Entertainment

Thor a woman? Shouldst thou care?

On Tuesday’s episode of “The View,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg announced some major superhero news: Thor is set to become a woman.

Casual superhero fans went crazy, and the story was picked up across the country. The question is, shouldst thou care?

Get your first glimpse at the female Thor.Russell Dauterman/Marvel Comics

You may want to temper your enthusiasm, and not just because Thor already had lustrous, flowing blond locks, so it won’t be that huge of a change visually.

Critics have long decried the lack of female superheroes, but this swap is only taking place in the comics, not in the movie world. Chris Hemsworth, your paychecks are apparently safe.

And in the comics world, change is a constant. When you publish at least 12 issues a year for some 50 years, as Marvel has with Thor, you have to keep finding new and interesting twists on the characters.

In fact, Marvel has already had a couple of female Thors. Thor Girl, an Asgardian ally of the Thunder God, appeared in 2000. Thordis, another double-X chromosome Thor, appeared in 1978’s “What If?” #10 and told an alternate-reality tale in which Thor’s girlfriend, Jane Foster, acquired his powers. Female X-Men member Storm also served as Thor briefly in the 1980s.

But this appears to be the first time Thor, er, “himself” will become a woman. I guess Marvel should be congratulated for trying to be gender-equal, but bear in mind that the publisher was willing to make Thor an orange space-horse before making the character a woman. Back in 1983, the magical hammer was wielded by Beta Ray Bill, an alien who assumed the mantle.

Character-swapping is also hardly news in the comics world, any more than an evil twin subplot is on a soap opera. Nearly all of Marvel’s marquee characters have been replaced at least once during their long, looong histories.

Multiple people have wielded Captain America’s shield, there have been at least two Black Widows and, just a few months ago, Marvel wrapped up a story line in which villain Doctor Octopus became Spider-Man.

In the end, most every change is eventually undone. The status quo returns, as is likely to happen with Thor. It’s just a matter of how long it will take.

Publicity stunts like these, however, do manage to goose sales in the short term, which is important in the comics business, where sales of mainstream Marvel and DC titles have seen alarming declines — especially when compared with the Golden Age of comics in the 1940s and the speculator boom during the early 1990s, when an issue of Spider-Man could sell more than a million copies

Thor may now be female in the comics, but when it comes to the big screen blockbuster, Chris Hemsworth’s paychecks are safe.Marvel

Last month, “Thor: God of Thunder” sold just 36,000 units, according to Comichron, a Web site that tracks sales.

Publicity stunts have been used by Marvel and DC so often over the years that many hard-core comics fans have become increasingly cynical, greeting each new announcement or earth-shaking story twist with an eye roll. Marvel recently announced the upcoming “death” of one of its most popular characters, Wolverine, and comic fandom mostly just shrugged and asked when and how he’d eventually be resurrected.

Many fans are no doubt approaching Thor’s gender swap the same way. Wake us when he’s a woman in the movies, which would actually mark a real creative and financial risk.