What are you, insensitive to Vikings?

Chris Sims’ declares this Badass Week, and kicks it off with a poll to pick The Toughest Man In Comics: he’s got a fine set of candidates lined up, making this a very tough choice, if you don’t take the wuss’s way out and sulk that Batman isn’t on the list.

But even better, he linked to this absolute comic gem from Dave Campbell, who explains why Thor is one of the biggest smack-talkers in comics:

For some reason, the fact that he’s one of the most powerful beings ever to walk the Earth yet still talks shit does not make Thor a dick. He just gets away with it, pure and simple. Nobody wants to hear Superman brag about how cool he is – he would just come across as a bully – but for Thor, it works.

Why?

Thor really uses cultural relativism to his advantage. Yes, he might go on and on about how great he is, but give him a break, he’s a Viking – that’s the way of his people. Don’t judge, man. What do you have against Vikings anyway? Way to be insensitive to other cultures, dick.

You know another area where Thor gets a free pass just because he comes from a traditional culture? That hammer of his, mjolnir. He’s up there with The Frickin’ Hulk in terms of strength, and yet he still carries a huge stone hammer around.

Again, if this were Superman we were talking about, packing a weapon would seem unsporting and cruel. It would be like, “Why does Superman carry that machete around? It’s not enough that he can shoot heat-beams from his eyes, he has to fly around beheading people with a fucking machete, too? Not cool!”

But hey, Thor’s a Norseman, it wouldn’t be PC to call him on his hammer. I think mjolnir is the Norse word for “overkill.”

That was a pretty long quote, but it gets better. Go read the whole thing.