Tuesday 25 December 2012

The God Thor

This is neat. Marvel Comics adapted the god Thor as a superhero, who has come to Midgard as Superman came to Earth. Then some Marvel Comics writers preferred to return to Thor as a god, based in Asgard.

I have just read Robert Rodi's Thor: For Asgard and am about to start reading Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's The Trials Of Loki. In the former, I don't buy Asgard as a city with citizens, running an empire, or the dead Balder residing in Valhalla instead of in Hel.

Marvel Comics have coined the unnecessary term "Asgardian." An "as" is a god. "Asgard" is the enclosure of the gods. So an inhabitant of Asgard is an as or a god, not an "Asgardian." This artificial term would mean "an inhabitant of the enclosure of the gods," in other words just a god.

The plural of "as" is "Aesir," the already familiar term for the Norse pantheon.

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