Angela
Aldrif Odinsdottir/Angela
Alter Ego: Aldrif Odinsdottir
Editorial Names: Angela: Asgard's Assassin, Angela: Queen of Hel
First Appearance: Age of Ultron #10 (June, 2013)
Angela (real name: Aldrif Odinsdottir) is a fictional comic book character created by Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane. She was initially from Image Comics' Spawn, but migrated over to the Marvel Universe after Neil Gaiman took the rights to her after a complicated legal battle. To see her Image Comics Incarcation, See Spawn.
Angela is a mysterious being and one of the Angels, a race of extremely materialist and selfish creatures hailing from Heven [sic], the Tenth Realm according to Marvel's version of the Norse cosmogony. They waged a war against Asgard until Odin severed Heven's connection to Yggdrasil, divorcing it from the other Nine Realms.
She is pulled from Heven as a result of the damage to the multiverse inflicted during Age of Ultron. Confused and enraged, she charges toward Earth from outer space, only to be intercepted by Gamora, who, as is pretty much standard in superhero comics, attacks her. She is captured when the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy arrive and manage to defeat her. After an interrogation, Angela claims she was only heading to Earth because she wanted to see it for herself. The Guardians realize they actually incited the fight, free Angela, and accompany her to Earth.
In the crossover with All-New X-Men, the Trial of Jean Grey, Angela is still with the Guardians, and works with both teams to rescue a time-displaced Jean Grey from captivity by the Shi'ar Empire.
During Original Sin, it is revealed that Angela is actually Aldrif, Odin and Frigga's long-lost daughter, making her the older half-sister to Thor and adoptive sister to Loki. She was supposedly killed when she was still an infant by the Queen of Angels during Asgard's war with the Angels. Her "death" was what caused Odin to sever the Tenth Realm from the other nine, as punishment for their attack. But she was not dead, and when the Queen of Angels ordered the corpse of the baby to be disposed, the Angel tasked to do so discovered it was still alive, and raised her as one of the Angels under the new name Angela.
Angela later abandons the Guardians of the Galaxy when Old Loki telepathically tells her that the portal to Heven is open and that she can return home. As Thor battles Heven's guards, Angela appears, having been guided to the doorway to Heven by Loki, and prepares to battle Thor. Angela defeats Thor, and is then told by the Queen of Angels to bring Thor to her.
While Loki leads an Angel fleet to Asgard, under the false pretense of helping them destroy it, Thor escapes captivity and engages Angela in combat once again. The fight is interrupted when Odin arrives and recognizes Angela as his daughter. He asks her to join him and the rest of the Asgardians, but Angela refuses, as she was raised to think Asgardians were her enemies. However, she is forced to leave Heven as well due to the Angels rejecting her for her lineage. With no place to go, Angela sets out to explore the other realms.
Her first ongoing series started in December 2014, titled as Angela: Asgard's Assassin, written by Kieron Gillen and Marguerite Bennett. During Secret Wars (2015) the title was replaced by 1602: Witch Hunter Angela. Post Secret Wars, her story continued in Angela: Queen of Hel, which concluded in April 2016.
Since then, she's mostly appeared in team books, like Asgardians Of The Galaxy and Strikeforce.
As her books tend to be part of the Thor family, most characters from this series can be found here, or for her team here.
Angela appears in the following works:
Notable Comic Books
- 1602: Witch Hunter Angela (tie-in to Secret Wars (2015))
- All-New X-Men
- Angela: Asgard's Assassin
- Angela: Queen of Hel
- Age of Ultron
- Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3
- Original Sin 5.1-5.5 also known as Thor & Loki: The Tenth Realm
- Vote Loki
- Asgardians Of The Galaxy
- Strikeforce
Video Games
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Universal Weapons (2014): A non-canon mobile game loosely based on Guardians of the Galaxy movie.
- Marvel: Avengers Alliance (2012-2016): Appears as unlockable playable heroine since PvP Season 19.
- Marvel Heroes: Available as playable character, voiced by Laura Bailey.
- Marvel: Contest of Champions: Angela is a playable character.
