A Guide to Recognizing Your Thors

One of Battleworld’s more interesting aspects is that it is policed by a squadron of Thors, hammer-wielding Worthy-types whose weapons were forged in dying stars created – as far as they know – by God Emperor Doom. This toe-headed team of tough guys has its own Secret Wars series as of today, by Jason Aaron and Chris Sprouse. In honor of the new book, here’s a look at the few, the proud, the ones who’ve been able to lift mighty Mjolnir or one of its similarly crafted cousin-hammers.

The Odinson: The original Mjolnir-swinging, Goldilocksing, Loki-fighting, god-of-thundering Avenger. First appearance: Journey Into Mystery #83, August 1962.

Jane Foster: Not necessarily the current Thor, because the current Thor is many Thors, but the Thor pre- and post-Secret Wars (she was among the small crew that made it off Earth 616 in Reed Richards’ Raft). When the Odinson is rendered un-Worthy by original-recipe Nick Fury during last year’s Original Sin crossover, his cancer-stricken ex gives Mjolnir a whirl. First appearance: Journey Into Mystery #84, September 1962. First appearance as Thor: Thor #1, October 2014.

Beta Ray Bill: aka Bojack Norseman (joke credit: Al Kennedy of the House to Astonish podcast). A horse-faced alien seeking to protect his stable – er, race – does battle with the Odinson and finds himself Worthy. He has his own hammer, Stormbreaker. He also has a spaceship called Skuttlebutt. First appearance: The Mighty Thor #337, November 1983.

Thorlief Golmen, aka Ultimate Thor: Is he a peacenik whackadoo, or is he a god? Either way, let’s make him a government-sanctioned superhero. First appearance: The Ultimates #4, June 2002.

Eric “Thunderstrike” Masterson: In a move that can only be described as pandering to a vocal minority of 1990s lumberjacks, Marvel for a time gave the hammer to a common Midgard mortal, who also briefly had his own series that was essentially “What if we gave Thor an Image makeover?” Thunderstrike is the name of his mace, and probably also his penis. First appearance: The Mighty Thor #391, May 1988.

Throg: Walt Simonson, perhaps Thor’s most prolific and best-loved writer, transformed the Odinson into a frog for a time in the 1980s. He got better, but eventually another character, a former college football star named Simon Walterson (homage much?) became the Frog of Thunder, wielding a hammer that was actually a sliver of the original Mjolnir. First appearance: The Mighty Thor #364: February 1986.

Ragnarok: aka that Thor clone from Civil War that killed Bill Foster. Not really a Thor. Not really Mjolnir. Still deadly. First appearance: Civil War #3, July 2006.

Odin: Thor’s father, naturally, was also able to lift the hammer. However, once his son lost that ability last year, so, too, did Odin, which, as you can imagine, he found incredibly emasculating. First appearance: Journey Into Mystery #85, October 1962.

Steve Rogers: Because OF COURSE Captain America is Worthy. First picked up a hammer: The Mighty Thor #390, April 1988.

Storm: In a 1980s X-Men story, Loki presents Storm, then depowered and rocking that badass Mohawk and leather vest, with an imitation hammer called Stormcaster. First picked up a hammer: Uncanny X-Men Annual #9, 1985.

Deadpool: “There is a man … with a typewriter.” Christopher Priest, who wrote Deadpool after Joe Kelly, is primarily responsible for Wade Wilson’s awareness of being a comic book character, as a direct result of a storyline in which Loki gives DP an imitation hammer to annoy his brother. During this storyline, Deadpool also briefly believes Loki to be his father. First picked up a hammer: Deadpool #37, February 2000.

Superman: Proving that being Worthy knows no multiversal bounds, Superman picked up both Thor’s hammer and Captain America’s shield – in the same panel, no less – to battle the villain Krona in the 2003-04 intercompany crossover JLA/Avengers by Kurt Busiek and George Perez.

Also there were all those hammers that got meted out during Fear Itself, but … meh.

In addition to writing for The Matt Signal, Dan Grote is now the official comics blogger for The Press of Atlantic City. New posts appear Wednesday mornings at PressofAC.com/Life. His new novel, Magic Pier, is available however you get your books online. He and Matt have been friends since the days when Onslaught was just a glimmer in Charles Xavier's eye. Follow @danielpgrote on Twitter.

Oh Warren, You and Your Ideas

Writer Warren Ellis launches a new volume of Moon Knight for Marvel this week, with art by Declan Shalvey. In many ways, Ellis is the perfect writer for this character, whom he previously worked with in a six-issue run on Secret Avengers in 2011. Ellis is a man who loves throwing high-concept, futuristic, pseudoscientific ideas at the wall to see if they stick, and Moon Knight is the vessel of vengeance for an Egyptian moon god or something. In a recent CBR interview, Ellis said of writing MK, “You can get really weird. Also, you can provide, as an entire plotline, the sentence ‘punching ghosts,’ and nobody bats an eyelid.” Stop. You had me at hello, I’m Warren Ellis.

