer anyone can lift? If so, what's the point? Thor Odinson will not be THor again? What is his name now?

 

[Vartha]

What Mjolnir is this you speak of? Did I miss something?

Mighty Thor 11 shows it doing something we've never see before.

Spoiler

It takes the form of Jane Foster while she's Thor

 

[Vartha]

no not that one, read above. lol

this one? :

Is the incantation always oriented in that direction?... It would bother the s**t outta me if I was Thor to see it upside down whenever I was holding it.
Or does it only appear when it's on the ground?
Or maybe... does it auto-flip, iPad-style??

Is this not the hammer anyone can lift? If so, what's the point? Thor Odinson will not be THor again? What is his name now?

I'll have to dig it up, but, I think Thor can only lift that one too, but, there's no worthy curse on it being a human made hammer

 

[BoredGuy]

I recall Ultimate U Magneto used his powers to lift it in Ultimatum, unless something changed after that

Mighty Thor 11 shows it doing something we've never see before.

Spoiler

It takes the form of Jane Foster while she's Thor

oh well that's... interesting

Once again, hate it when legacy characters are instantly better at everything than their predocessors
Jane's use of Mjolnir is leagues ahead of a person who's been using it for millenia
doesn't make sense

 

[Thor The Mighty]

I recall Ultimate U Magneto used his powers to lift it in Ultimatum, unless something changed after that



oh well that's... interesting

Once again, hate it when legacy characters are instantly better at everything than their predocessors
Jane's use of Mjolnir is leagues ahead of a person who's been using it for millenia
doesn't make sense

Exactly my point.

 

[Vartha]

I recall Ultimate U Magneto used his powers to lift it in Ultimatum, unless something changed after that



oh well that's... interesting

Once again, hate it when legacy characters are instantly better at everything than their predocessors
Jane's use of Mjolnir is leagues ahead of a person who's been using it for millenia
doesn't make sense

Maybe that's the point though. Maybe she has a newer way of thinking, even compared to the others that HAVE been worthy.

 

[Havok83]

Do people know that Jane is Thor? Does OG Thor know that? Is she still dying?

 

[Set]

Maybe that's the point though. Maybe she has a newer way of thinking, even compared to the others that HAVE been worthy.

Given how Jane is *regularly* wondering how Mjolnir does what it does, I don't see how anyone could have the idea that Jane is *better* than Thor at handling Mjolnir.

Mjolnir's the one doing this stuff. Not Jane. She was unconscious for this latest stunt, and Mjolnir did it anyway.

The question shouldn't be 'why is Jane better than Thor,' the question should be 'why is Mjolnir doing stuff it's never done before.' and 'Is that even Mjolnir?' Does it like Jane better? Has it been holding back for millennia? Has it's power grown over millennia, and Thor didn't realize it, just basically using it as a club that throws lightning? Or, was Mjolnir swapped out at some point for this new sentient version?

It could be funky if Fury said, 'That's not your hammer.' and Mjolnir dropped to the ground because it knew the gig was up. Thor *thought* he meant 'That's not YOUR hammer,' as in 'You're not worthy' (and Mjolnir plonking to the ground and refusing to be lifted afterwards helped reinforce that idea) when he actually meant, 'That thing you're holding isn't what you think it is...'

 

[Vartha]

Well Mjolnir does absorb the talents of previous holders.
Example, after Eric Masterson returned Mjolnir to Thor, Thor new things an emt would know how to do and Mjolnir/Jane does say it can only hold the figure and knowledge a short time. Maybe when Mjolnir turned on CLASSIC Thor years ago, it was because it was overloaded so to speak with absorbed knowledge it needed to release and Thor didn't KNOW that.

And yes, it WOULD be funky if that's the only reason Thor Odinson can't lift Mjolnir lol

 

[Vartha]

Do people know that Jane is Thor? Does OG Thor know that? Is she still dying?

I know Sam Wilson knows Jane is Thor and that she has cancer.
The Odinson has been locked away since after Secret Wars so he doesn't know

 

[BoredGuy]

So you're saying basically he needed to unplug and plug mjolnir back in??

where's that damn asgardian IT when you need 'em?!

 

[TheCorpulent1]

From what I can tell, when God Doom brought Ultimate Thor over to Battleworld (or created a new Ultimate Thor in his original image, or whatever he did for the Thors mini-series), he created a full-power Mjolnir, complete with worthiness enchantment and everything, because all of the Battleworld Thors' hammers had worthiness enchantments.

Either that, or, according to this, Odin created a version of Mjolnir that looked like the ugly Ultimate axe/hammer near the end of Ultimates 2, so that could have had the worthiness enchantment.
http://marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Mjolnir#Alternate_Reality_Versions

Odin was eventually reborn, and thus Thor would regain his godhood. Odin then gave Thor a second version of Mjölnir that resembled the Earth-made axe-hammer.