- Marvel: Avengers Alliance: She appears in the Facebook game.
- Marvel Future Fight: She is a playable character in the mobile game Marvel: Future Fight.
- Marvel: Avengers Academy Angela was a recruitable character in Marvel Avengers Academy during its A-Force event, voiced by Natalie Van Sistine.
Western Animation
- Angela has her first Marvel Animated appearance in the Guardians of the Galaxy (2015) episode "We Are the World Tree".
Angela provides examples of the following tropes:
- Action Girl: She's an Asgardian and raised as a warrior of Angels. She's skilled with many weapons, especially axe and sword.
- Angela Can Breathe In Space: She is capable of surviving in the vacuum of space unaided. This weirds Starlord out a bit.
- Big Sister Instinct: While her relationship with her blood family is... complicated, she does show a degree of distant protectiveness towards her little brother, Thor, as well as telling him to get his act together as King.
- Black Sheep: Not that her family doesn't love her, all Asgardians adore her, but her upbringing by the enemy (especially that by Angel standards their affection put her in a debt she didn't want) caused her to rebel and deny them. Loki declared her their side of the family repeatedly thanks to this.
- This later shades a bit in the 2018 and 2020 Thor series, which shows her working together with her brother, Thor, and being both genuinely concerned for him and genuinely impressed by him, in a muted sort of way - and as she relates to their mother, when he asks her if she thinks he's Worthy, her reply is essentially that she's not qualified to say, but if anyone is, it's him. In the latter, her and her mother bonding in Vanaheim, the latter having effectively retired after Thor took the throne. While she also refers to 'Asgardians' without including herself, she also threatens Thor with challenging him for the throne if he doesn't buck up his act as King.
- Blood Knight: Angela is always up for a good fight.
- Bodyguarding a Badass: She is Loki's chief of security in his presidential campaign.
- Canon Immigrant:
- It was initially ambiguous as to whether the Angela that debuted in Marvel Comics is the same one in Spawn, as she says she was involuntarily pulled into the Marvel Universe from her own and very few details of her home dimension were given. It's ultimately revealed that Marvel's incarnation of Angela is not only Asgardian but Thor's long-lost older half-sister, making her a completely different character from Image's incarnation. Also, she wasn't actually pulled from out of Marvel Universe, but instead she's pulled from Heven (a.k.a. the Tenth Realm) into realm of mortals, not too far from Midgard (Earth), and she had no knowledge about Midgard at the time.
- It happens again in Queen of Hel, twice. The Leah who is now living with Angela and Sera turns out to be the Leah from the Secret Wars: Siege miniseries, and issue 6 brings Angela up against the Faustian Queen, who is really Angela from 1602: Witch Hunter Angela, who was brought into the main Marvel universe due to the cursed play written by Lady Serah somehow falling through the cracks when the Multiverse was reborn. Said play is now believed to be a lost Shakespearean play that is common knowledge, and even Thor recalls reading it in high school.
- Chainmail Bikini: A metal bra and panties are all the armor she needs to fight. This is pretty much an Angel thing. She gets a Battle Ballgown later on in her solo series.
- Character Development:
- She goes from denying her Asgardian family to avoiding it, to later bonding with her mother and threatening her brother with challenging him for the throne if he doesn't shape up and act as a better King (if only for the pragmatic reason that Asgardian problems rarely stay in Asgard), while also showing a certain distant affection for him.
- She also sheds her stiff Heven derived values over time, and emotes rather more, being willing to have serious discussions with her Asgardian family.
- Concepts Are Cheap: Angela fully believes this, and refuses to fight for honor (or freedom, or justice, or any ideal), and can't conceive that her long lost family would love her just because she is family. Yes, this is an Angel thing.
- Cool Sword: Angela’s weapons in general.
- Demonization: Another Angel thing is spreading outrageous slander about their (Asgardian) enemies, for example that Volstagg Eats Babies, Heimdall uses his omniscience for being The Peeping Tom, and Bor turned his shieldmaidens into soul-eating monstrosities.
