dwc@hou2b.UUCP (D.CHEN) (01/30/85)
so what do people think of thor #355? i think that simonson has managed to write some wonderful adventures for thor and the rest of the asgardians. i've even found myself feeling a little choked up while reading the last three issues. the issue does however, bring about alot of inconsistencies with the celestials storyline presented way back in ~290-301. namely the origin and nature of the asgardians and earth's other gods. simonson came up with a nice way to explain away the origin of odin and the asgardians presented back then (i didn't much like that origin anyway) but it doesn't explain all the other stuff. since simonson's presentation of the asgardians is much closer to the norse gods of mythology than another other writers, does anyone out there know what norse mythology says about odin's father and grandfather? i seem to recall that the first of the line was born from ice and something from a giant cow but i can't remember the details. that seems to fit the description that tiwaz (alias buri) gave of the place of his birth. was tiwaz another name for that first god? what is norse mythology's version of the fate of buri and bor? the only thing that i didn't like about the story is that thor wasn't smart enough to figure out that tiwaz was a relative of his father. just how many sky gods have there been? i think that all sky gods must be related (zeus was able to hold thor's hammer back in a thor annual somewhere). danny chen ihnp4!hou2b!dwc
boyajian@akov68.DEC (Jerry Boyajian) (02/13/85)
> From: hou2b!dwc (danny chen) > was tiwaz another name for that first god? > ... > just how many sky gods have there been? i think > that all sky gods must be related (zeus was able to hold thor's > hammer back in a thor annual somewhere). > From: hpfclg!jack > So this Tiwaz character claims (in his own thoughts, yet) to be Thor's > great-grandfather, and by implication, Odin's grandfather. Is there *any* > mythological basis to this? I always thought that Odin was right there > close to the beginning of the Asgardian (Aesiric?) line. In the AMAZING HEROES 1985 PREVIEW, Simonson has this to say about Tiwaz: "...[Thor] will meet Tiaaz (possibly under a different name), one of the ancient sky gods of Indo-European culture, who preceded the Norse gods and the Germanic gods." So, apparently (I haven't been up on my mythology for many, many moons, I'm afraid), this Tiaaz (renamed Tiwaz by WS) is more of a *literary* ancestor than a *real* ancestor of Odin, but Simonson has made him into the latter in the mythology of the Marvel Universe. As for Danny's comment about Zeus being able to lift Thor's hammer, well, there is a reasonable explantion. It's not just that the hammer is super-heavy, otherwise, Hercules, the Hulk, Wonder Man, et al. could lift it. What prevents the others from lifting it is an enchantment placed on it by Odin. Obviously, anyone whose power rivals (or exceeds) Odin's can override this enchantment. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Maynard, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...}!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA