Jane Foster's Thor Actually Debuted Way Before Fans Realize
Most fans assume Jane Foster’s ability to lift Thor’s hammer is a recent concept, but the female Thor actually made her debut way back in a 1978 issue of Marvel’s classic What If...? series. The Jane Foster version of Thor has been a surprise fan-favorite ever since writer Jason Aaron and artist Russell Dauterman’s critically acclaimed Thor run from 2014. The storyline followed a cancer stricken Jane Foster welding Mjolnir and regaining her strength through the power of Thor. The story went on to inspire the 2022 MCU release Thor: Love and Thunder.
The inaugural What If...?series followed Uatu the Watcher as he peered into alternate realities of the Marvel universe in order to see different outcomes of established events. While none of the stories told in What If...?were canon to main Marvel continuity, many of them held the seeds of ideas that would germinate further down the line such as Magneto ruling all of mutantkind, a fascist Captain America, and Spider-Man’s daughter continuing his legacy as Spider-Girl. The What If...? books were the perfect place to experiment with new ideas and deviations like Jane Foster being worthy of calling herself the Thunder God.
Related: Jane Foster's Thor Costume Has A Secret Detail Fans Totally Miss
What If...? #10 is titled What If Jane Foster Had Found the Hammer of Thor? Written by Don Glut with pencils by Rick Hoberg, the issue is set during the early period of Thor comics when Thor was still confined to the body of mortal physician Dr. Donald Blake. In this version of events, instead of Blake discovering the magic walking stick that transforms into Thor’s hammer, it’s his colleague and potential love interest, Nurse Jane Foster. Being somewhat familiar with Norse mythology, Jane
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