- Dystopia: If the other tropes haven't clued you in, Heven is not a good place to live unless you fall into the very narrow demographic of "perfectly healthy, rich, female angel from good background and/or with considerable fighting skills, and no morals to speak of".
- Equivalent Exchange: As an Angel she believes in fair trade, so yes, if she does anything for anybody that will come with a monetary price-tag of equivalent size (or a life for a life and such). She also deeply detests feeling/being in debt.
- Fiery Redhead: She is redheaded and is fiery and boisterous as most Angels/Asgardians warrior alike.
- Fire-Forged Friends: With Gamora during her time with the Guardians of the Galaxy. It was Gamora who jumped and fought her for the first time. Eventually as teammates, they are qualified enough to be Smash Sisters.
- Flat-Earth Atheist: As Angels in general she only believes in material things (Angels apparently have goddesses but those are generally restricted to aspects of fighting, survival or money), so concepts like an afterlife and coming back from the dead are foreign to her. Unfortunately for them Angels do belong to Marvel's Norse World Tree meaning they go to Hel after death, because no Valkyrie would choose an Angel for Valhalla, and Hela was explicitly instructed to create the worst hell for them, because of Aldrif's fate.
- Flight: She's apparently capable to fly in the vacuum of space. Her Battle Ballgown costume comes with a pair of wings and this power.
- Healing Factor: She's not invulnerable to all harm and it is possible sufficient blunt physical force can injure her. But due to her unique physiology she is able to heal from most injuries much faster than a human being could.
- Improbable Weapon User: She has a pair of ribbons attached to her outfit as whip-like weapons, thanks to the psychic connection she has with them.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": While she isn't an actual angel, she was raised as one from infancy and was given the mundane and very uncreative Angela.
- Long-Lived: It is a common misconception that Angela and the other Gods of Asgard are truly immortal. Angela and the other members of her race do age but at a rate so slow that to other beings they give the appearance of immortality.
- Long-Lost Relative: A tie-in to Original Sin and Loki: Agent of Asgard reveals that Angela is Odin's daughter, and thus Thor's half-sister and Loki's adopted sister.
- Meaningful Rename: She's renamed as Angela when she's raised by Angels.
- Mercury's Wings: She wears a winged circlet on her head.
- Missing Mom: Apparently her surrogate mother, one of the Queen's servants, disappeared mysteriously. When the representative of the church of the tenth realm tried to bribe her with information about her... she didn't take it kindly.
- Monochromatic Eyes: Her eyes color is white.
- Most Common Superpower: Angela has a pretty sizable bust.
- Ms. Fanservice: Most Common Superpower? Check. Stripperiffic with Chainmail Bikini? Check.
- Multi-Melee Master: Uses a variety of weapons, including a Cool Sword, an axe, her ribbons, and some kind of polearm-looking-like-thing.
- Nineties Anti-Heroine: Most Common Superpower? Check. Stripperiffic with Chainmail Bikini? Check. Really likes killing things with an arsenal of extremely varied weapons? Check. Belt big enough to cover her entire pelvis? Check.
- Omniglot: Thanks to the Allspeak she can communicate in all of the languages of the Nine Realms, Earth's dialects, and various alien languages.
- Our Angels Are Different: Or rather, she isn't an Angel, but Asgardian. But she's raised by Angel and thus once believed that she was an Angel. But also Angels here are a race of ruthless and ruthlessly effective mercenaries, with philosophies centred around materialism.
- The more traditional image of angels as winged servants of God have showed up a couple of times in Ghost Rider comics, but are completely separate from the Tenth Realm versions associated with Asgard.
- Raised by Orcs: She's an Asgardian, but she's raised by Angels who are at war with Asgardians.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: When she is accidentally dragged from the Tenth Realm, she swears vengeance on the one who caused it to happen.
- Statuesque Stunner: Tallest woman in the Guardians of the Galaxy.
- The Stoic: As Sera lampshaded, Angela is too stoic to even have an expository inner monologue.
- Stripperiffic: Even her creator Neil Gaiman himself has questioned the practicality of Angela's dress code. Lampshaded by Leah as apparently Sera described her in a space bikini to her... and in vivid detail. Leah sounds a tad disappointed that Angela is in a new (and much less revealing) costume when they meet.
