Previous Post that is incredibly weak sauce. The idea that one character needs to be humiliated to make another rise is something of a modern highlight. There is always a build up classically with that sort of thing, but there were also better fights. It feels like fights now are pretty much one shots of domination when two big characters come to blows. One side has to get humiliated. There are plenty of ways to highlight situations or giving respect to a character despite having them fail or go down. It happens with villains in the hands of good writers. You know they are going to go down, but you also do not need to make them useless from that point forward. The static ideas of the internet community also applies to Thor though. Either some on this board or on youtube channels. Thor has been treated badly compared to other Marvel characters, but that does not change that a vocal number of the fanbase appears to have an overinflated view of the character as well. Pretty sure there are at least two or three members that would think base Thor should have been able to do this. Galactus is a highly variable character and has had crappy showings over the years as well but this is one of the worst, even considering his easy beat downs in JLA/Avengers. There was honestly no rason in the story to get to the place it ended up. This is just going the same way as the Thanos sotry he wrote and the only reason some are ok with it is because it is their guy. It is just fan service battle board stuff that does nothing and adds little to the character. And at the expense of others. I guess Odin was just a terrible king for not going out and killing Galactus sooner...

Oh well I also take your opinion to be incredibly weak sauce lol

Anyway I just don't think Galactus losing or dying even is an act of humiliation. It was a special circumstance in which he was out gunned. What makes it humiliating? That implies there's a level of shame or being demeaned, but I think you're adding that. I think a cosmic God just got murdered (temporarily) in a battle that we already knew had those kinds of stakes. Galactus didn't beg for his life or act uncharacteristically so I don't see where the humiliation comes from.

The only reason it would in itself bedemeaning is if you thought it shouldn't happen. Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but I don't necessarily agree with that "supposed to". I just think the premise of Galactus losing in a fight upsets certain people's imaginary power heiratchy apple cart, but isn't itself bad writing.

And as far as this being a bad showing for Galactus that's entirely relative in how powerful you think Thor was in this case. I'm not sure why it couldn't be the case that however powerful you think Galactus is Thor was just a bit more stout. And there are plenty of in story reasons for that. You've got Thor's own power, the power he's inherited from the Asgardian Throne and the power cosmic. Maybe for Cates that combination of things is greater than the sum of its parts. Regardless, any notion that this is a low showing for Thor would have to be predicated on the idea that beating the "Herald Thor" was a low bar to clear. And seeing as how this Thor was ostensibly a novel creation, we'd have no basis to say he wasn't this powerful.

As far as "the story has no reason to be that way" criticism, I think like a lot if criticism this is just a set of subjective impressions an arbitrary standards disguised as objective criteria. I mean the purpose of the story is to be entertaining. I thought it was, and I think I'm at least case in point for why that's not just liking Thor getting over on someone or being extra powerful. I also really liked Jason Aaron's Thor run, as well as Warren Ellis's for that matter. But in terms of why the story ended up where it did, the reason the story ended up was there of the big reveal that "the Black Winter" wasn't coming for the 616 universe but just to reclaim Galactus, Thor was incensed that Galactus used him and that the latter had in the process of that destroyed an entire world of souls without allowing Thor to save them. Killing Galactus for that, insofar as it was in his power to do so, makes sense givin' what we know of his character. And turning Galactus into a bomb to be used to dispatch the Black Winter was just a nice dotting of the exclamation point for good measure. So I think the story works and makes sense. in a kind of causal A to B to C sense.

As far as Odin not killing Galactus, I mean Odin might have been right. Galactus certainly seemed pretty certain Thor had made a massive mistake; that might not be for exclusively selfish reasons. We might find that the consequences of killing Galactus are greater than they appear. Odin was always for all his moral ambiguity more forward thinking than Thor, and we might discover that Thor in his simple directness has made a pretty big mistake.

I just think in certain ways all this talk about various power levels distracts from the actual merits of the book. I love the morose almost Shakespearean tone, I love the high level stakes and that Cates really seems to be swinging for the fences. If a few giant purple space gods have to get their asses kicked on the way I think it's worth it.

cheers,
---the late great Donald Blake