Superman Through the Ages! Forum

It's an interesting thing about Thor comics: the more they got away from Norse mythology, the more interesting the stories got. One would think it would be the opposite, but some of the best Thor Silver Age stories involved the Black Galaxy, Ego, the Planet with a Face on It, the Raddish-headed Rigellians, the fascinating concept of the Destroyer suit, and one of Thor's more enduring contributions to the Marvel Universe, the High Evolutionary.

I direct your attention to THOR #115 (1966).

By accident, the High Evolutionary creates the Super-Beast, a wolf with a mind 1,000,000 years ahead of man's current state. The Superbeast is able to defeat Thor because his knowledge of combat techniques is 1,000,000 years more advanced than any yet known, using knowledge of Pressure Points that could disarm even Thor's molecules. This interesting weakness was used much later by the Mantis against Thor, disarming him with nerve cluster hits. Now, when the Superbeast (possessing knowledge of fighting styles not to be discovered for several million years) uses a Karate Chop against Thor, Thor is heard to remark:

"A Karate Chop - but one unlike ANY I have EVER SEEN!"

Whoa, hold up. How many Karate Chops has Thor seen in his day?

Does this mean Thor knows Karate?

It couldn't possibly be because Don Blake knows Karate, and this knowledge was transferred to the Thunder God; for one thing, each time Thor has to use his medical skills, he transforms back into Dr. Blake, indicating that the knowledge the two possess is separate; that is, Thor has no access to Blake's abilities. Also, Don Blake has been established as a noncombatant; his lameness may preclude knowledge of advanced Martial Arts.

It could just be that Thor has seen Karate performed in a movie or possibly by his Avengers ally Captain America, and so he knows what a Karate Chop looks like. However, given the nature of the statement it implies specialized, detailed knowledge - how would one Karate Chop look different from any other?

One possible explanation: perhaps Captain America devoted some time to showing Thor a few combat tricks when he was an active Avenger?

Both Hawkeye and Hank Pym were shown to know Judo as a result of Avengers combat training, which is presumably mandatory. Does that mean Thor may have been taught a few Karate moves, too? Surely the lustful warrior Thor would not turn his nose down at a few new fighting techniques he is unfamiliar with.

The Norse Gods lost interest in Earth for hundreds of years; Karate was invented in the 19th Century in Okinawa, when the Asgardians were aloof from Midgard. Thor might surprise some of the Asgardians with his knowledge of techniques that developed since their days on earth; can you imagine Thor teaching a Feng Shui course for stressed out Viking gods?

One can't imagine the hot-blooded Thor doing something so relaxing, but that is a pretty funny mental image.

Not having read that particular book, let me speculate from pure ignorance so please forgive me if I make any blunders.

Thor is given to bombastic, grandiose statements.  If he had to tie his shoes he'd say it in some overly stated manner completely out of proportion to the task at hand.  Perhaps this is part of why he said that karate chop remark.

Thor hasn't seen all manner of karate moves but he probably has seen some in his time in the 20th century.  He probably knows the general nature of the move and might have seen a martial arts film or even a tournament.  It would be in character for Thor to watch a karate tournament just for enjoyment given his warrior nature.

Regardless of how much real karate he's seen, Thor has seen at least some demonstration of a karate chop.  Perhaps the Superbeast's skill use was so remarkably great, esp. to Thor's trained warrior eye, that it stood out far and away from anything our modern karate had to offer.  Modern practitioners operate within normal human skill and body limits.  What that beast did obviously exceeded anything achievable for us, which would stand out to the trained warrior Thor.  What he can't do, Thor certainly can observe and remark on the same way a good coach may not be better at basketball than Michael Jordan but he certainly can notice what the man is doing right or wrong.

Or maybe I'm just completely off my rocker here ...  :wink:

Please let me add a more explicit example re: difference in skill/execution levels.

The difference in skill/execution Thor observed would be like comparing a kid fumbling onto the ice in hockey gear for the first time (normal human karate level) with a top-notch NFL player like Gretzky (Superbeast).  If the difference were that dramatic, it wouldn't even take Thor's warrior eye to notice it as any one of us would be able to.

Ha!  As Homer Simpson says, "It's funny because it's true!"  :lol:

Also, Julian, you may be reading too much into this.  Thor said it was a karate chop unlike any he'd ever seen.  But he didn't say he was an expert on karate.  Therefore for all we know he'd only seen one karate chop before in his whole life.  And so the chop delivered by the Superbeast wouldn't have to be all that special at all to dazzle Thor with it's "uniqueness," would it?  And as Captain Kal says, it would fit in with his overblown speech to make a big deal about it.

