Overview: Marvel/Thor
The Thor fandom is a pretty new and active fandom which mostly sprung as a result of the movie. Although there is a rich comics canon - not to mention Norse mythology - that also informs and shapes it. While Thor/Loki is the most popular pairing in fanfics -- and Balder/Loki for purely comics based fics -- there's a variety of pairings and gen fics written for it. I'm mostly here to rec Loki centered, and, to be honest, the fandom does kind of revolve around Loki.
If you like:
...this may be a fandom for you!
I won't claim to have a deep and thorough knowledge of Thor comics, but I'll do my best to make an overview of the character's history:
Thor is a character created a long, long time ago in the Silver Age of Marvel by Lee, Kirby and Lieber in a comics called Journey into Mystery before it was retitled The Mighty Thor. He's a god of thunder from Asgard, a realm of space gods. He was punished for his arrogance by his father, and king of Asgard, Odin to be exiled in a human body on Midgard aka Earth. In the original comic book canon, he was also given amnesia and a whole alter ego -- Donald Blake -- who was a surgeon with a disabled leg. Donald Blake could become Thor again by using Mjolnir, Thor's hammer which whomever is worthy should hold the power thereof, which was hidden as a walking stick before Donald Blake would use it. Other continuities have blissfully ignored those complications and just went with the "exiled in a human body without his powers" and "recovers power with Mjolnir" parts.
Eventually Thor recovered his memories and powers long term, but after spending so much time on Earth, he got attached to it and decided he liked spending time there being a hero and hanging out with the Avengers and his girlfriend Jane Foster. This apparently was a bit of a backfire to Odin's plan as he was not overjoyed with it.
In the 80's was one of the most beloved runs on Thor by Walt Simonson. It was awesome and epic and very metal and fun, and Thor got turned into a frog. It's one of the few runs I've read, so a lot of the explanations I'll be able to give are from there.
Thor also went through his 90's dark age phase, which involved getting a spiky armor and dark anti-heroic replacement as one does. I haven't read any of that though.
In the 00's there was a storyline of Ragnarok taking place, at the end of which pretty much all of Asgard was dead, including Thor, and they let the franchise rest for a couple of years. In 2007 they brought it back with Joseph Michael Straczynski on writing and with gorgeous art (by Olivier Coipel amongst others).
Straczinski had Thor recreate Asgard in the middle of a small town in Oklahoma, which provided some interesting contrast between the mythic and the mundane, and also used some old Silver Age elements such as Donald Blake, as a whole other person whose personality shared time with Thor, and even a little bit of Jane Foster. More importantly, he had Loki taking possession over Sif's body (Sif being an Asgardian warrior and the lover of Thor) and walking around in a female form being sarcastic and deliciously manipulative especially with Balder (another son of Odin and friend of Thor, king over Asgard at that time) and chilling out with Doom in Latveria, and also trolling the Mighty Avengers by cosplaying as the Scarlet Witch. Overall a fun run which inspired a few fanfics.
Whatever Straczynski had in mind was cut short by the big Siege crossover event of 2010 (he quit writing Thor as a result the event meshing badly with his own plans), in which Norman Osborn and his Dark Avengers decided to attack Asgard - still in Oklahoma - in great part due to manipulations from Loki. Under Kieron Gillen's pen, Loki was revealed to be tired of being predictable as a bad guy and decided to try to seize a second chance for himself by getting killed heroically(?) while defending Asgard (you know, after having engineered its fall, yeaaah).
Matt Fraction then took over writing, and Thor resurrected Loki (as one would expect), but he turned out to be a little kid with no memories of most of the evil deeds Loki did through the ages. Gillen got to write the kid version of Loki in an ongoing series, called Journey into Mystery, which, I shall emphasize, is one of the best current Marvel series and you should read it.
