A-Force Puts Men On the Bench

Today I’ll be talking about Marvel’s A-Force by Marguerite Bennet & G. Willow Wilson, and I’m happy to tell you I swapped out the headline “A-Force To Be Reckoned With”. You’re welcome.

What is A-Force? The comic is one of many in the interim series called Secret Wars, that are in the process of reshaping the entire Marvel universe. The whole Secret Wars things is a mess that I never bothered wrapping my head around, and I think the purpose of it is to kill out some less profitable comics from the production line. Initially I just wanted to keep track of where Ms. Marvel and Thor ends up when it’s over, but then I learned that the author of Ms. Marvel is co-writing this all female led gang of super heroes called A-Force.

Week 37 Follow Up

Did you know Swedes talks about weeks when scheduling stuff? As in, “My annual leave starts week 34,” or “Our deadline is week 40.” It’s the most idiotic thing, because nobody except school teachers knows which weekday it is. Then Google calender doesn’t show which week it is, so we need to use web pages like whatweekisit.se with a smiling cartoon lady on it, who look suspiciously much like a teacher. At least once a week you hear someone asking, “What week is it?” It’s almost as silly as the imperial system, though there is some predictability in the fact that the week system only counts from 1 to 52 and then starts over again from 1 without mixing in a logarithmic scale or anything.

Anyhow, this week is 37, and I kind of promised to follow up on The Malazan Book of the Fallen, as well as Thors. I thought I could say something about Midnight’s Blessing too.

Thors Issue #2 Is Lesson #1 in Toxic Masculinity

(This is a stand-alone follow up on my post Marvel’s First Issue of “Thors” Is a Train Wreck By Men, For Men, About Men)

I ended my subscription of Thors, to the let-down of my comics dealer. “But you liked Thor so much!” he said, and asked if I wanted him to renew my subscription when Secret Wars ends and Thor will be about girl power again. I said no, because Thors crushed my hope so thoroughly that the same writer that wrote Thor and then Thors could ever be able to write a women friendly comic again. It even took away my hope that he could write a decent comic.

Compared to how bad Thors #1 was then, how bad was Thors #2?

Marvel’s First Issue of “Thors” Is a Train Wreck By Men, For Men, About Men

This post contains spoilers for Thors issue #1 2015. Thors (in plural) is the continuation of the Thor series, where issue #1-8 2014 sparks the story of the new, female Thor. This post does not spoil that story, and nothing really important happens in Thors, so you’re probably good reading this unless you’re a super hardcore fan (in which case I’m sure you already read Thors).

If you’re new to Marvel like me, maybe you didn’t know they mess around with multiple universes in their stories. I guess it’s something you’ve got to do when you’ve been pumping out comics for over 70 years and have over 8000 characters to keep track of. Right now Marvel is cleaning up their house, killing off a ton of story lines, characters and comic books in a big and pretty complex story arch they call Secret Wars. They mash everything together in some kind of final fight, and at the end of it fewer comic titles will emerge. I’m not going into details, but Thors is a new temporary series that’s a part of this.