As we look to Moon Knight’s future, let us also look to the past, to but a small sampling of Ellis’ most outré ideas:

The alien race that killed its own god (Excalibur): In 1994, Marvel gave Ellis the then-third-tier X-book Excalibur to infuse with his dark, distinctly British sensibility. Among his first acts was creating the snarky but haunted spook Pete Wisdom and teaming him up with not-a-girl, not-yet-a-woman Kitty Pryde. Together they discovered Wisdom's employer, Black Air, was experimenting on an alien race called the Uncreated, self-named because they killed their own deity as a means to conquer their inferiority complex. After doing so, the race traveled the stars looking to exterminate any lifeforms that did not embrace their atheism. Ellis next used the Uncreated in 1995's Starjammers miniseries, in which the titular space pirates defeated the nasties by projecting an image of their god, leading the Uncreated to commit seppuku. (For more on Ellis’ Excalibur run, read Matt’s Recommended Reading column from last May.)

The most obvious visual representation of Darwinism ever? (Storm 1-4): Ellis and Terry Dodson did a four-issue Storm mini in early 1996 that picked up a few dangling Morlock/Gene Nation plot threads from earlier in the ’90s. Storm is shunted into an alternate dimension run by Colossus’ brother Mikhail Rasputin, last seen flooding the Morlock tunnels and disappearing with the undercity dwellers. In Rasputin’s pocket world, where time moves in erratic patterns, the Morlocks were trained to become Gene Nation terrorists by climbing The Hill. Literally, every denizen of this world had to scale and survive a giant hill to prove their fitness and worth to Rasputin.

The bowel disrupter (Transmetropolitan): “Now, what setting? Watery, loose … prolapse.” One of Ellis’ greatest triumphs and crazy-idea farms is this 60-issue Vertigo series starring Spider Jerusalem, a futuristic Hunter S. Thompson whose work for The Word uncovers the dirty deeds of one president after another and puts a big old target on his back. It’s a near-future world in which people fight for the right to change species and there’s a children’s show called “Sex Puppets.” There’s also a gun that makes people poop themselves, which Jerusalem uses to threaten stripper turned “filthy assistant” Channon Yarrow and actually uses on the president known as The Beast in issue #4 in 1997.

Superman and Batman as a gay power couple (The Authority): Ellis ported Superman analogue Apollo and Batman analogue Midnighter from Stormwatch to The Authority. In their new book, the two were revealed to be a gay couple. Back in 1999, this didn't happen all that often, and so the book received a GLAAD award. Arguably these two paved the way for other gay couples in comics such as Northstar and Kyle Jinadu, Batwoman and Maggie Sawyer, and Wiccan and Hulkling.

Right-tool-for-the-job expert-dispatch service (Global Frequency): This 2002-04 Wildstorm book may be the best example of what happens when Ellis favors concepts over characters. Global Frequency was a 1,001-member organization (about on par with Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers cast) of the world’s foremost experts in their field, who are called in as crises warrant based on field of expertise and proximity. In a way it was like a super-serious version of G.I. Joe, with a mix of military, intelligence, scientists, ex-cons and the like all working to save the world, except the characters didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to decipher who the Shipwreck and Roadblock analogues were. Even the artists changed from issue to issue. Also it was almost a TV show.

The guy who buggers cars (Two-Step): In 2003-04, Ellis wrote a quickie three-issue miniseries for Wildstorm with Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti about a bored, cheeky London camgirl named Rosi and a zen gun-for-hire named Tony who run afoul of a gang whose trademark is having artificially large wedding tackle. Among their number is a Baby Huey of a man named Ron who enjoys having sex with cars to the point where they explode. According to TLC’s My Strange Addiction, this is a real thing.

Having Iron Man inside you (Iron Man: Extremis): In 2005-06, Ellis got to tinker with Iron Man's origin, tying the creation of the first Iron Man suit to the war in Afghanistan as part of a six-issue arc that introduces the concept of Extremis, a nanotech virus that allows fir the constant healing and enhancing of the body in the latest attempt to re-create the Super Soldier Serum that transformed Steve Rogers into Captain America. Tony infects himself with Extremis and in so doing becomes one with Iron Man, allowing parts of it into his bones and give his brain a complete upgrade. Elements of the Extremis story were used in the Iron Man movies, including the updated origin story.

Supervillain marketing (Thunderbolts 110-121): Ellis took over Thunderbolts after Civil War in 2007-08. During that period, the ’Bolts were Colorado’s Initiative superteam and were run by a Tommy Lee Jones-looking Norman Osborn. Osborn used his business acumen (when he wasn’t using his crazy acumen) to market the team through Saturday morning cartoon commercials, brainwashing kids into rooting for psychotic killers like Bullseye, Venom and the Strucker twin who was in love with his dead sister.

Honorable mention: Warren’s novel ideas (Crooked Little Vein, 2007; Gun Machine, 2013): Ellis’ two published novels are every bit as idea-rich as his comics. Without going too deep into either, it should be noted that in Crooked Little Vein, the two main characters inject saline into their genitals to artificially swell them and then have sex, and in Gun Machine, a Wall Street financier explains that the key to the future of financial-market real estate is pingback, the time it takes information to transmit from a given location, to ensure the fastest, most competitive buying and selling.