Dude Looks Like A Lady -Thor Is Now A Woman?

 

Dodgy song reference aside, this is interesting news that I was completely oblivious too.

So a thank you goes out to the person who has brought this story to my attention, which i'll now give my opinion on.

 

First of lets get the context of this change laid out so that I can give a fair assessment.

Marvel has announced some changes to its main cast of the the 'Avengers' comics (if you don't who or what the Avengers are, you better return back under your rock), resulting in some permanent changes. The biggest news being that the character of Thor is to now become a woman. 
The original Thor (who was male) has now lost the right and thus become unworthy to wield his famous hammer, Mjolnir, which gives you title "Thor God of Thunder". So now a new worthy female character wields Mjolnir and has now become the new 'Thor'.

Also in conjunction with the new Marvel shake up, former black superhero Sam Wilson a.k.a 'Falcon', is to now take up the mantle of 'Captain America', who was previosly white character Steve Rogers.

There is a lot to talk about here and i'm not an expert on Marvel comics,but there are some general issue I would like to talk about, so lets start with the Thor news.

The primary cause for Thor's gender change is:

"THOR will be the 8^th title to feature a lead female protagonist and aims to speak directly to an audience that long was not the target for super hero comic books in America: women and girls."  - (Taken from Marvels Press release on their website)

 

So in short, the main reason for Thor's change is to attract a larger female audience for Marvel, and its fair to say that Captain America's change is possibly to get more a larger readership from non-white ethnicities. Now changes like this to comic book characters isn't exactly new, but this is one of the few times that the major/main characters have been changed. Usually it is side or minor characters that change and have their titles taken over by a different person, whether it be their race, gender, sexuality or any other differences.

My main issue with the changes to main character, like with Thor and Captain America, is that I feel that its just pandering  or creating a publicity stunt to attract a bigger audiences.

 

Don't get me wrong, I like there to be diversity and equality with comic book characters but, to me, this is the wrong way to go about it. In the Marvel comic universe (and DC for that matter), their are numerous characters that are of different ethnicity's and gender that I feel should be made more prominent.
Rather than making Thor a woman why aren't the other female, Avengers 'Black Window' or 'Spider-Woman', being made more prominent to appeal to a female readership? Or what about the other female Marvel characters, like the Hispanic character 'White Tiger' (See left) or any other the lesser known female characters? And rather than change Captain America's ethnicity, why not bring up Latino character 'Nova' or fan favourite characters like African character 'Black Panther' ?
What I am trying to say is is that there is a wealth of Marvel character of different gender and ethnicity's that are under-used and that it comes of as kinda lazy when they change a main character to attract a new audience. Each of the characters I have mentioned above have an already existing long running and rich history that would greatly appeal to a wide audience of new readers.    

But all in all, it will be interesting to see the long term affects the change of Thor and Captain America has on the comic books and possibly even the films. And for the new Captain America, lets see if he can avoid any embarrassing incidents like the last Captain...

 Well I hope you like my post and find it at least a little bit educating and informative.

If you agree, disagree or just feel like putting forward your own view on the topic, feel free leave a comment in the comment section below. Also, feel free to bring up any other news or stories you would like to see my view on.