 

[Vartha]

That I didn't l know!

 

[Vartha]

What the hela! they rewrote Mjolnir's history/creation

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Eh, more like they expanded on it in interesting ways. I'm cool with the new origin. A cosmic "mother storm" is pretty badass--more so than Odin just commissioning it from the dwarves for no particular reason, at least.

 

[Vartha]

But it messes with the worthiness and other "family rights" issues.
One thing that comes to mind is how Thor could control Mjolnir all these years. Was it the Mother Storm who decided to torture Odin by allowing Thor to hold Mjolnir or truly Odin's enchantment?
Then the issue of Thor killing Bor being a family member and Mjolnir broke.
I don't recall ALL the times Odin has held Mjolnir but he HAS.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea, but, it messes with some of my fave stories lol

 

[Silicon Surfer]

As a staunch traditionalist, I think it is utter garbage and shows a great disrespect for those who have written the stories before them. When you write in a shared universe you do so withing the bounds of what has been previously established or not at all.

 

[Set]

But it messes with the worthiness and other "family rights" issues.
One thing that comes to mind is how Thor could control Mjolnir all these years. Was it the Mother Storm who decided to torture Odin by allowing Thor to hold Mjolnir or truly Odin's enchantment?

I got the impression that the storm was 'sleeping' in the hammer, until Fury woke it up with his whispered comment, which is why the hammer has almost never bothered to judge whether or not Thor was worthy during the course of a given storyline (such as when he's mind-controlled by the Red Skull and about to kill Wanda, and the enchantment apparently considers that 'worthy,' since the hammer didn't plonk from his hand right then and there, just to pick one of a dozen or more times throughout the last fifty years that the hammer, if it truly judged Thor minute-by-minute as to his 'worthiness' should have jumped ship).

As a retcon, it actually goes further than making sense, it actually makes sense of stuff that, previously (like Thor remaining 'worthy' even when he's trying to kill people for a Nazi), didn't make a lick of sense. It's almost as if the writer put more thought into this than a lot of Thor fans have, accustomed to decades of the hammer's worthiness clause not really ever working as such, or working inconsistently, at best.

So that's actually kind of cool.

And if the sentience inside Mjolnir was asleep/dormant all this time, it would explain why Odin could manhandle it, why it never 'spoke' to Thor before now, etc. The origin story of Mjolnir, in which the storm was trapped inside the uru, *which was then melted down in the heart of a star and forged into a hammer,* even kind of addresses the fact that the hammer has been broken in the past and the storm didn't 'get out.' If the uru can be melted without freeing the storm, then chipping off a chunk and later reforging it shouldn't 'free the storm' either.

I'm not 100% sold on the story, but it's consistent, and addresses a lot of the issues I see complained about most commonly.

What I don't see addressed is all those other hammers that have shown up over the years, like Beta Ray Thor's (also made by dwarves and Odin) or Storm's (from that annual in Asgard, made by dwarves and *Loki*). We didn't see enough of Storm's hammer in action to know if it was truly in a class with Mjolnir, and Stormbreaker seemed to explicitly be sharing some of Mjolnir's enchantments, in a scene that suggested even way, way back then, that Odin was somehow incapable of recreating the enchantment on Mjolnir, but had to transfer it to Stormbreaker, which seemed a bit off, since Odin claims to have created the original enchantment in the first place... A retcon-minded fellow seeking a No-Prize could rationalize that Odin actually needed to forge a bond between the hammers, so that Stormbreaker could tap into the power bound into Mjolnir, power he couldn't just snap his fingers and recreate as easily as a 'turn some dude into another dude' enchantment, which, historically, has been a cakewalk for him.

It seems to me that the story *could* all make sense, and fit into the continuity without a problem.

That doesn't necessarily make it a good idea, or guarantee a great story, but that's up to the writers, and going to end up a matter of subjective taste for a lot of readers.

I'm still liking this a lot better than the Eric Masterson/Thunderstrike years, or even Ultimate Thor over in the Ultimates verse, even if I do expect that Jane Foster is not going to be Thor for too very much longer. Hopefully she'll get to hold onto the role (and the hammer) long enough to go out like a Viking, in glorious battle, and not in a hospital bed somewhere, stuck full of tubes.

 

[Silicon Surfer]

Buri has also demonstrated the ability to handle the hammer.

 

[Vartha]

The storm was awake after the uru was forged into Mjolnir. Remember it wouldn't let Odin control it?

I got the impression that the storm was 'sleeping' in the hammer, until Fury woke it up with his whispered comment, which is why the hammer has almost never bothered to judge whether or not Thor was worthy during the course of a given storyline (such as when he's mind-controlled by the Red Skull and about to kill Wanda, and the enchantment apparently considers that 'worthy,' since the hammer didn't plonk from his hand right then and there, just to pick one of a dozen or more times throughout the last fifty years that the hammer, if it truly judged Thor minute-by-minute as to his 'worthiness' should have jumped ship).

