Kapow! Attack of the feminist superheroes
The action in issue five of the new series of Thor is par for the course in a superhero comic. Absorbing Man, a granite-coloured lug with a wrecking ball, is on a crime spree and Thor, the Norse thunder god who joined the Marvel Comics universe in 1962, is trying to stop him. The crucial difference in this series is that Thor is now a woman.
“Thor? Are you kidding me? I’m supposed to call you Thor?” roars Absorbing Man. “Damn feminists are ruining everything!”
The scene is writer Jason Aaron’s pointed riposte to the uproar last summer when Marvel announced that the mantle of Thor would pass to a woman and some aggrieved male fans accused the company of pandering to political correctness. For people outside the comic-book world, the backlash seemed to confirm the old stereotype of fans as aggressively maladjusted man-boys, like Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.
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