Marvel Universe | PNEUMYTHOLOGY

Poseidon

In Greek mythology, he is the god of the sea. His name in Roman mythology is Neptune. Here are some representations in painting and sculpture from various centuries:

Shown on a Corinthian plaque (550-525 B. C.).

Poseidon from Milos, 2nd Century B. C. (National Archaeological Museum of Athens).

Andrea Doria as Neptune by Angelo Bronzino.

Neptune and Amphitrite by Jacob Gheyn II.

He has been borrowed and modified for inclusion in the Marvel Universe where he interacts with Namor, the Submariner…

Credit: Marvel Comics (Personally, I'm cheering for the Hulk.) — Credit: Marvel Comics (Personally, I’m cheering for the Hulk.)

… as well as the DC universe. Of the images I examined, I didn’t like the mean-spirited tone of most of them (Poseidon going rogue, hitting Wonder Woman, bloody noses, bloody mouths, etc.), so I included only one for this post. This is the best I found for my purposes, and it shows an angry Poseidon battling an angry Aquaman.

DC characters are so angry so much of the time. It strikes me as rather one-dimensional. This is definitely not the DC comics of my childhood.

More examples of shameless borrowing continue next week.

Continuing on in our series, let’s take a look at…

Freya

Actually, this goddess has a number of appellations and spellings as can be seen in some of my image captions. Also called Frigga in the Marvel Universe, she is the goddess of love, sex, fertility, beauty, war, death, etc. As you can see, their is some redundancy of function between the members of the Norse pantheon. Freya is the wife of Odin and the mother of Thor. Below is a depiction of her flyting with the god Loki. Flyting would have been called “playing the dozens” in the not too distant past of the American inner city. In the 1970s, my friends and I called it “firing” on each other when we were in high school. As this picture suggests, this is a fairly widespread sport throughout history.