I'm sorry that this thing is going to sound really petty. But the one thing I have always hated about Thor is his Hair colour, that's right his hair colour. Now Thor in the comics has Blonde hair if you know anything about Norse and Germanic mythology you would know that Thor is a Red-haired Bearded character. For some reason this pisses me off I really don't know why.
Thor
Character » Thor appears in 8598 issues.
Thor Odinson is the All-father of Asgard /God of Thunder, offspring of All-Father Odin & Elder-Goddess Gaea. Combining the powers of both realms makes him an elder-god hybrid and a being of no perceivable limits. Armed with his enchanted Uru hammer Mjolnir which helps him to channel his godly energies. The mightiest and the most beloved warrior in all of Asgard, a staunch ally for good and one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse/omniverse. Thor is also a founding member of the Avengers.
The one thing that has always got on my nerves about Thor.
It's been bugging me a little ever since I did a bit deeper research (read: Wikipedia) on Scandinavian mythology.
If it makes you feel better, DC Comics version of Thor who briefly appeared in a few issues of the Jack Kirby's Fourth world series had red hair and red facial hair. :P
You'd want to check out Red Norvell then, he was basically supposed to replace Thor as thunder God when Thor was "supposed" to be killed by the Midgard Serpent. He's basically the norse Thor, I think I prefer the blonde version of Thor myself though.
Marvel's Thor is not supposed to be exactly like the actual Thor of myth, he's just based on him.
Marvel's version is blond and beardless, but that doesn't bother me because his looks are still consistent with being Norse/Scandanavian.
Matter of fact; I like Marvel's version better than the mythical one.
" Marvel's Thor is not supposed to be exactly like the actual Thor of myth, he's just based on him. Marvel's version is blond and beardless, but that doesn't bother me because his looks are still consistent with being Norse/Scandanavian. Matter of fact; I like Marvel's version better than the mythical one. "Same here, some people are just too picky.
"im ok with the blond hair its the long hair that always annoyed me "
The long hair threw me off when I was a kid because back then only girls and hippies had long hair.
I got used to it fairly quickly, though. Now, along with Conan, I can't imagine Thor without long hair. It suits him
I got to say, Thor would look so strange without long hair. Beard or no beard, he looks fine with whatever. I'm just kind of used to the whole blonde hair thing.
The Norse red haired Thor already existed within the Marvel U. He died in the Ragnarok prior to the creation of the Asgard and all characters therein that exist in Marvel currently.
This...a story was actually told explaining it." The Norse red haired Thor already existed within the Marvel U. He died in the Ragnarok prior to the creation of the Asgard and all characters therein that exist in Marvel currently. "
it basically had what "we" know as the mythological Thor, Odin, Loki, etc....they all died in Ragnorok and from them were born the NEW versions...blonde thor et al.
it actually wasn't as bad a story as it sounds.
but there ya go. Blonde Thor isn't the Thor from mythology..he's a new Thor, reborn from the cycle of Ragnorok that killed off the old Thor et al.
a cycle I believe our beloved Blonde stopped did he not?
There are quite a few parts of the Myth that Marvel ignored some of which would make for great stories, like Thor's 3 kids,Modi, Magni, and Thrud, Thor Girl would've been much easier to take had she been Thor's daughter(Thrud) or they could have thrown one or both of his sons on the young avengers or maybe avengers academy
" I'm sorry that this thing is going to sound really petty. But the one thing I have always hated about Thor is his Hair colour, that's right his hair colour. Now Thor in the comics has Blonde hair if you know anything about Norse and Germanic mythology you would know that Thor is a Red-haired Bearded character. For some reason this pisses me off I really don't know why. "The MIGHTY Thor is Marvel's character.They can do what they want with him.I think he's better off blonde.
Thor has been reborn, Stan Lee's Thor is 10,000 years old and based on myth but not the real Thor of myth. He did once have red hair in Marvel history but he always dies and is reborn in an everlasting cycle of life and death, hes come back as blond for a while now. This doom and reincarnation is the cycle of Asgard
I like how he's not the exact Thor of myth
I agree with the OP, but I'm going to take it a little bit further.
First though, let's dispense with this idea that "Marvel's Thor isn't supposed to be the Thor of mythology, he's only based on that character". No. That doesn't square with what we see in the comics - in the MU, Thor is the GOD of Thunder...not the Aesir of Thunder, or the Asgardian of Storm, or the Extradimensional Alien of Inclement Weather. His father is Odin, he's battled the Midgard Serpent, he lives in Asgard, his hammer is called Mjolnir (no Stan, your brother didn't "make up" that name), he eats the magic Golden Apples of Idun to stay young, etc. etc.
Clearly MU Thor is supposed to beThor, just transposed into Superhero-world. Just as clear, is that while Stan & Jack were doing research for the character, they didn't do very much. Stan probably read some Edith Hamilton or Bulfinch for a couple hours one night, thought it was cool enough, but never explored the mythology beyond a cursory glance. Same thing with Jack. That's why MU-Thor is blond, not because they made a concious, deliberate effort to radically change the character of Thor into a completely different character (which is what they did). They simply got that detail wrong. They got other details wrong, too, and if they had not, MU Thor would be much cooler.