This whole conversation reminds me of Maxwell Smart and one of his running gags.  An example occurs in the film, "the Nude Bomb," where the entrance to a villain's hideout is a gigantic zipper.  Of course as soon as it opens and a truck drives out, Max says, "That's the second biggest zipper I've ever seen!"   :lol:

Hmmm, this might be the case. The very fact that it CONNECTS - against a guy like Thor who is no slouch in a fight and knows how to keep his guard up - might imply such a statement; Superbeast was just that good, so of course it would be a move LIKE Thor's never seen (in terms of skill level) instead of a move that Thor's never seen.



Hee hee! Well, Thor's dialogue was always theatrical and antiquated, but there's a funny thing about it: the more you read it, the more and more natural it gets.

A while back I made a post saying how one of my favorite superhero comics was Kirby's Fourth World. While I do love MISTER MIRACLE a lot, after reading MIGHTY THOR again, I'm not sure I'd have it on that list again. Thor had everything that Fourth World had: acid-trip weirdness, amazing Kirby art, fantasy worldbuilding, gadgets..and it was also FUNNY a lot of the time, thanks to Stan Lee. Kirby never made me laugh; not once.

I'd take that karate chop connecting with a bit of a grain of salt.  The convention in the books is everybody gets to tag everybody else at least once in an encounter.  Even the top-tier super-speedsters get tagged at least once by the normals in a bout.  It's a given in the genre.  Maggin tried explaining this as a side-effect of the metagene in that it give the possessor a measure of initiative.  IOW, metas have a bigger than normal share of sheer luck for both hitting their targets and avoiding being pulped by superior forces.

Of course, the fact that it connects and Thor makes that remark at the same time is perhaps proof that this isn't the usual meta-gets-to-tag-Thor theme.

Well, that's DC physics, not Marvel, but it is an interesting theory nonetheless, at least to consider. I was never a fan of its application; Johnny Redbeard's GENESIS made me wish DC would never, ever mention the metagene ever again; suddenly human heroism no longer became about guts and gumption, but because a planet blew up at the dawn of the universe and that's why firefighters can rescue little children.

(Which begs the question: why is anybody heroic in the REAL world, where there was no Genesis wave?)

The problem with "the nation that controls magnesium controls the universe" metatheories when applied to superheroism and superpowers is, they make every other origin illegitimate. It wasn't REALLY the lightning and the chemicals that gave us the Flash, but the Genesis wave activating Barry Allen's metagene. Something that was previously straightforward now becomes almost an afterthought.

It doesn't QUITE apply in this instance, because the Superbeast was a super-physical monster that presumably had super-physical agility and speed, which was how he was able to strike at Thor.

Although I did like the explanation that Kurt Busiek had for how even super-speedsters could be struck in a fight occasionally, when Steeljack battled MPH: "I've fought fast guys before," he said, and how he beat him was not a measure of initiative, but the fact that he was able to anticipate where his enemy was going to be and trip him this way. In other words, taking on speedsters by slow guys is more a matter of tactics - and even here, it isn't a perfect strategy; Steeljack noted that this trick would only work once before MPH adjusted for it.

Another way for normal guys to defeat speedsters is by surprise, which is how Captain America defeated the Whizzer in Steve Englehart's Serpent Crown story: throw the shield, have the Whizzer dodge, and let the shield get the fast guy in the back when it bounces.

Point well taken re: metagene doesn't apply to Marvel.

Just the same, the previous point stands.  The genre has the convention of everyone getting to do themselves honour by scoring at least one hit in an encounter, no matter how impossible that would be in the real world.  Maggin chose to come up with a possible explanation.  Marvel fails to even try on this.

I'd like to speak about the other aspect you brought up but time is pressing at work today.  I'll get to them in another post.

Marvel hasn't addressed the problem because the necessity doesn't exist to address it. To illustrate my point, let's look at the founding JLA roster that fought Starro the Conqueror:

Superman
Wonder Woman
Green Lantern
Martian Manhunter
The Flash
Batman
Aquaman
"Snapper" Carr

Notice that of the characters listed here, Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter and the Flash - four out of seven, the majority by a hair if you count Snapper as a mascot instead of a true member - have superspeed. Now, superspeed is a much more common in the DC Universe than in Marvel: for example, Captain Comet, Ultra the Multi-Alien, the Marvel Family, Ultra Boy, Mon-El and others have superspeed to chow from at their powers buffet table.

Even Thor, the mightiest of all Marvel heroes (except for - POSSIBLY - Captain Universe, Hyperion, Gladiator, Circe, and Captain Ultra, at least if someone would ever write him appropriately) lacks superspeed. It is interesting to note that the Superman equivalent of the Marvel universe, Hyperion, lacks superspeed - Patsy Walker got a few licks in on him in AVENGERS #147 (1975) just with her extraordinary athletic ability. And hey, if your Superman isn't packing superspeed, who can be, right?  :D

Though I'm hardly a fan of Mark Waid's "contributions" to the Flash (this could be a whole other post [administrator's note: which it now is (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1991)], but sufficed to say, Mark Waid is to the Flash what John Byrne is to Superman) it is interesting to mention how he pointed out that at DC, there is just about a CIVILIZATION of "pure" speedsters: Max Mercury, Jessie Quick, Johnny Quick, XS, Impala, the various Flashes over the years, and so on.