Currently, both series have been strongly impacted by the big event of 2011, Fear, Itself, which has resulted SPOILERS in Thor being dead - although he's fighting in the Underworld so fear not that he'll be back soon - and replaced by a Troll (literally) who was retconned in everyone's memory except Loki figured it out and is not happy about it. At all. END SPOILERS
Other continuities
In 2011, there was a movie directed by Kenneth Branagh. It was pretty good and tragic in a Shakespearian way, and filled with sexualized male bodies, and suddenly there was a Thor fandom. The movie is big on the space god part, emphasizing "space" here, and a very sympathetic and tragic version of Loki - although judging from trailers, etc. for the Avengers movie, Loki is quite on the road to become the over the top supervillain we also love.
There was also an animated movie called Thor : Tales of Asgard taking place when Thor and Loki are still children and very much BFF, and although it isn't great, it's an okay story and the kids are very adorable in it.
Thor features in the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon series, as well as Loki, Amora, Skurge, Hela, Jane Foster and various frost giants and other Norse mythology critters. There was also the Hulk vs Thor animated movie which I think is supposed to be in the same continuity. There is very few fanfics inspired by this continuity yet, though, which is a shame.
There are a few comics based alternate continuities worthy of mention. There is the Thor : The Mighty Avengers which was a fan favorite by virtue of being an extremely adorable rom com about Thor and Jane. There were two Loki miniseries, especially one by Rodi and Ribbic which a lot of fans love because it lays the slash Thor/Loki subtext very thickly and is quite sympathetic to Loki. There was a Thor: Son of Asgard comics series about the Thor, Loki, Balder and Sif as teens (although I disliked it so much I didn't read it in full but some people seem fond of it). And there is also the Ultimate universe version in which Thor, Loki and Balder are brothers by blood but I don't read Ultimate so I don't know much more than that.
Major characters
Thor, duh, a big, heroic guy who can be overly impetuous, arrogant and cocky at times, but has a big heart and is far from as stupid as he is sometimes assumed to be. He can talk smack like a master. Thor loves his brother no matter what, although it does not mean he isn't sometimes an asshole to him.
Odin, his father, who is a dick of variable levels of dickishness from "means well but sucks as a dad" to "mega dick of epic proportion" depending on writers and continuities. Also really fucking powerful and badass and kind of a magnificent bastard if written well.
Frigga, his (adoptive) mother (Thor's biological mother is actually elder goddess Gaia). She is cool-headed and loves all her children despite how much they grieve her. Quite badass in her own right, but seldom highlighted by canon as such.
Loki, Thor's adoptive brother of Jotunn origin. Loki is definitely Odin's son though, in that he has learned the ways of dickishness from him and is a skilled magician, trickster, and shapeshifter, and a god of mischief and occasionally of "evil". While Loki ignored his heritage in the movie continuity, he was quite aware of it (and grateful to Odin, mostly) in most comics continuities, although not feeling wholly accepted by his adoptive family and home is true to all incarnations. Loki is intensely envious, jealous and spiteful of Thor, and how much he was Odin's favorite son (or so Loki thinks), and one of Thor's main antagonists. Loki is clever, snarky, impulsive, mercurial, cruel but not always uncaring, gets bored easily and likes being in control. He has complicated feelings about his family and Asgard; although the specifics vary from continuities to continuities, he can be seen as loving his brother and father and the whole of Asgard as much as he hates them. Self loathing may also be a key feature of his characterization (mostly from the movie canon).
Sif, Thor's childhood friend and usual girlfriend when he isn't dating Jane Foster. The Lady Sif is a badass warrior whom one should not fuck with .
Amora the Enchantress is a skilled Asgardian witch, and in love with Thor, which results in her being a frequent antagonist out of spite when he doesn't love her back. She sometimes works as an ally of Loki.
She has a sidekick called Skurge the Executioner who is a stoic badass in love with her whom she utterly takes for granted, and who stood alone at Gjallerbru, which granted him the rare comic book right of not being resurrected willy nilly. As I type this, I expect that means Fraction will bring him back any day now.
Jane Foster, Thor's mortal girl friend. Depending on continuities, she has been a nurse, an astrophysicist, a museum curator and a paramedic.
The Warriors Three -- Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg -- are Thor's sometimes sidekicks and friends. They are basically the Three Musketeers as Norse gods and they are cool in a swashbuckling sort of way.
