Warning: contains spoilers for Death of Doctor Strange: X-Men/Black Knight #1!
The Black Knight is a seemingly average Marvel hero who just so happens to have a horrific dark side – and it also informs how Thor acts while using his prized weapon. Both Dane Whitman and Thor are, for better or worse, defined in the Marvel Universe by the weapons they use while engaged in combat. In Death of Doctor Strange: X-Men/Black Knight #1, Marvel reveals the true nature of the bond between enchanted weapon and wielder.
In Marvel Comics continuity, Dane Whitman is the third character to hold the Black Knight name. A descendant of the knight Sir Percival of the famous Arthurian legend (which is true in the Marvel Universe), Whitman wields the Ebony Blade, an enchanted sword that can cut through nearly any material and – perhaps the single most defining attribute of the weapon – can only be wielded by the impure of heart.
This characteristic naturally causes one to label the Ebony Blade the functional opposite of Thor’s Mjolnir, although that’s technically not the case. The hammer does not judge one’s purity of heart but worthiness, and takes into account one’s warrior spirit as well as intentions. But Death of Doctor Strange: X-Men/Black Knight #1 reveals that certain magical weapons in the Marvel Universe can pass on their properties and even powers to the wielders, given enough time. Both Dane Whitman and Thor have spent plenty of time holding their weapons in battle…but Thor is a long-lived Asgardian and has spent hundreds of years carrying Mjolnir into combat.
This naturally raises plenty of questions regarding the properties that Mjolnir would transfer to Thor. Are those properties physical (is Thor’s skin as strong as the uru of the hammer, for example)? Or has Thor taken into himself the hammer’s ability to decide who is worthy and who is not? If that is the case, that means Thor, consciously or otherwise, decides for himself if he’s truly worthy of lifting the hammer. Considering the current arc in Thor comics, in which Mjolnir has gained sentience and could possibly be the God of Hammers of legend, this opens the door to a very internal battle between Thor and his own self-doubts.
The revelations in the one-off issue means Thor is in complete control of the hammer – he just doesn’t know it yet. Far from being the simple-minded brute that his brother Loki believes him to be, Thor is actually fairly knowledgeable about magical items, if not necessarily an expert in all things enchanted. If Thor doesn’t yet know the transference of magical properties from weapon to wielder, perhaps the Black Knight could explain it to him.
