Thing is though - by the Eye's account there WAS NO Buri to father Bor, nor Bor to father Odin. Buri/Tiwaz's very existence goes against the Eye's story.DonCampbell wrote:Also, I think it would really be a good idea to take a close look at what "Tiwaz" actually told Thor in THOR #355. Quoting from page 15, Tiwaz says, "Oh, I know you have heard different versions of Odin's beginnings. Did not a great eyeball with a grudge once tell you that your father was the fusion of four earlier gods? And did not Odin himself tell you of his younger days with his two brothers? In truth, were I told conflicting stories by my father and a floating eyeball, I know which I should believe." And that's ALL he says. While it seems to me that "Tiwaz" was strongly implying that the Eye of Odin was lying, it falls short of being an absolute declaration. And let's not forget that "Tiwaz" himself was lying to Thor the whole time they were together since he was, in actuality, Thor's own great-grandfather, BURI. So I would take anything that "Tiwaz" said with a grain of salt.
Thing is though, SW:O is in the MCP. With a crowbar at points, yes, but in the MCP.DonCampbell wrote:Now, I'm not trying to say that EVERYthing the Eye told Thor was the absolute truth/canon and anyone who disagrees is a damned heretic. However, I'm also not willing to completely dismiss the Eye's account simply because Walt Simonson wrote a story in which ONE character IMPLIED that the Eye was lying about Odin's origin. And I'm also not willing to blindly accept everything in any of the retcons that subsequent writers have seen fit to force upon us (anymore than some posters on this board are willing to accept the events depicted in SPIDER-WOMAN: ORIGIN as the new "canon" about Jessica Drew's origin).
And if it comes down to throwing one already-unreliable flashback out, or throwing a whole series (Thor: Son of Asgard) out wholesale... I'll go with the series. Especially since there was more against SW:O than against T:SOA.
Fair enough. I think the weight of evidence against it has reached critical mass by this point, however. To wit (and I'm pulling this example out of thin air - any resemblance to any actual story past, present or future is purely coincidental) if one issue features Character X spinning a tale of how he was born as an only child into an poor family, how he was shot at by the Punisher who was looking for a mob boss, and how that led him to invent a suit of armour and declare revenge against the Punisher... only for it to be later revealed that he was never an only child, and that he stole the armour... I would dump the rest of the FB on the basis that it's been shown to be unreliable regardless of whether other FBs have superceded those bits.DonCampbell wrote:I think it is a DRASTIC overstatement to claim that most of what the Eye of Odin told Thor is "absolute bunk." Personally, I rather liked the Eye's account of how the previous Asgard ended and how the current Asgard was born. Also, as far as I know, no alternate explanation for how the Ragnarok cycle works has yet been put forward so we might as well accept the Eye's story (albeit with a notation that it MIGHT not be accurate).
Hell, the way the Loeb/Sale "colour" series have been treated mirrors that - the framing sequences are in the MCP, but the FBs (even the bits that don't contradict other material) aren't.