Marvel heroes tend to be 1) super-coordinated athletes with post-human prowess, 2) exclusively focused on superstrength and toughness. Attacking Marvel for battle implausibility and innappropriate use of power is throwing stones from a glass house. If anything, Marvel's battles are MORE realistic; Thor and Hulk may demolish warehouse districts with no loss of human life, but at least they don't have to wonder why the battle isn't over in the time it takes an electron to round a cesium atom, because the supertypes can outrun photons.

To be fair, Marvel has some speedsters too. Like Quicksilver, the various Whizzers, and...ummm...uhhhh...ehhh...I mentioned Quicksilver, right? Dang.  :wink:

You missed Northstar, Aurora, Makkarri, Mercury, Runner, and Hermod.

IIRC, an X-foe, Supersaber can run at mach one.

Thor has been 'granted' super-speed by the PTB at Marvel, though his is still nowhere near that of even Byrned Superman's.  Simonson has written a Thor capable of literally lightning-fast movement.

In nearly all the above cases, it's not uncommon for common human opponents to score hits on superfast guys.

And we both forgot the most obvious one - the Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel, moving at lightspeed as a beam of light, she potentially operates at a level that - possibly - may make stories impossible, much like the DC Speedsters.

Refresh my memory: Who is "Runner," again?

Though it feels strange to say Makkari's a part of the Marvel Universe - Kirby's ETERNALS felt, in many ways, like its own continuum with its own rules. And it is rather disappointing to put Gilgamesh in with the Avengers, where he's just another strong guy amongst strong guys instead of being THE FORGOTTEN ONE!

Runner is one of the Elders of the MU like Champion or the Gardner.

OHHHH, the gold guy with the Infinity Gem of Space? Yeah, I know who that is.

I agree completely re: wrongness of mainstream MU'g the Eternals into the MU proper.  If you read Kirby's original run, it's very clear he intended it to be our real world and the MU to be a fictional world for his Eternals.  Notice how the Eternals' 'Hulk' was a cosmic-energy powered robot and how the fanboys of that Earth were jazzed that their comics heroes were coming to life because of that 'Hulk'.

Along the same lines, Kirby's stated the Thor and the Asgardians were his first go at pantheon building, the New Gods were his next step of development, then the Eternals truly captured his final thoughts on the pantheon concepts.  IMHO, the Eternals truly were his masterpiece of myth-building amongst all his god books.

ETERNALS was quite an achievement, and it is unfortunate that they decided to incorporate it into the Marvel Universe, where the characters became essentially just an alien race pretending to be the gods of myth instead of the real deal.

(I also wish Marvel would bring ETERNALS out in trade paperback form in some way!  :D )

Earlier in this thread I said that I felt that of Kirby's great achievements, the one that was the most impressive to me at least was MIGHTY THOR, because THOR had everything the other comics had, but also had a sense of humor and the human characters had vivacious personalities, instead of...well..."And me, young but cool Harvey Lockman!" Notice for instance, the situation of Thor being asked to leave a street because of a building guard:

GUARD: "Hey, break it up, muscles! Where's your permit for a street demonstration?"
THOR: "Permit? I have no permit! I am THOR!"

Stan Lee's dialogue was grandiose and Shakespearean but at the same time naturalistic, whereas Kirby wrote things like in NEW GODS #2: "What is WRONG, friends? Why do you COWER from me, as if from some nameless FEAR?"

At the same time, as a raw act of worldbuilding, the one I think was most impressive was Fourth World, because it was entirely science fiction as opposed to folkloric in origin. There wasn't a juxtaposition of Japanese Samurai with rocketships.

I *love* ETERNALS, but it had Aztec gods still wearing Aztec clothing and Kingo Sunen acting in Samurai movies - it essentially felt like a divine version of Epcot, where French people stand around the Eiffel Tower and wear beanies and ascots. At least THOR picked a single historical period and stuck with it.

I can't believe we missed this one.

Spider-Man has incredible speed, agility, reflexes, and that darned spidersense stacked on top of it all.  He's been able to outmaneuver Masterson-Thor and Titania with neither able to lay a finger on him.

But for some strange, esoteric reason, human normals like Kingpin, Kraven, and the Vulture can hit him at will.

Go figure.

(Yeah, I mentioned Masterson-Thor just to be back on topic and that Thor had the same abilities minus the millenia of experience so he'd be just as fast at the real Thor.)

I met Thor once.  He had a Battle Hammer called Mjolnir if I remember correctly. I met him when the universes collided and nobody knew what was real anymore.

Many people justify this as him holding back, because if he tried, he could tear any of them a new one.