Darcy is Jane Foster's assistant in the movie continuity. She tased Thor and was generally awesome in a snarky, pop culture savvy sort of way.
Brunnhilde is known as the Midgardian superhero Valkyrie, and a sometimes member of the Avengers. I don't know all that much about her other than that she is sometimes victim of straw feminist bad writing (such as in the Tales of Asgard animated movie).
Heimdall is the guardian of the Bifrost and he sees everywhere. In the movie he was played by Idris Elba which immediately granted him several levels in badassness, and he was already quite the stoic motherfucker before that.
Balder is Thor's best friend in their childhood and turns out to also be his brother by blood as well, although he only finds out about that during Straczynski's run. Balder is a pretty boy, a brave warrior, a wise man and a Disney princess, who is loved by almost everyone (and as result hated by Loki like he hates few others). That could make him dull if he didn't have this awesome dry sense of humour. He's inclined to brooding melancholy, and there was that time when he decided to become a pacifist until Loki pushed him in a position to break that oath.
Karnilla, Queen of the Norns (no relationships to the Three Norns who are the Goddesses of Fate). She's a rival power to the Asgard kingdom and therefore a frequent enemy of it, as well as a powerful witch. She's also in love with Balder and has used many tricks to try to get him to reciprocate, and at some point did succeed in dating him. Also a sometimes ally of Loki.
Tyr, another son of Odin, I believe, and a god of war. I don't know the comic version so well, though, I think he's supposed to be a bit of a dick? But he's currently dead and as a result is having a tentative romance with Hela.
Hela, goddess of Death. She's a terrifying and powerful. She's sometimes an antagonist of Thor's, but she takes her duties very seriously and so is often more of a neutral figure that has to be negotiated with. Also she's Loki's daughter by a giantess, of which we are informed offhandedly in canon and which is a bit weird if you think too hard about. In recent comics continuity, she has a young handmaiden called Leah, which is not a suspicious anagram at all, who is a deadpan snarker badass who sidekicks for kid Loki.
Laufey, Loki's father in comics continuity. Loki's mother in Norse mythology. As a result of this and of the movie's failure to depict any female Frost Giant, part of fandom has decided giants are a genderqueer people, which is kind of neat. Laufey doesn't feature in comics all that much, but as a result of hir role in the movie, zie was developed in various interesting ways in some fanfics.
Sigyn, Loki's wife in Norse mythology, and at some point in comics, though at many other points they were estranged. I haven't read anything with her in comics, but she does sometimes show up in fanfics interpreted in creative ways.
Thrym, a Frost giant who once tried to woo Freya once by taking Mjolnir hostage. Despite being a very minor character in comic continuities, that makes hir very important because Thor and Loki then had to crossdress in order to get it back.
Sleipnir, Odin's eight legged horse. In Norse mythology he is the offspring of Loki after he shapeshifted into a mare in heat in order to distract a stallion who was building Asgard too quickly for the Aesir to win a bet. This isn't true to comics continuities, but the fandom decided to ignore that detail and to keep the bestiality mpreg in their canon, kthxbai. Other children of Loki (from Norse mythology and comics continuity both) have also frequently been reinterpreted as a result of mpreg for the same reason, such as Jormungandr (who is all over the place in comics continuity anyway), Fenrir, and Vali Halfling.
Fandom Resources
norsekink, the Thor movie kink meme, still quite active, and welcoming of all sorts of Thor centered prompts
needmyhammer, a generic comm for the Thor movie.
thor_slash, a comm for all your Thor related maleslash pairings.
thor_het, a comm for all your Thor related het pairings.
thorki, a comm for Thor/Loki.
damnitloki, a comm for all non-Thor/Lok Loki pairings.
darcy_loki and trickstertaser two comms for Darcy/Loki.
loki_sif a comm for Loki/Sif.
afigureofspeech has a reclist for Sif/Loki, and so does modillian.
Some meta:
Thoughts on Journey into Mystery up to 633 & inevitability
Loki: An Allegory About Internalised Racism
And that's about all I can provide! On to recs...
