ODIN

In the Tales of Asgard back-up story in Journey Into Mystery Vol. 1 #103 (1964), “Thor’s Mission to Mimir,” Odin had already done the quiet part of creation himself: he had planted two trees on the empty face of Midgard. What he needed was a catalyst, so he sent Thor into the land of the dwarfs carrying a branch of Yggdrasil, on an errand Thor was pledged to complete.

King Mimir received the branch and dipped it into his enchanted fountain. The magic waters spilled out across Midgard and fell on the two trees Odin had planted — and the trees stood up as a man and a woman: Aske and Embla, “destined to start a new race in the image of the immortals of Asgard.” In Marvel’s cosmology, every human being who has ever lived descends from that watered pair.

It is a deliberate remix of the Eddas. In the old Norse telling, Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve do the work with their own hands, carving driftwood and gifting it life, reason and form. Marvel kept Odin as the author of the plan but reassigned the labour — a son for the journey, a dwarf-king for the fountain — making the All-Father humanity’s creator by delegation as much as by power.