Shockley
Maester
There is almost no correlation between what I would consider the primordial inception of the character Superman and the mythological figure of Thor. Superman was always written, to the best of his ability, as a force for good - this is not something that we ever saw of Thor in the Norse myths, where he runs around like a madman murdering anyone anyone who vaguely ticks him off.
Marvel Thor and Norse Thor are very, very different creatures.
That said, Joe Schuster was very good at chronicling what was going through his head and what he was doing when he created a character. We not only have fairly elaborate backstories on Superman's creation, but lesser characters like the Specter as well. As I recall, he took the name straight from Nietzsche - he had composed a story a few years earlier where someone named 'Superman' was the bad guy, and that just carried over. In addition he had been reading a hack sci-fi novel called 'Gladiator,' and that's where Superman's powers derived from.
As to the actual mythic essence that is Superman, I'd say he's fairly close to the Golem. They're very similar in their abilities and nature, and Schuster never concealed that the Golem was an influence and that the entire Kryptonian origin was supposed to be a reference to his own Jewish-in-America experiences.
Marvel Thor and Norse Thor are very, very different creatures.
That said, Joe Schuster was very good at chronicling what was going through his head and what he was doing when he created a character. We not only have fairly elaborate backstories on Superman's creation, but lesser characters like the Specter as well. As I recall, he took the name straight from Nietzsche - he had composed a story a few years earlier where someone named 'Superman' was the bad guy, and that just carried over. In addition he had been reading a hack sci-fi novel called 'Gladiator,' and that's where Superman's powers derived from.
As to the actual mythic essence that is Superman, I'd say he's fairly close to the Golem. They're very similar in their abilities and nature, and Schuster never concealed that the Golem was an influence and that the entire Kryptonian origin was supposed to be a reference to his own Jewish-in-America experiences.