If you like:
- mythology
- epic family drama
- manipulative bastards
- tragic anti-villains
- redemptive stories for them
- or corruption stories for them
- the angst of people who hate themselves yet can't stop themselves from the road they walk on
- horned hats
- mindfuckery
- genderqueer characters
- hate/love angst
- mpreg
...this may be a fandom for you!
I won't claim to have a deep and thorough knowledge of Thor comics, but I'll do my best to make an overview of the character's history:
Thor is a character created a long, long time ago in the Silver Age of Marvel by Lee, Kirby and Lieber in a comics called Journey into Mystery before it was retitled The Mighty Thor. He's a god of thunder from Asgard, a realm of space gods. He was punished for his arrogance by his father, and king of Asgard, Odin to be exiled in a human body on Midgard aka Earth. In the original comic book canon, he was also given amnesia and a whole alter ego -- Donald Blake -- who was a surgeon with a disabled leg. Donald Blake could become Thor again by using Mjolnir, Thor's hammer which whomever is worthy should hold the power thereof, which was hidden as a walking stick before Donald Blake would use it. Other continuities have blissfully ignored those complications and just went with the "exiled in a human body without his powers" and "recovers power with Mjolnir" parts.
Eventually Thor recovered his memories and powers long term, but after spending so much time on Earth, he got attached to it and decided he liked spending time there being a hero and hanging out with the Avengers and his girlfriend Jane Foster. This apparently was a bit of a backfire to Odin's plan as he was not overjoyed with it.
In the 80's was one of the most beloved runs on Thor by Walt Simonson. It was awesome and epic and very metal and fun, and Thor got turned into a frog. It's one of the few runs I've read, so a lot of the explanations I'll be able to give are from there.
Thor also went through his 90's dark age phase, which involved getting a spiky armor and dark anti-heroic replacement as one does. I haven't read any of that though.
In the 00's there was a storyline of Ragnarok taking place, at the end of which pretty much all of Asgard was dead, including Thor, and they let the franchise rest for a couple of years. In 2007 they brought it back with Joseph Michael Straczynski on writing and with gorgeous art (by Olivier Coipel amongst others).
Straczinski had Thor recreate Asgard in the middle of a small town in Oklahoma, which provided some interesting contrast between the mythic and the mundane, and also used some old Silver Age elements such as Donald Blake, as a whole other person whose personality shared time with Thor, and even a little bit of Jane Foster. More importantly, he had Loki taking possession over Sif's body (Sif being an Asgardian warrior and the lover of Thor) and walking around in a female form being sarcastic and deliciously manipulative especially with Balder (another son of Odin and friend of Thor, king over Asgard at that time) and chilling out with Doom in Latveria, and also trolling the Mighty Avengers by cosplaying as the Scarlet Witch. Overall a fun run which inspired a few fanfics.
Whatever Straczynski had in mind was cut short by the big Siege crossover event of 2010 (he quit writing Thor as a result the event meshing badly with his own plans), in which Norman Osborn and his Dark Avengers decided to attack Asgard - still in Oklahoma - in great part due to manipulations from Loki. Under Kieron Gillen's pen, Loki was revealed to be tired of being predictable as a bad guy and decided to try to seize a second chance for himself by getting killed heroically(?) while defending Asgard (you know, after having engineered its fall, yeaaah).
Matt Fraction then took over writing, and Thor resurrected Loki (as one would expect), but he turned out to be a little kid with no memories of most of the evil deeds Loki did through the ages. Gillen got to write the kid version of Loki in an ongoing series, called Journey into Mystery, which, I shall emphasize, is one of the best current Marvel series and you should read it.
Currently, both series have been strongly impacted by the big event of 2011, Fear, Itself, which has resulted SPOILERS in Thor being dead - although he's fighting in the Underworld so fear not that he'll be back soon - and replaced by a Troll (literally) who was retconned in everyone's memory except Loki figured it out and is not happy about it. At all. END SPOILERS
Other continuities
In 2011, there was a movie directed by Kenneth Branagh. It was pretty good and tragic in a Shakespearian way, and filled with sexualized male bodies, and suddenly there was a Thor fandom. The movie is big on the space god part, emphasizing "space" here, and a very sympathetic and tragic version of Loki - although judging from trailers, etc. for the Avengers movie, Loki is quite on the road to become the over the top supervillain we also love.
