Remember When Characters Sounded Like Themselves?

Remember When Characters Sounded Like Themselves?: "
So, here’s a page from next week’s Fear Itself #5 (Spoilers, so it’s under the jump):



(Image via CBR’s preview of the issue, in case you’re wondering.)

Am I the only person who read that and thought “There’s no way Thor would ever say anything like ‘You were always a giant pain in the ass‘”? It’s perhaps a fannish concern, the whole idea of consistent “voices” for characters – especially as even superhero comics become more and more creator-led, and series become remembered for specific creators’ runs as opposed to individual stories or the like – but… “Giant pain in the ass”? From Thor? Really?

I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess; one of the drawbacks of writers with strong individual voices like Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Millar and now Matt Fraction is that their characters tend to have very similar dialogue; re-read something like Civil War and it’s easy to imagine Cap and Iron Man’s dialogue swapped out without too much difficulty (It’s all the “sweetheart”s), for example. But what gets lost in that stylized dialogue (which can be a lot of fun) is the idea that these characters have particular personalities that set them apart from each other – For me, Iron Man would call someone a pain in the ass, and maybe even Cap, but Thor would be the one who would just do either a monologue about what evil this particular creature is, or do a “Have at thee” and hit them. The idea that Asgardians use “ass” in general seems off, and somehow… beneath them, if that doesn’t sound too weird for a fictional character and fictional race.

I shouldn’t be bothered by it, of course; it’s a gag line – Not Thor’s first, in Fear Itself; #4 opened with one, as well – that’s essentially throwaway and there purely to make Thor seem even more badass than he would otherwise. But I’m not sure if it’s not a gag at the cost of the character. Am I just being ridiculously old-fashioned here?
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