Thursday, April 20, 2006

Leggo Mjolnir!

Jeepers, Mister Thor! You might wanna consider puttin' a bike lock on that thing or something:


Thor #126

Thor #286

Thor Annual #1

Thor #109

Thor #338

Thor #112

Avengers/JLA #4


(More Ten of a Kind here.)

4 comments:

Marc Burkhardt said...

I was bummed in that Avengers/JLA mini that Superman couldn't lift the hammer after the crisis ended.

That whole, "only in times of great peril", sthick is a buncha hooey.

The hammer says "Whoever holds this hammer, IF HE BE WORTHY, shall posess the power of Thor." There's no exceptions in the fine print.

And if anybody is worthy, it's Kal-El.

Anonymous said...

I've been trying to figure this out for years: can robots lift Thor's hammer? What about sentient ones like Ultron or the Vision? Could you pick up the hammer with a crane? (I know it's not really that heavy, but still.)

Bully said...

Fortress Keeper: Yeah, but even Thor says in Avengers/JLA that Mjolnir is subject to the will of Odin ("My father is stern, Superman, but not stupid. A very few worthies have been allowed to overcome the spell in desperate hours.")...and we've seen enough inconsistency over the years (and in some of the covers above) that prove that while the real-world explanation is writers not be consistent about the limitations and powers of Thor's hammer, the easiest explanation that'll win ya a No-Prize is that Mjolnir don't do nuthin' if Odin don't want it to. I don't think the Norse Highfather is worried about following the carved words that closely. Heck, he's the Odin-Meister!

Either that, or every time you see something that doesn't make consistent sense (hey, how did Warlord Kro lift the hammer?), it's wizards. Yeah, wizards.

Chuck: this is just my personal opinion, but without a specific issue telling us so or otherwise, I'd imagine that any sentient being can't pick up the hammer if he/she isn't worthy. This isn't solely limited to humanoids (or, as L,. Frank Baum would call them, "meat" people). I'd guess that any being with a will is subject to the enchantment, although I'm jus' guessin' here.

A crane? Maybe. But it's got a human consciousness behind it, even if it's preprogrammed in advance. Otherwise we could argue that Iron Man could lift Mjolnir--cos what is Iron Man but a slightly more advanced crane. With a drinking problem.

In the end run, however, it's not Odin or Thor or Norse myth that controls who can pick up the hammer and when, it's Stan Lee and Roy Thomas and Walt Simonson and Kurt Busiek. And its usually simply for them to just tell us the story. We the readers wind up being the ones who have to figger out how.

But what do I know? I'm not 'lowed to touch the electric can opener in our house.

Bruce said...

Wonder Woman's bid to moljnir is classic, and classy too. I love when she looks and the writing, and picks it up, and says, "Isn't 'worthy' too subjective a ..." bam!!! WonderWomanThor.
That was great.