There was also an animated movie called Thor : Tales of Asgard taking place when Thor and Loki are still children and very much BFF, and although it isn't great, it's an okay story and the kids are very adorable in it.
Thor features in the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes cartoon series, as well as Loki, Amora, Skurge, Hela, Jane Foster and various frost giants and other Norse mythology critters. There was also the Hulk vs Thor animated movie which I think is supposed to be in the same continuity. There is very few fanfics inspired by this continuity yet, though, which is a shame.
There are a few comics based alternate continuities worthy of mention. There is the Thor : The Mighty Avengers which was a fan favorite by virtue of being an extremely adorable rom com about Thor and Jane. There were two Loki miniseries, especially one by Rodi and Ribbic which a lot of fans love because it lays the slash Thor/Loki subtext very thickly and is quite sympathetic to Loki. There was a Thor: Son of Asgard comics series about the Thor, Loki, Balder and Sif as teens (although I disliked it so much I didn't read it in full but some people seem fond of it). And there is also the Ultimate universe version in which Thor, Loki and Balder are brothers by blood but I don't read Ultimate so I don't know much more than that.
Major characters
Thor, duh, a big, heroic guy who can be overly impetuous, arrogant and cocky at times, but has a big heart and is far from as stupid as he is sometimes assumed to be. He can talk smack like a master. Thor loves his brother no matter what, although it does not mean he isn't sometimes an asshole to him.
Odin, his father, who is a dick of variable levels of dickishness from "means well but sucks as a dad" to "mega dick of epic proportion" depending on writers and continuities. Also really fucking powerful and badass and kind of a magnificent bastard if written well.
Frigga, his (adoptive) mother (Thor's biological mother is actually elder goddess Gaia). She is cool-headed and loves all her children despite how much they grieve her. Quite badass in her own right, but seldom highlighted by canon as such.
Loki, Thor's adoptive brother of Jotunn origin. Loki is definitely Odin's son though, in that he has learned the ways of dickishness from him and is a skilled magician, trickster, and shapeshifter, and a god of mischief and occasionally of "evil". While Loki ignored his heritage in the movie continuity, he was quite aware of it (and grateful to Odin, mostly) in most comics continuities, although not feeling wholly accepted by his adoptive family and home is true to all incarnations. Loki is intensely envious, jealous and spiteful of Thor, and how much he was Odin's favorite son (or so Loki thinks), and one of Thor's main antagonists. Loki is clever, snarky, impulsive, mercurial, cruel but not always uncaring, gets bored easily and likes being in control. He has complicated feelings about his family and Asgard; although the specifics vary from continuities to continuities, he can be seen as loving his brother and father and the whole of Asgard as much as he hates them. Self loathing may also be a key feature of his characterization (mostly from the movie canon).
Sif, Thor's childhood friend and usual girlfriend when he isn't dating Jane Foster. The Lady Sif is a badass warrior whom one should not fuck with .
Amora the Enchantress is a skilled Asgardian witch, and in love with Thor, which results in her being a frequent antagonist out of spite when he doesn't love her back. She sometimes works as an ally of Loki.
She has a sidekick called Skurge the Executioner who is a stoic badass in love with her whom she utterly takes for granted, and who stood alone at Gjallerbru, which granted him the rare comic book right of not being resurrected willy nilly. As I type this, I expect that means Fraction will bring him back any day now.
Jane Foster, Thor's mortal girl friend. Depending on continuities, she has been a nurse, an astrophysicist, a museum curator and a paramedic.
The Warriors Three -- Fandral, Hogun, and Volstagg -- are Thor's sometimes sidekicks and friends. They are basically the Three Musketeers as Norse gods and they are cool in a swashbuckling sort of way.
