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that’s amazing

Amazing stuff. Comic artwork in general has just improved in leaps and bounds over the past 15 years or so.

Love Thor Odinson attempting the broke back pose.

The letters column at the end of Thor: God of Thunder #25 states pretty plainly that there is a lot of mystery behind who she is and why she’s now infused with the power of Thor. Giving the game away in the first issue of the new series would be pretty dumb if they’re trying to achieve this sort of build.

There are countless series where the first issue or appearance does not explain the origin of the character. (Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Spider-Man’s new costume, Hobgoblin…)

Now, imagine Amazing Spider-Man #252, with the cover showing Spider-Man in a black costume. But then you open the comic, and it’s all about Peter Parker adjusting to the time on the Warworld, debriefing himself, and getting back to “normal”. No black costume seen.

I think argument isn’t about them not explaining whats the deal with She-Thor but that she didn’t even appear in this issue.

That logo — woof, ugh, ick…

Hope it doesn’t last long. I’m getting tired of all the gimmicks, and would rather just have good story arcs.

Perhaps it will be a good story.

I don’t necessarily have a strong feeling one way or the other, but the trend I’ve seen over the years when it comes to complaints about things like this is as follows:

Dear DC/Marvel:
1. Do not change the hero’s powers.
2. Do not change the hero’s secret identity or heroic identity.
3. Do not change the hero’s powers.
4. Do not change the hero’s costume.
5. Do not change the hero’s past.
6. Do not change the hero’s supporting cast.

However, you can now do whatever you want. Which is most likely having the hero fight a previous villain in a different way or create a new villain for him to fight.

I confess to being disappointed. I’m not a Thor reader, but picked this up to see what they were doing with the new female Thor. I got more information about her out of the cover than I did the contents of the book. I didn’t pick up the new book to read about the old Thor.

@glen simpson – i don’t think that fans are against any of the plot devices that you bring up, per say., i think that fans are just tired of those plot devices being used over and over and over again, with what seems to be increased frequency. i feel that fans are just looking for good stories without all the gimmicks attached. the exception being the recent “superior” spider-man story line, which was done in such a unique way that the fans didn’t seem to mind the hero being replaced yet once again.

Well, that’s an ugly logo.

The Robinson variant, third cover down. Someone has to say it.

“The hammer is my penis.”

Yes, the logo is really bad. They ‘should’ rework the logo so it does not need the white surround to make it legible. Make the outline stroke much thicker, so it can be reduced in size without disappearing.

I like the illustration on the main cover, and variant 2, even though it’s ‘too quiet’ for a typical comic cover. The other variants, including ‘ball-pein-of-my-loins’ variant, are not appealing to me. They look like concept mockups that didn’t make it past roughs. sorry.

Future fodder for ha-ha-look-at-these-stupid-old-comics blogs.

Dauterman’s great.

Yet again Marvel decides “Hey, let’s take a pretty great comic and shake it all up so everyone buys the first issue like wackos and then drops the title like crazy! Yes!” I’ve been loving this current take by Aaron and Ribic. Beautiful art and great stories (at least the first and third arcs. Most of us will ignore the second “Garney” one. ;) So obviously Marvel couldn’t have kept this great little book going without a shameless shake-up. The new artist does nothing for me, the premise is “done it before” and that logo is a monstrosity.

The interior pages look very good, but the covers are just plain horrible.
Hopefully the heavy lipstick this “not She-Thor” sports is Non-Smudge. Or maybe it’s tattooed.
Don’t like the concept, but reserve judgment. If the story is good that’s all that counts.
Can’t wait for the He-Thor to return.

@ Nathan Aaron
I thinks it’s just the fact that when comic runs lasted hundred of issues they also sold three four time today figures. Thor, Cap and Iron Man are they main characters and they are all selling less than Deadpool or Hawkeye, if a book doesn’t do profits one cannot expect it will keep going. Especially in a market where putting out a new issue one assures you the profits of five regular issues with just one and keeps the book above the previous sales for two or three quarters. I guess that despite the fact that the market is said to go well (or at least better in the past), today average figures are not enough for longform serialized stories, after a couple of years the sales are too low to keep going.

