Hela…WOW! What can you say about Hela that will do her justice?
Borne out of Thor's Asgard mythology, Hela’s the mac-daddy of goddesses- the otherworldly embodiment of DEATH!
I wasn’t a keen reader of Thor, and for most of my life, Thor was the one major Marvel comics that I hadn’t gotten into. For one, the stories were, for a kid, REALLY grown-up, and it was hard to follow along, and TWO, Nobody I KNEW was into it, so there was no one to “turn me onto” Thor. But I knew the characters well enough, and the spectre of Hela was always known to me, along with the other major players of the comic such as Loki, Odin, Balder, Sif and Ulik.
The first Thor story I read was printed in a Marvel book called “THE SUPERHERO WOMEN”, read while sitting on the floor of our local Waldenbooks. It was a paperback collection featuring Marvel Comics' roster of Super Heroines such as the Invisible Girl, Black Widow and Medusa, among others.
In it, they had reprinted what was one of Thor’s most well-known and heralded HELA stories, culled from issues featured in THOR #186-190, called “The Icy Grip of Death”, where Hela comes to earth to hunt down Thor and take his life.
When Stan Lee came up with this story where Hela was going to don a “human” physique and appearance a la Donald Blake, It was up to Big John Buscema to come up with how she would look, and WHOA, did he deliver!
Hela’s mortal form, in my opinion, is SPOT-ON PERFECT! Looking at her, my first thought was, Oh my God, YES! Adopting a sultry Greta- Garbo-ish outlook ijust has to be the PERFECT container for her, for if anyone has to imagine what Hela’s voice would sound like, Garbo’s husky swedish voice ABSOLUTELY fits the bill! I was BLOWN AWAY!
Besides that, even Garbo’s PERSONALITY was akin to Hela, with her “I Vant To Be Alone” mythos…imagine the swedish Sphinx uttering Hela’s lines “Why speakest thou to me of...Love?"
It would be many, many years later til I collected the actual issues in that impressive THOR run, but even back then I knew what I had read was a classic story that would continue to shine as one of the great cornerstone THOR tales for years to come!
Hela
First appearance: Journey into Mystery #102 (March, 1964)
Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