Darcy is Jane Foster's assistant in the movie continuity. She tased Thor and was generally awesome in a snarky, pop culture savvy sort of way.
Brunnhilde is known as the Midgardian superhero Valkyrie, and a sometimes member of the Avengers. I don't know all that much about her other than that she is sometimes victim of straw feminist bad writing (such as in the Tales of Asgard animated movie).
Heimdall is the guardian of the Bifrost and he sees everywhere. In the movie he was played by Idris Elba which immediately granted him several levels in badassness, and he was already quite the stoic motherfucker before that.
Balder is Thor's best friend in their childhood and turns out to also be his brother by blood as well, although he only finds out about that during Straczynski's run. Balder is a pretty boy, a brave warrior, a wise man and a Disney princess, who is loved by almost everyone (and as result hated by Loki like he hates few others). That could make him dull if he didn't have this awesome dry sense of humour. He's inclined to brooding melancholy, and there was that time when he decided to become a pacifist until Loki pushed him in a position to break that oath.
Karnilla, Queen of the Norns (no relationships to the Three Norns who are the Goddesses of Fate). She's a rival power to the Asgard kingdom and therefore a frequent enemy of it, as well as a powerful witch. She's also in love with Balder and has used many tricks to try to get him to reciprocate, and at some point did succeed in dating him. Also a sometimes ally of Loki.
Tyr, another son of Odin, I believe, and a god of war. I don't know the comic version so well, though, I think he's supposed to be a bit of a dick? But he's currently dead and as a result is having a tentative romance with Hela.
Hela, goddess of Death. She's a terrifying and powerful. She's sometimes an antagonist of Thor's, but she takes her duties very seriously and so is often more of a neutral figure that has to be negotiated with. Also she's Loki's daughter by a giantess, of which we are informed offhandedly in canon and which is a bit weird if you think too hard about. In recent comics continuity, she has a young handmaiden called Leah, which is not a suspicious anagram at all, who is a deadpan snarker badass who sidekicks for kid Loki.
Laufey, Loki's father in comics continuity. Loki's mother in Norse mythology. As a result of this and of the movie's failure to depict any female Frost Giant, part of fandom has decided giants are a genderqueer people, which is kind of neat. Laufey doesn't feature in comics all that much, but as a result of hir role in the movie, zie was developed in various interesting ways in some fanfics.
Sigyn, Loki's wife in Norse mythology, and at some point in comics, though at many other points they were estranged. I haven't read anything with her in comics, but she does sometimes show up in fanfics interpreted in creative ways.
Thrym, a Frost giant who once tried to woo Freya once by taking Mjolnir hostage. Despite being a very minor character in comic continuities, that makes hir very important because Thor and Loki then had to crossdress in order to get it back.
Sleipnir, Odin's eight legged horse. In Norse mythology he is the offspring of Loki after he shapeshifted into a mare in heat in order to distract a stallion who was building Asgard too quickly for the Aesir to win a bet. This isn't true to comics continuities, but the fandom decided to ignore that detail and to keep the bestiality mpreg in their canon, kthxbai. Other children of Loki (from Norse mythology and comics continuity both) have also frequently been reinterpreted as a result of mpreg for the same reason, such as Jormungandr (who is all over the place in comics continuity anyway), Fenrir, and Vali Halfling.
Fandom Resources
norsekink, the Thor movie kink meme, still quite active, and welcoming of all sorts of Thor centered prompts
needmyhammer, a generic comm for the Thor movie.
thor_slash, a comm for all your Thor related maleslash pairings.
thor_het, a comm for all your Thor related het pairings.
thorki, a comm for Thor/Loki.
damnitloki, a comm for all non-Thor/Lok Loki pairings.
darcy_loki and trickstertaser two comms for Darcy/Loki.
loki_sif a comm for Loki/Sif.
afigureofspeech has a reclist for Sif/Loki, and so does modillian.
Some meta:
Thoughts on Journey into Mystery up to 633 & inevitability
Loki: An Allegory About Internalised Racism
And that's about all I can provide! On to recs...