As we’ve noted before, Disney is shameless in its cross-promotion, which is why Star Wars is being shoved up into ESPN like a fat man’s hand up a narrow Muppet. But, clearly deciding that wasn’t nearly uncomfortable enough, now they’ve made The View get in on the action.
Yes, The View, Whoopi Goldberg’s chat-show paycheck gig, is debuting a new Marvel comic this morning. I didn’t believe it either, but apparently it’s true. The View has mostly been interesting lately because they finally fired Sherri Shepherd and Jenny McCarthy, the former of whom had the worst possible answer when asked if the world was flat and the latter of whom is absolutely uncontroversial in every possible way.
We’d love to pretend that there’s any sort of chain of logic here, but this is blatantly Disney handing down an order from on high. Marvel has admitted they don’t even do market research and thus has no idea of the female audience in comics, and The View is aimed squarely at people who don’t read comic books. It’s almost certainly a Thor book they’re announcing, considering the press release called it “thundering,” so maybe they think they can get ten minutes of jokes about Hemsworth abs out of the whole thing?
Either way, it will be incredibly awkward, forced, and embarrassing… so we’re totally there. Check back in on the post comments for some live impressions of just how this train wreck unfolds.
UPDATE: Amazingly, it was not a total train wreck. For one thing, Whoopi either actually read a few Thor books or just hit up Wikipedia, but either way she knew what she was talking about. Aside from a few asinine observations about boobs from the peanut gallery, and Jenny McCarthy trying to explain Valkyrie’s origin and failing, it was mostly a pretty straightforward bit.
As for the concept of a female Thor, it’s definitely an interesting one. Marvel’s mum about who’s hefting the hammer now, but honestly, it’s a blond woman, so it’s either somebody we haven’t seen before or someone along the lines of Valkyrie or Carol Danvers. It’s an interesting idea, and we’re looking forward to seeing how it pays off.