ODIN

Every version of Mjolnir’s birth Odin allowed to circulate left out the prisoner. Eons ago a sentient cosmic superstorm — the God Tempest, called the Mother of Thunder, a thunderstorm the size of a galaxy — bore down on Asgard, and Odin fought it for days before finally trapping the weakened storm inside a nugget of Uru the dwarves of Nidavellir had gifted him.

Odin then ordered that metal forged into a weapon through which he could wield the storm’s power. Seventeen weeks of dwarf-work, powered by a star, produced Mjolnir — whereupon the hammer, storm still raging inside it, refused to be tamed, hurled its maker around, and threw him back to Asgard. The All-Father’s answer was enchantment: he made the weapon all but impossible for anyone else to lift and left it sitting in a weapons hall for ages.

The buried history surfaced in Mighty Thor Vol. 2 #12 (2016), by Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman, when Mjolnir dragged Jane Foster’s Thor to the Halls of All-Knowing and its librarian told the tale. Which reframes his son Thor entirely: the worthiness test generations celebrated began as a lock on a cage Odin himself could not hold shut.