- Stylish Protection Gear: In her second solo series her armour is more modest but still stylish.
- Superhero Gods: She's Asgardian, biological daughter of All-Father Odin and All-Mother Frigga, sister to The Mighty Thor, the God of Thunder. Angela herself once joined the superhero team, Guardians of the Galaxy, and fought alongside them.
- Super-Strength: Considering her ability to match an admittedly weary and wounded Thor blow for blow, noting that he had 'a slight edge in raw strength', she should also possess Class 100 strength. At the same time, she noted that she was far faster than he was, though this, again, should be taken in the context of his weakened state.
- Underwear of Power: Which is covered by oversized belt.
- Warrior Princess: While she initially didn't know this, she's a daughter of Odin and Frigga, King and Queen of Asgard. Everybody kicks ass in this royal family.
Allies
Sera
First Appearance: Angela: Asgard's Assassin (vol. 1) #1
Sera is a wingless Angel from the Tenth Realm (Heven) that opened up thanks to the Original Sin crossover. She's Angela's best (and apparently only) friend from that realm (later revealed to be Love Interest), who died years ago but now she is back and sets the lost Asgardian princess on a journey to Hel and back...
- Back from the Dead: One of the most asked questions of Angela: Asgard's Assassin is how she did.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Well, heavily Depending on the Artist but Sera is shorter (a head or two shorter than Angela, a head shorter than Star-Lord too) and relatively heavy set for a comicbook character. She generally at least has wide hips but generally more.
- Dead All Along: Not counting some flashbacks the "Sera" in Angela: Asgard's Assassin is Malekith impersonating her.
- Magic Is Feminine: Sera is a Transgender female sorceress. She was born as a male angel but always knew she was a woman. During her travels with Angela, Sera found a way to transform her body from male to female.
- Medium Awareness: Has her moments. Like "Okay. Narrative intrusion time." or "And now blatant exposition!" or "Read more Gillen you'll be fine."
- Miss Exposition: She plays this role, if she isn't outright narrating, because Angela is not that talkative.
- The Omniscient: Because Sera looked into the furnace of the Hierophants (which was intended as a way of spying on the multiverse) she tends to know things she has no business knowing. For this to not break the story it seems like the more general or irrelevant the information is the more likely it is that she knows it. Why yes that's putting it nicely that she is an endless fountain of popculture references and semi-useful trivia.
- Rescued from the Underworld: Basic premise of Angela: Queen of Hel.
- Rescue Romance: This relationship began with Angela saving her from the church of the tenth realm.
- Tagalong Chronicler: Sera as travelling companion is good with the sword, passable as sorceress, and entertainer but she's also there to immortalize Angela's exploits. Yes. It means she is narrating a lot.
- Trans Nature: She was born an angel male, traditionally considered fragile and sequestered belowground, but she always knew she was female. Angela rescued her and they became adventuring companions, along the way finding a way to change her body into something better suited for her.
- Adaptational Sexuality: The Leah of Earth-616 had Belligerent Sexual Tension with Kid Loki. This Leah fell in love with a version of Magik.
- Interspecies Romance: When she was a guardian of the Shield protecting the rest of Battleworld from the Deadlands, Perfection, and New Xandar, she, a Jotunn, was in a romance with a Mutant.
- The One That Got Away: While she reformed on Earth-616 after the Multiverse was restored, her girlfriend Magik didn't, which gives her a lot of angst.
- Hellhound: Or "Hel-Hound", the local Norse variant.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He speaks of how much he wants to murder and gore everyone, as befitting a Hel-Hound, but as of now, he's shown himself as surprisingly loyal to the heroic Thor.
- Talking Animal: Speaks in a You No Take Candle fashion.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Particularly after Thor becomes his master and gives him a heroic example to follow. He also, despite his constant expressed desire to murder everyone, expresses a wistful interest in settling down and being at peace in the 2018 Thor series.
- Undying Loyalty: To Thor, much to general surprise, after they met in the Collector's cages.
Enemies
