Thor is easily one of the greatest characters created in Marvel’s Silver Age. If you look back at Marvel back then, you can see the characters that Stan Lee created and the ones that Jack Kirby was more in control for and the Odinson was one of the latter. Kirby loved mythology and cosmology – there’s a reason that he created the Fourth World for DC Comics – and the God of Thunder allowed him to indulge those proclivities. He was the House of Ideas’ Superman equivalent back then, which meant that he got all of the awesome powers. Comics in the Silver Age weren’t as serious as they are now, so creators would sometimes come up with powers out of nowhere for one issue and then they’re never seen again.
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Thor is a deity, so him being given new powers that are completely forgotten about is par for the course. Some of these powers make sense when you think about what kind of abilities that the God of Thunder with a magic hammer would have and some definitely don’t. He’s a character who has numerous powers, so some of them are going to fall through the cracks. Marvel has forgotten about these five Thor powers, abilities that make him even more potent.
5) Super-Breath
Super breath is more like one of Superman’s powers than Thor’s, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes that he has it. Super breath is a simple power; it allows a superhuman to exhale with great power and is also often freezing, but not always. As far as it goes, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby made the power make sense in Thor’s repertoire by calling the resulting blast of air “hurricane force”, which makes sense since the Odinson is the God of Thunder. It’s not all that weird for him to have this ability, but there’s just something about it that doesn’t really feel right. Maybe it’s because it feels like overkill; this is someone who can fire massive lightning blasts and use his hammer to create whirlwinds. He has control over the weather; there’s really no reason for him to have super breath, which is almost certainly why it’s been forgotten over the years. It’s surplus to requirements.
4) Dynamokinesis
The universe is made up of four fundamental forces – gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, and weak nuclear force. Everything you see around you is made up by those four forces and controlling them could potentially make you the most powerful being in creation; you could do whatever you wanted. Over the years, numerous Marvel characters have revealed that they can control one or more of the four forces, a power that is known as dynamokinesis. It allows its bearer to control one or more of the four forces and it is a power that Thor has but doesn’t use very much. Weather and electromagnetism go hand in hand, so Thor being able to use this power definitely makes sense. However, it’s the definition of a broken power. The Odinson is already a god with amazing powers, so giving him the power to manipulate the very building blocks of reality is a little much. It’ll probably get trotted out at some point if a power scaler is writing the book and then fade away again.
3) Mjolnir’s Other Energy Powers
Mjolner is one of Marvel’s most powerful weapons and has long been a staple of Thor’s stories. The mystical hammer was forged by Odin a long time ago and enchanted with a spell that made only the worthy able to use it. It became a symbol of the hero to the extent that Odin made it so whoever was worthy of it has the powers of the God of Thunder. It’s basically the ultimate buff; it makes all of Thor’s powers greater. Most of the time, he uses it to summon lightning, to fly, and as a melee weapon. However, it’s also long had a variety of energy powers that don’t really get used much anymore. It can absorb and dissipate energy, allows him to sense different kinds of power, and has access to energies beyond just lightning. There’s the God-Blast, which allows the God of Thunder to channel the various godly energies he has into devastating blast. The hammer also has access to something called Anti-Energy, which can destroy entire planets. Finally, there’s the Thermo-Blast, a blast that is described as “universe-shaking”. Most of these have been forgotten over the years.
2) Earth Manipulation
Recent years have seen Thor’s origin changed in a lot of ways. Instead of being the son of Odin and Frigga, it was teased that he was the son of the lord of Asgard and the Phoenix Force, but this was just a weird bait and switch for the reveal of Gaia as his mother. She’s the embodiment of the Earth and growing things, and some of that rubbed off on Thor. In Thor (Vol. 6), the Odinson ended up going against the God of Hammers and found himself in a terrifying battle for his life. He had to dig deep to get the power to win and this meant tapping into the power of his mother. He was able to manipulate the Earth around him, revealing geokinetic powers. This is probably the most modern of his forgotten powers, as it was established about four years ago, which makes it weird that he hasn’t used it again. It’s a cool power, but it feels like another case of adding too much power to an already powerful character.
1) Time Travel
Marvel has put out some awesome time travel stories, even if all time travel stories are a bit convoluted. As far as powers go, time travel is one of the most broken out there. It’s an ability that if you used it in the most efficient way, it would render all stories moot; they could just go back in time and fix everything. Not many heroes actually have time-based powers and equipment, especially not major heroes. However, back in the day, Thor could use Mjolnir to travel in time by moving faster than the speed of light. Mjolnir can also open portals (which Marvel hasn’t forgotten by the way; he still does it at times), so he was able to create time portals. Mjolnir lost this power thanks to the Space Phantom, an early Avengers foe who was working for Immortus (as revealed in Avengers Forever (Vol. 1) #1-12). The future version of Kang the Conqueror wanted to take away the Avengers’ ability to travel through time, so the Space Phantom tricked the Odinson into burning out this power of Mjolnir. Technically, it’s not forgotten about, it’s just gone, but they could have restored the power at any time and didn’t. The last time I remember it being mentioned was in Avengers Forever, which gave the explanation for why it happened.
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