As a retcon, it actually goes further than making sense, it actually makes sense of stuff that, previously (like Thor remaining 'worthy' even when he's trying to kill people for a Nazi), didn't make a lick of sense. It's almost as if the writer put more thought into this than a lot of Thor fans have, accustomed to decades of the hammer's worthiness clause not really ever working as such, or working inconsistently, at best.

So that's actually kind of cool.

And if the sentience inside Mjolnir was asleep/dormant all this time, it would explain why Odin could manhandle it, why it never 'spoke' to Thor before now, etc. The origin story of Mjolnir, in which the storm was trapped inside the uru, *which was then melted down in the heart of a star and forged into a hammer,* even kind of addresses the fact that the hammer has been broken in the past and the storm didn't 'get out.' If the uru can be melted without freeing the storm, then chipping off a chunk and later reforging it shouldn't 'free the storm' either.

I'm not 100% sold on the story, but it's consistent, and addresses a lot of the issues I see complained about most commonly.

What I don't see addressed is all those other hammers that have shown up over the years, like Beta Ray Thor's (also made by dwarves and Odin) or Storm's (from that annual in Asgard, made by dwarves and *Loki*). We didn't see enough of Storm's hammer in action to know if it was truly in a class with Mjolnir, and Stormbreaker seemed to explicitly be sharing some of Mjolnir's enchantments, in a scene that suggested even way, way back then, that Odin was somehow incapable of recreating the enchantment on Mjolnir, but had to transfer it to Stormbreaker, which seemed a bit off, since Odin claims to have created the original enchantment in the first place... A retcon-minded fellow seeking a No-Prize could rationalize that Odin actually needed to forge a bond between the hammers, so that Stormbreaker could tap into the power bound into Mjolnir, power he couldn't just snap his fingers and recreate as easily as a 'turn some dude into another dude' enchantment, which, historically, has been a cakewalk for him.

It seems to me that the story *could* all make sense, and fit into the continuity without a problem.

That doesn't necessarily make it a good idea, or guarantee a great story, but that's up to the writers, and going to end up a matter of subjective taste for a lot of readers.

I'm still liking this a lot better than the Eric Masterson/Thunderstrike years, or even Ultimate Thor over in the Ultimates verse, even if I do expect that Jane Foster is not going to be Thor for too very much longer. Hopefully she'll get to hold onto the role (and the hammer) long enough to go out like a Viking, in glorious battle, and not in a hospital bed somewhere, stuck full of tubes.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I don't see it as contradicting the worthiness enchantment at all. Actually, I think it helps to explain the worthiness enchantment's inconsistency over the years a bit more. Like, extremely noble superheroes like the Thing can't lift Mjolnir, but Eric friggin' Masterson could? I see it as the Mother Storm and Odin's enchantment being at odds with each other, and sometimes one wins out over the other. I agree with a lot of what Set mentioned, too.

She and Thor were drawn to each other because they're both intimately connected to storms, whereas Odin is not, and Odin's also her jailer and nemesis. Sometimes he could force the hammer to submit via his magic powers, sometimes not. One thing magic never really needs to be is consistent. The rules change and power dynamics shift; that's what makes it different from just "science by another name" (which I hate).

As for the stuff about Odin and Buri and other inconsistencies, that was a huge mess long before this secret origin of Mjolnir story. Odin supposedly created the hammer specifically for Thor, who earned it at first as an adult in a "Tales of Asgard" backup, then it was revealed in Son of Asgard that Thor dedicated his childhood to proving himself worthy before finally earning it as a teenager, then we learn that Thor actually wielded Jarnbjorn well into his adulthood before becoming worthy of Mjolnir. Buri's not a big deal because Odin's enchantment wouldn't block him and he's not a giant *****ebag like Odin, so the Mother Storm probably wouldn't mind. Bor is kind of a *****ebag, but he seemed to be as powerful as Odin, and we know Odin wielded Mjolnir before. It's not a big deal.

If you want to get into real inconsistencies, let's go all the way back to Journey Into Mystery and talk about that time Ulik picked Mjolnir up like no big deal because the idea of the worthiness enchantment hadn't really been set in stone yet. There may be some weird isolated incidents that don't quite match up, but the Mother Storm idea doesn't break anything big in a totally inexplicable way.

 

[BoredGuy]

anybody pickin up Unworthy today??

 

[All-Father]

anybody pickin up Unworthy today??

I just did (with a couple of variants, to "vote with my wallet"). It is pretty good and it's great to see Thor again, even though his journey will be pretty rough!

Also, there are some words from Aaron on what's coming in the future, and it seems really exciting.