The Olympians: Marvel version

The last few days weeks have been pretty brutal. I've started those long working weeks, and the discussions of the last few days--although greatly appreciated--took up a lot of time and energy. As such, I really needed a lighter topic for today. Thankfully, there is comic book producer Marvel, who has taken just about any pantheon and turned the beings within them into comic book characters... including the Olympians.

The Olypians, like the Asgardians or other members of famous pantheons, feature only as an addition to the stories they are in, but a great majority of Them have made the cut. In the comics, the Theoi are sometimes replaced by their Roman equivalent, but the Theoi featured in the comics, along with Their domains, are:

Zeus - The God of the Sky and King of the Olympian Gods
Hera - The Queen of the Gods
Aphrodite - The Goddess of Love
Apollo - The God of Light, Music, Poetry, Medicine, and Science
Ares - The God of War
Artemis - The Goddess of Wild Animals, the Hunt, and the Moon
Athena - The Goddess of Wisdom
Eros - The God of Love
Demeter - The Goddess of the Harvest
Dionysus - The God of Wine
Hephaestus - The Gods' Blacksmith
Hebe - The Goddess of Youth
Hecate - The Goddess of Magic, Witchcraft, Necromancy, and Crossroads
Hercules/Herakles - The Gatekeeper of Olympus
Hermes - The Messenger of the Gods
Pan - The God of the Countryside and Nature
Poseidon - The God of the Sea
Persephone - The Queen of the Underworld
Hades - The God of the Underworld
Thanatos - The God of Death
Hestia - The Goddess of the Hearth

Wonder Woman (member of the pantheon through the Amazons, created by Ares and Athena) 

gives thanks to the Olympians at Their temple. [DC comics]

So, how do the Olympians translate into comic book characters? The basics come from the Comics Database:

• Superhuman Strength: All Olympians are superhumanly strong with the average male being able to lift about 30 tons and the average female being able to lift about 25 tons.
• Superhuman Speed: All Olympians have the potential of being able to run and move at speeds much greater than the finest human athlete.
• Superhuman Stamina: The musculature of all Olympians produces considerably less fatigue toxins during physical activity than the muscles of human beings. The average Olympian male and female can exert themselves at peak capacity for about 24 hours before fatigue impairs them.
• Superhumanly Dense Tissue: The skin, muscle, and bone tissues of all Olympians are about 3 times as dense as the same tissue of a human body. This contributes, somewhat, to their superhuman strength and weight.
• Superhuman Durability: The bodies of all Olympians are considerably more resistant to physical injury than the bodies of humans. Olympians are capable of withstanding great impact forces, exposure to temperature and pressure extremes, falls from great heights, etc. without sustaining physical injury.
• Regenerative Healing Factor: Despite their natural durability, it is possible for any of the Olympians to sustain injury. However, if injured, their highly advanced metabolism enables them to recover with superhuman levels of speed and efficiency. As with most of their other powers, the speed and extent of these powers varies from one Olympian to another. Most Olympians, for instance, are not able to regenerate missing limbs or organs while a small minority can.
• Immortality: All Olympians are functionally immortal. They are immune to the effects of aging and haven't aged since reaching adulthood. Their bodies are also immune to all known Earthly diseases and infection.
• Energy Manipulation: All Olympians have some potential to manipulate magical or cosmic energies for some purpose. These powers are mostly limited to changing their appearance or shape, and teleporting across great distances. However, a small minority of the Olympians is capable of manipulating vast amounts of energy for a variety of purposes including teleportation, shapeshifting, matter manipulation, augmentation of their physical capabilities, erecting powerful force fields, firing powerful blasts of energy for destructive purposes, granting superhuman powers to objects and beings, etc.

 

The Olympian Gods on the left, and the Olympian Eternals on the right

As for the story of how the Olympians fit into the broader pantheon of Gods; Marvel explains it best:

"In the early ages of the Earth, a sentient life-force developed and one day manifested itself into the being Demiurge. He birthed the Elder Gods who eventually warred among themselves until one of them, Atum, transformed itself into Demogorge and devoured or chased away all but himself and Gaea, also known as Mother Earth. Atum would reform from the Demogorge and leave the Earth, dispersing the energies he had absorbed into the planet. When mankind eventually began rising towards sentience, their dreams gave form to the absorb energies; this transformed those who would become the progenitors of mankind's gods, notably the Olympians, regarded as deities by the peoples of Greece and the Roman Empire.

[...] Under the gods' watchful eyes, the Olympians flourished, especially the Greeks, Romans and Atlantean civilizations. The Olympians soon found themselves drawn into conflict with other gods, in particular the Asgardian gods of Northern Europe and the Ennead of Northern Africa; however, the coming of the world-threatening Celestials taught these gods that there were greater threats to their world than each other, and Zeus and his fellow leaders created the Council of Godheads and made a pact despite individual conflicts, the pantheons would never go to war as a whole. When Zeus and the Asgardian leader Odin were unable to head off a war between their peoples, they cooperated to alter the minds of every warrior, leading each to believe briefly that they had won. The Celestials existence drew Zeus' attention to the Eternals, a Celestial-manipulated offshoot of mankind with powers which made them seem godlike to humanity. Their City Olympia lay near Mount Olympus, and Zeus and his daughter Athena met with the Eternals to negotiate a treaty by which the Eternals would act as gods on Earth; despite their best intentions, this lead to repeated confusion between similarly named gods and Eternals, heightening each society's resentment of the other. When the time came for a final conformation with the Celestials, Zeus used his peoples' annoyance towards the Eternals as motivation to lead them in an invasion of Olympia, though he soon withdrew when it proved unprofitable."

For a full checklist of the Marvel comics which feature the Olympians, go here. Happy reading!