It seems Marvel is trying any strategy they can think of without any really sticking. They relaunched with new writers with so and so results, Hickman’s Avengers don’t do really well if you compare them to Justice League and Bendis X–men have a book selling well and the other so and so. They even tried to relaunch books with the same creative team, like Waid/Samnee Daredevil and many others, and it did worst. Now they are trying new launches with same writer / different artist and “peculiar” concepts than can get press (afro american Cap, female Thor) and is probably the smarter strategy the came up with because probably the interest will translate in better numbers for the first issue that’s the only thing that has the potential to translate to a long–running book.

I think in 2014 comic book companies need to realize they are NEVER going to sell in the numbers like they did back in their heyday. It isn’t going to happen. But hey, now they have respectable television programs, and big budget movies to help cover that. Instead of expecting Thor to sell 100,000 + copies each month like perhaps it did back in the 80′s, and just repeatedly recasting the creative teams, throwing in an event every three issues, and relaunching the title with a brand-new #1 every 25 issues, why not come to this realization that you have additional profits that hopefully help counter-balance your “losses” from the actual comic book sales today. And instead, just get great steady creative teams and allow them to do long form story lines without event interruption.

This relaunching is never going to work. What will we get to? Every issue is a new #1? Because at some point, that’ll have to happen. Sure, right now due to the “Walking Dead” speculators market, #1′s fly off the shelves, but at some point that’ll taper off. I just think they’re barking up the wrong trees.

DC’s Green Arrow is another one. That book is never going to sell 100,000 copies. (more than likely.) So they relaunched the book with the New52, it was a bomb, they replaced it out with Lemire and co. as the creative team, and it’s retained a steady 23,000 + or so readers every month. The key is STEADY. Also in today’s market, do you want to mess with a steady book? Don’t touch it if it’s working! Even if it’s not selling Justice League numbers (and seldom do!) You think this new creative team they shoved on the title will boost sales? Nah. I can bet you their feeble attempts at that will result in the book’s cancellation. Most days, comic book companies have NO clue when they’ve got something good under their noses.

Granted it was a few years ago now at this point, but Green Arrow was regularly a top selling book when Kevin Smith was doing it. Not to say that every book can be written by a multimedia star with a devoted following like Smith, but the ability to get these books to higher sales figures does exist.

Steady means they are slowly losing a little bit of money each month off the top. ‘Relaunches’ as they are being called is completely normal in TV, magazine, etc. I’m not sure why comic books have to be different from every other form of entertainment in that respect.

Marvel must’ve been SO desperate to try and boost Thor (+Captain America)’s rubbish sales and get attention that this was ALL the idea they had.

And all this “This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is Thor. This is the Thor of the Marvel Universe. But it’s unlike any Thor we’ve ever seen before,” says writer Jason Aaron” rubbish – this constant need by Marvel to keep endlessly justifying the new direction. They must be so insecure about it.

Jason Aaron’s been doing some good stuff with this title, so hopefully this will work. When he initially came on the book though he sounded like he had some long-term plans for what we wanted to do – was this meant to be part of it?

“And the Marvel Universe will never be the same!”

And the newest Marvel short-lived publicity stunt is unveiled, until the next cheap publicity stunt they can think of to get attention. NONE of these things lasts long. Spider-Man’s secret identity revealed to the world lasted all of one year even though Marvel claimed that it was the new status quo and wouldn’t magically go away. There was the death of Captain America, until he got better, but the mainstream media keeps buying into these stunts and reporting them like they are actual stories. I still place the blame for all of these cheap tricks at the feet of DC Comics who in 1993 had “The Death of Superman” which they milked for months and months and the mainstream press bought into all of it as Mike Carlin announced “The death of Superman is not a gimmick!” 20 years later we know different, although DC still pretends this was all a big deal (watch the special features interviews on the Death of Superman dvd).