Interesting creative team on a religious Thor tale.
This is a strange issue: Some members of the mob are muscling in on a church, so Thor helps them. We don’t usually see him doing street jobs, and the choice to have him save a Christian-based church is an interesting one. It could have been much more interesting, of course, being that this is 1981 and Marvel still isn’t allowing its comics to get too deep. There is a sequence, above, where Thor tells the priest that all Gods are derived from the same energy source. One the one hand, that seems a little bit like Western cultural appropriation of polytheism. On the other hand, “all are one” is a pretty Eastern way of thinking.
Neat.
Scarlet Witch: “What’s the matter, Thor-?? You seem a little nervous.” Thor: “Aye, fair Wanda- this house of Christian worship hath ill regard for the Asgardian God of Thunder. E’en though mine father, Omnipotent Odin, be called ‘All-Father’, e’en he doth lay no claim to Supreme Divinity, and yet, there be those in this world who wouldst consider mine very existence as an affront to this edifice.” -‘Avengers’ #178, 1978. This topic is one of my own personal Big Two favorite topics in the entire realm of comics. ( we’ll discuss the other one at a later time ) Since the Dawn of Man, the Great Philosophers of All Time, not to mention the Great Theologians, have all grappled with the Great Question of “Why does our so-called ‘God of Love and Mercy’ permit so much evil and misery to dominate our world??” Well, in twenty Millenia of existence ( and counting ) Man has yet to come up with anything even resembling an answer to this most important of questions. So- two and a half Millenia ago, we got gods-like Thor, and Hercules- and, beginning almost exactly a century ago now- we got superheroes!! As answers to the Great Quanderies of Man go, ficticious comic-book superheroes are a poor solution, but- they’re better than what we’re taught in church!!! I’m not one to put my faith in Blind Faith- I’m from Missouri- and the super-jocks-especially the street-level, non-omnipotent ones- do excellent jobs of teaching us self-reliance, tenacity, the virtues of courage, and, most importantly- the ability to THINK FOR OURSELVES!!! Religion- particularly, organized religion- actually DISCOURAGES independent thinking!!!! Screw THAT!! In my time, I have discovered MORE ANSWERS to my life’s problems by reading COMIC-BOOKS than I EVER discovered by reading ANY religion’s holy book!! No shit!!!! Now, I am NOT trying to knock religion, by any means- if it works for you, then, more power to you!! But I subscribe, out of basic necessity for survival, to applications of thoughts and actions that are applicable to the challenges of today’s modern world!! Even given that the vast majority of the super-set live in a REMARKABLY money-easy world, there are, nonetheless, certain characters and comics series that you can learn a lot about basic survival from- titles like ‘Daredevil’, and ‘Green Arrow’, for instance. Again, this is not to say that a good overview of the Christian Bible ( the only holy book I have actually studied ) is a waste of time- it isn’t. The Old Testament, in particular, is actually a pretty good common-sense handbook on how to properly and safely live! ( I highly recommend ‘Leviticus’, in particular ) So- as Thor himself points out to his lovely colleague in the above exchange from ‘Avengers’#178- perhaps there is enough room in the human lexicon for ALL trains of philosophy!!! N’est ce pas-??? EXCELSIOR!!!!