So yeah, the blond hair grates on my nerves too. Here's some other stuff Stan & Jack got wrong:
-The idea that Odin would banish Thor in order to teach him humility. Humility-as-a-virtue makes no sense when you're talking about Viking Gods. Humility-as-a-virtue is not a Viking or a Warrior concept, and it sure isn't something that Viking Warrior GODS would worry about. The Aesir are warriors and cosmic badasses - they know it, you know it, and they know you know it. Humility-as-a-virtue wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to them, any more than it would to Conan the Cimmerian or Galactus.
-MU's Thor is a bit too goody-goody. In the myths, he is the defender of Midgard, and the preferred god of common farmers, so he's definitely a friend-of-humanity and certainly not bad or malicious, but he also likes drinking, fighting, and wenching. He's the Viking ideal. In terms of personality, he's more like Robert E. Howard's Conan than Sir Galahad.
-Loki isn't supposed to be Thor's adopted-brother. He's Odin's blood-brother. Which kind of makes him Thor's uncle.
-A Viking God speaking Elizabethan English? That's just Stan goofing around, so this one's not that big a deal. Still silly, though.
-Dwarfs made Thor's hammer, Odin had nothing to do with it.
-In most of the myths, Loki isn't a bad guy. He's definitely a mischievous practical joker and often a pain-in-the-ass, but not really evil. He goes on adventures with Thor all the time. They make a fun brains-and-brawn duo. In later myths, Loki is definitely a bad guy, though, so I can't really say that MU's Loki is all that wrong, but imagine how MU's Thor series would look if they went with old-school Loki & picked some other entity as the main villain of the series. It would have been cool. (and Loki's supposed to be handsome and beautiful. He's the one who should be the baby-faced blond, not Thor.)
-MU-Thor's getup is awful. Granted, he looks slightly less stupid these days, but the basic torso-circle motif is still there. I love Jack Kirby, but nobody's perfect, and Jack really dropped the ball when he came up with Thor's look.
@typingkira: yeh Definetley as we "now" know. The common person has accepted the false fact that every single northman has blonde hair. This is very incorrect as red hair was also a very common trait especially in the Middle Ages. A lot of these red haired viking raiders stayed in places like Scotland and Ireland, coinsedently the two places with the most redheads and the two places the Vikings raided most frequently.
@john_valentine: but redheads do dirty things...
I've never had a problem with the Marvel version of Thor. I've had more problems with his portrayal since his return in 2007 by certain creators.
So yeah, the blond hair grates on my nerves too. Here's some other stuff Stan & Jack got wrong:
-The idea that Odin would banish Thor in order to teach him humility. Humility-as-a-virtue makes no sense when you're talking about Viking Gods. Humility-as-a-virtue is not a Viking or a Warrior concept, and it sure isn't something that Viking Warrior GODS would worry about. The Aesir are warriors and cosmic badasses - they know it, you know it, and they know you know it. Humility-as-a-virtue wouldn't make any sense whatsoever to them, any more than it would to Conan the Cimmerian or Galactus.
-MU's Thor is a bit too goody-goody. In the myths, he is the defender of Midgard, and the preferred god of common farmers, so he's definitely a friend-of-humanity and certainly not bad or malicious, but he also likes drinking, fighting, and wenching. He's the Viking ideal. In terms of personality, he's more like Robert E. Howard's Conan than Sir Galahad.
-Loki isn't supposed to be Thor's adopted-brother. He's Odin's blood-brother. Which kind of makes him Thor's uncle.
-A Viking God speaking Elizabethan English? That's just Stan goofing around, so this one's not that big a deal. Still silly, though.
-Dwarfs made Thor's hammer, Odin had nothing to do with it.
-In most of the myths, Loki isn't a bad guy. He's definitely a mischievous practical joker and often a pain-in-the-ass, but not really evil. He goes on adventures with Thor all the time. They make a fun brains-and-brawn duo. In later myths, Loki is definitely a bad guy, though, so I can't really say that MU's Loki is all that wrong, but imagine how MU's Thor series would look if they went with old-school Loki & picked some other entity as the main villain of the series. It would have been cool. (and Loki's supposed to be handsome and beautiful. He's the one who should be the baby-faced blond, not Thor.)
-MU-Thor's getup is awful. Granted, he looks slightly less stupid these days, but the basic torso-circle motif is still there. I love Jack Kirby, but nobody's perfect, and Jack really dropped the ball when he came up with Thor's look.
This has all been explained away somewhat by the Ragnarok cycle. That Thor existed, but in a previous lifetime. Regarding some of your other comments:
1. Young Thor has usually been depicted more like this. Current Thor is supposed to be a mature version.
2. Odin banished Thor not to become humble in the modern sense, but to show more forethought. His recklessness caused trouble across the nine worlds and Odin was tired of Thor being an embarrassment and having to clean up after him. Worse, in a universe like Marvel where other groups of gods existed Thor's actions could have provoked a war with another pantheon and caused far more trouble.
3. Loki being Thor's brother I think works better than the way the original myths had it for a comic book story. Its brains vs brawn brother vs brother story that is as old as civilzation and is much more emotional than if Loki was some outsider causing trouble or seeking power.
4. Loki as a good guy is what they have been doing with him the last few years.
Jack Kirby's design for Thor is one of Marvel's most classic and iconic looks. In fact, I think it's Jack Kirby's work on Fantastic Four and Thor that stands out above the rest of the Silver Age stuff.
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