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| Thor, Marvel Comics' God of Thunder, was manifested on Earth and joined the Avengers, a group of superheroes who have their own butler. Like Thor himself, his story is pretty much as simple as it seems. Ages ago, way back when people still believed in them, Odin, leader of the Norse Gods, decided that something had to be done about his son, Thor. Thor was, to put it bluntly, a little slow in the  head. He would do things without thinking about the consequences and then would brag about it to the serving wenches that brought his mead. This pissed of Odin and so Odin wanted to teach him a lesson in humility. Odin banished Thor to live as a mortal in the late Twentieth Century. That humbled the rest of us, it should work on him, too. Sadly, this is where Odin’s plan kind of went off the rails (yeah, right at the beginning). Thor didn’t live as just any mortal. No, he became Dr. Donald Blake. In order to teach him humility, Thor was forced to live as a successful doctor in the early sixties, an era when doctors could prescribe cigarettes and not be held accountable.. Good plan, Odin. This is the kind of foresight and thinking you can expect from a one-eyed booze hound who talks to his pet ravens. Of course life wasn’t all peaches and cream for the good doctor. No, he had a bad leg, which gave him a bit of a limp. The injury was severe enough that he was often referred to as lame. At least, I assume people were referring to the leg when they called him lame. They also called him a cripple because you could call people cripples in the sixties and it was still okay. No matter how lame he may have been, the cripple thing was definitely about his leg. So one day on vacation, this lame, crippled, successful doctor went hiking in the mountains of Norway because he was learning to be humble, when he found a piece of wood in a cave. “Hey,” he thought, channelling the wisdom and clear thinking that had made him a successful doctor, “I could use this piece of wood as a walking stick to help me hobble along with my lame, crippled leg, although I’ve managed to get along just fine without a walking stick up to this point, hiking in the mountains, as lame cripples are wont to do.”  Then the entrance to the cave collapsed, trapping him, because he was being a dick.In order to free himself, Dr. Blake saw only one appropriate course of action. He began hitting the tons of fallen rock with the wooden stick. Yeah, that’s effective. How did this guy become a doctor? As luck would have it, this particular stick of wood was, in fact, Thor’s mighty battle hammer, apparently also transformed by Odin in order to teach the hammer humility or something. With a flash of lightning (inside the sealed cave), the lame doctor became the God of Thunder and used his hammer to free himself from the cave and join the Avengers. Okay, so the utterly moronic hit-the-rocks-with-a-wooden-stick plan actually worked, but really, is this the best way to teach someone humility, by making even their stupidest ideas yield success? I don’t think so. So off Thor goes, into the modern world, making rash decisions based on arrogance and pride. Every once in a while, he’ll tap his hammer on the ground and transform back into Donald Blake and go do some doctoring. Even Thor’s gotta make a buck. Blake uses his lame, crippled leg as an excuse to carry a stick around with him everywhere, but he can’t actually use it as a walking stick, because every time he taps the stick on the ground, he’s transformed into Thor. Good plan. Thor’s hammer is made of mystical Uru metal, It has a leather strap at the bottom of the handle. It’s manly and girly at the same time. His hammer is always with him. If he goes more than a minute without being in direct physical contact with the hammer, he turns back into Dr. Blake. Talk about dependency issues. Thor even named his hammer, because, well, doesn't everyone name their hammer? He named his hammer Mjolnir and sometimes he talks to it. So, you can see why Thor's parents make him wear a helmet all the time.  When Thor has to travel a great distance and he doesn't want to go on the short bus because the other kids will take his lunch money, he just winds up and throws his hammer in the air (aiming in the general direction of wherever he wants to go) and then hangs on to the strap. The force of the throw (generated, remember, by Thor) is enough to actually lift Thor himself and fling him through the air to his destination, many miles away. Really. That's the explanation, going all the way back to Journey Into Mystery #83 in August of 1962. Ponder that for a moment. Even in 1962, the physics of that are dodgy at best. (Many years ago, as a joke, I proposed to some friends the game of Tackle Bowling. There's barbed wire at the end of the lane in front of the pins, you have to wear a helmet and you've got a modified skateboard strapped to your torso. It's just like normal bowling, I explained, except you don't let go of the ball. This whole "throw-the-hammer-but-don't-let-go" thing sounds like a similar sort of thing. Thor's adopted brother Loki is the prankster God of Mischief. It's really no mystery where Thor got the idea for his fake-flying power.) But then it just gets silly. Having thrown Molly the Hammer, Thor is "flying" along beside Iron Man, on the way to an Avengers cook out or something. "Lookest thou at me, Iron Man," Thor says, with stars in his eyes and a bit of wind-blown dribble on his chin. "I canst fly! I doth be flying just like thee. Now we canst be bestest friends. Yay!" Wishing he hadn't given up drinking, Iron Man says, "That's nice. Turning left now." So Thor, while in motion through open air, with nothing to anchor against and no pivot point, being dragged along behind a hunk of metal and leather COMPLETELY CHANGES DIRECTION BY AIMING THE HAMMER TO THE LEFT!!!  Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! That's just messed up. Even with Asgardian physics, that's gotta be about eight different flavours of impossible. Here's a fun game you can play with children... (Don't play it with your own children; use nephews or neighbourhood kids or any kids that, ultimately, you won't have to wheel around if things go wrong.) Get a big plastic hammer and tie a belt to the handle. Better yet, just duct tape the hammer to the kid's hand. Then tell the kid about Thor and how he can fly just like a real superhero when he throws his hammer. Then sit on your back porch, have a beer and watch the eager little thunder god fling himself around the backyard in his futile attempts to fly. Fling! Waahhh! Thump! Fling! Waahhh! Thump! Fling! Waahhh! Thump! Oh, it'll be lots of fun. |
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