Hel is Loki’s daughter. Odin sends her to Niflheim and gives her the dead. In Norse mythology Odin doesn’t have a daughter. In The Mighty Thor, Marvel comics change the family. Hela becomes Odin’s firstborn, a warrior beside him as he takes the Nine Realms. Later he wants peace. She does not. He shuts her away. The mythological Hel waits below. Marvel’s Hela returns wanting everything above.

winter light
the locked door
open again

Paul Conneally
September 2026

….

The image is ‘Odin’s Daughter’ also by Paul Conneally. ‘Odin’s Daughter’ is a détournement of the cover of Boden mail order fashion catalogue. It is deliberately scratchy and imperfect. It is avowedly freehand and in juxtaposition to generative AI images.

Here is Hela as portrayed by the artist Jack Kirby in issue 150 of The Mighty Thor in March 1968: