oHOTmu or NOT Ep.47: Hela to Hellions

The goddess of death. The gods of Egypt. A very exclusive club. The rival school to the New Mutants'. Which are hot and which are not? That's for the Girls to decide.

Featuring permanent panelists Elyse, Isabel, Nathalie, Josée, Amélie and Shotgun.

Listen to Episode 47 below (the usual mature language warnings apply), or subscribe to oHOTmu OR NOT? on iTunes!

Relevant images and further credits at: oHOTmu or NOT ep.47 Supplemental

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27 responses to “oHOTmu or NOT Ep.47: Hela to Hellions

  1. Even by OHOTMU’s normal standards, this episode was particularly wild. Ride ’em, cowgirl!

    The Heliopolis characters look like designs from an action figure line that never went anywhere. New, from Remco!

    Growing up my parents generally didn’t look inside my comics, but I always worried they would when I had an issue of X-Men with the Hellfire Club. Those costumes would have really tested their patience regarding their young son’s choice of reading material.

    #FindYourArmadillo

  2. Hela – I was so excited for this because Cate Blanchett (melts and thinks about her wearing the Hela outfit in scenes from “Carol”). But I have to be honest, I’m a bit let down. I think it’s the collar. I REALLY don’t like the collar at all. I hate to condemn because of a single clothing aspect (actually I’m pretty sure I’ve done it before, but whatever, let me have my hypocrisy) but it’s so damn prominent that it’s the first thing I see and all the other details fade. I also don’t love how the helmet covers the top half of her head. The rest of the outfit works, but it’s not enough.

    Heliopolis – Horus raided Colossus’ wardrobe. Both Osiris and Seth have a diaper thing going on, Geb is… ok I guess. But Isis and Nut, yeah. I can totally work with that in both cases. I love the that robes reach the floor but also slit all the way up to the hip. That’s just… mmmm, yes.

    The Hellfire Club – Does anybody else, looking at the face images, get the sense that the artists are taking the piss out of old time aristocratic notions? Because, these guys have surrounded themselves with beautiful women, but looking at the faces of Black King, Black Bishop, and Black Rook I get that feel of “really… you feel you’re superior and you look like THAT?” Fuck the patriarchy. That said, yeah the ladies rule. Black Queen is 100% my jam, and would be on my cosplay shortlist if most cons didn’t consider something that skimpy to be “not family friendly” enough for the show floor.

    Hellions – I’m really surprised at how well this outfit suits both men and women without notable alteration. Though Roulette needs to get her measurements retaken and get it adjusted. I kind of like “luck” powers, like Black Cat and Domino so I’m here for it. I’m really shocked that nobody made the first comment that came to mind when Jetstream’s powers were described. He generates “super heated air” to propel himself? Am I the only one who thought “that sounds like a super fart”? When it comes to Tarot I’m with the girls that I love the random element to her powers. Thunderbird is a soft hot. I want to get to know more about Catseye, but I loved hearing the ladies relate. And Empath can choke to death on length of his own frozen smug, the manipulative twat.

    A few notes on “packing” – Cans, or anything that rigid, are a bad way to go. Balled up socks are the popular cheap solution for a reason, you want something with some give to it because otherwise it gives away the game. Not that there isn’t some fun to had going over the top. When I host burlesque shows in my more gender-bending persona, I opt for the “go big or go home approach.” Pics available on request 😉

  3. Wow, lots of sharing in this episode. Not only did the audience learn some things about the girls, the girls learned some things about each other. Good session.

    Is it weird that while I found Cate Blanchett pleasing to look at, I never thought she was HOT before Ragnorak? I can’t separate her version from the comic now, and I don’t really want to. I just wish the girls could have seen some Kirby art of her, since the movie is more closely based on that look.

    I remember Set (Seth?) being the big bad in the DeFalco/Frenz run after Simonson left Thor. He had a much better look there too.

    Wasn’t the Hellfire Club lifted directly from an episode of The Avengers (Steed and Peel), or am I just making that up? I liked your little caption on the image gallery about Byrne being a perv, Siskoid.

    Hellions…, man, Empath got everything he deserved. What a horrible character! The reversed cowgirl comment (which Rob mentioned above) almost cost me a monitor at work. I shouldn’t drink (even water) and listen to this show.

    One thing I find interesting is the girls tend to look at this drawings as the “style guide” for the characters, as far as body proportions. Like, this character has a small torso, this one has smaller boobs, etc. The fact is, many comic artists wing it from book to book, and even panel to panel sometime. And if an artist changes, a petite woman with small breasts can suddenly go to a an Amazon stripper in the month between issues! Artists should strive to stay on model to the established depiction of the original illustrator…but they rarely do.

    Fun episode, and for those interested (you know who you are), my personality is generally easygoing, good-nature and level-headed but I sometimes lose my cool over annoying stuff that doesn’t amount to anything.

    Chris

    1. Refurbished Set gets an entry in the Updates, so yeah, big and better bad later.

      The Hellfire Club was in the Avengers, yes, but also based on the historical secret society. (You like my mouseover caption because it’s true.)

      Good point about the style guide (I often think this during recording), but OHOTMU invites this with its dull poses. At least there’s usually some reprinted panel by another artist that gives other takes, but not always (to the character’s detriment, I feel).

  4. Hela is one of my favorite Thor villains….according to Norse myth Hela (or Hel) is the daughter of Loki and the sister of Fenrir (or Fenris) and Jörmungandr (The Midgard Serpent)…the Hellfire Club has some pretty awesome X-Men villains in its roster (my favorite being Selene and Sebastian Shaw) and also one of the most annoying in Donald Pierce (Donald Pierce is a villian you love to see get a Wolverine beat down)…the Hellions were actually mostly nice kids (except for Empath who is a major douche bag and a petty slimeball) who if they weren’t on the opposite side of the fence would have been friends the New Mutants kids….they were really likeable characters (except for Empath who I hated as a kid and I still hate now…Empath deserved a fiery kick to the scrote from Magma for all the abusive gaslighting shit he did to her!) .

  5. This episode I learned about ‘can crotch’ and ‘cowgirling’. Who says comics aren’t educational?

    Good show, I didn’t spot any mischief by Mike a la last time, adding in stuff for Hawkeye that came in years after the entry shown, such as the dog and the apartment building.

    Hela is one of the all-time Kirby designs and it’s a big shame the girls didn’t get to see her in all her Silver Age glory. Great as Walt Simonson is, where Kirby’s Hela looked manipulative and evil, Walt’s looks mildly quizzical. Still hot.

    All the Egyptian gods are hot, though I dislike the Colossus legs on some of the chaps.

    The Hellfire Club members aren’t hot, they’re sad – they’d look much better in business wear, and be less sweaty. I always get Tessa mixed up with Arcade’s PA – not, not Prince Albert – Miss Locke.

    I can’t consider whether the Hellions are hot or not because they’re kids, but give the guys 15 years or more and yes, indeedy. Even Empath – it would be fun to make him cry. Actually, Catspaw isn’t hot, humans with tails are creepy, like those animal cosplayers who like to be stroked and patted. And I bet her fur is super-matted.

    1. What’s the over/under on Roy Thomas revealing Tessa’s last name is “Locke”, and that they’re cousins?

  6. This was one wild ride of an episode. Hot!

    Hela – Hela is one of those characters who I find very hot for some reason. I love Simonson’s run and love his depiction of her. But I really love her at her Kirby-est, with the wild, entwined, ludicrously big head gear. And I think there is something very sexy about all of it. Plus, that issue where she unleashes the ‘hand of glory’ and scars Thor is one of my faves.

    Hellfire Club – let’s just say that as a young lad, the images of Emma Frost and Jean Grey slinking around in corsets and capes were indelibly burned into my brain. I could never pull off the courtly clothes the guys were. But this isn’t hot, it’s scorching.

    Hellions – These are students. And as I high school guy, I hated guys like Empath just as much as the girls. Unfortunately, in my experience, they often had girls and lived this leisurely rich life. So how much of that dislike was born from jealousy and how much from realizing they were jerks or a combination is hard to parse out. Anyways, I always feel a little better about myself when I hear the girls tear down creeps like him.

    Hela good time this show!

  7. Whew… learned a lot this time … nothing like goddesses and bdsm clubs to get folks to open up

    Hela: Hell yeah!

    Heliopolis: love the Robot legs… but I love the way Nut is holding open her skirt even more!

    Hellfire Club: incidentally this group was inspired by an episode of the Avengers (the British one) called “a touch of Brimstone” from 1966.
    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0516805/

    Hellions: the new mutants were very important to me as a kid, it was the right comic at the right time for a 6th grader. glad the gals liked one of their rouges gallery.

  8. Hel … sorry, Hela, is actually the daughter of Loki in both the Lore and the comics, and many writers have made use of that for a very interesting byplay. Also, Naglfar (pronounced Nah-Gil-Far) is not an invention of the comics. It exists in the Lore and is made from the fingernails of the dead, which is why those of the Norse persuasion tend to keep their nails trimmed, so as to delay the building for as long as possible. That is because it will ferry the giants, led by Loki, to fight the Asgardians in Ragnarok, so keeping it in dry-dock is a good idea.

    Maybe it’s me, but I can’t consider a half-corpse character to be hot. I suppose you could count each half differently, in which case should could be simultaneously Hot and Not.

    I should point out that Garm is the hound that guards the gates of Hel, preventing souls from leaving. Fenrir is her brother (as is the MIdgard Serpent). Their mother was the giant Angrboða (pronounced Anger-Bo-Tha). It can be read that they are either just siblings or triplets, since it seems they were all discovered by Odin at once and while they were very young. I would have much preferred that they used Garm in Thor 3, since he’s big but Fenrir is so large that he can swallow gods whole.

    Hel does not have children, mainly for being the goddess of death but also because she’s got enough to deal with running the realms of the normal dead (aka Hel aka where I expect to be in the future) and the dishonored dead (aka Nifelheim). Valhalla is just for the warriors that died in battle, where they fight all day and feast all night, which really isn;y my idea of a good time. Hel is where everyone that isn’t going to Valhalla or Nifelheim ends up, and it’s more or less just like life on Midgard, except that you are reunited with the loved ones that passed on before.

    OK, I think that’s long enough. Let me know if you have any more questions. 🙂

    1. “Simultaneously Hot and Not.” Schroedinger’s Fneh?

      “aka Hel aka where I expect to be in the future”. What if you die playing an RPG? Or trying to setup a cable modem? Those are heroic in my book!

  9. I had a lot of fun with this episode. It sounded like a lot of fun to record (though I’m guessing not so fun to edit?). Like almost every episode, I learned a lot of new things this episode that, though informative, I cannot bring up in casual conversation with coworkers.
    Hela – I’m not familiar with the character as I didn’t read a lot of Thor comics growing up but I, like many people, fell in love with Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of her. If I remember correctly, the Thor 3 cast did a funny stage show of Thor 3 on the Late Late Show with James Corden that I would recommend if you want to like Cate Blanchett even more. Ah, here it is…..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8atgsWFfDOg

    Heliopolis – The name lottery is something I can certainly relate to. Though my name isn’t Nut, with my mother’s maiden name of Hunt, I almost got a terrible joke for a name that kids would torment other “Mike”s in school. If you don’t know the terrible joke, just say Mike Hunt really fast and blur the words together. It’s not nice.

    Hellions – I enjoyed all this talk, specially Empath and Catseye. You ladies made me laugh so hard at work, that people were giving me the side eye. Well done.

    Being a male, I never stuck a can down my pants but now I feel like I have to? Seems uncomfortable and I don’t think a can of tuna would impress any potential lady suitors. In reference to Spinal Tap, I believe a cucumber wrapped in tin foil is the “ideal” object to put down there, but I will learn from Ms. Wylde and stick to the balled up socks.
    Excellent job, everyone! Keep up the great work!

  10. One thing I just noticed in this drawing of Hela is the black makes it look like her head is floating apart from her body. Now I love it more!

    Heliopolis-tic-ex-pe-alidocious. I don’t care if the men are gods, no way are those full leg metal pants comfortable. You can’t possibly walk wearing those. Ugh. But I do like the mighty Isis.

    Hellfire Club is perhaps the unfortunate facial hair club for men. As for a White King, that role is filled by Magneto a year or so after this entry, but he never dresses the part. That could have been interesting. Or not. Brrr.

    Oh, the Hellions. I always felt sorry for these kids, recruited by the wrong group. Well, except for mean-girl Roulette and douchebag Empath. Boy oh my, the sympathy for Catseye was astounding! I think we’ve found the spirit animal for our Hot Squad.

  11. Sometimes I feel like I am part of a secret society of audio voyeurs when I listen to this podcast.
    Regarding the Hellfire Club, they were originally drawn, and named, for movie actors and a role they played. For instance, White Bishop’s name is Donald Pierce, because he’s drawn to look like Donald Sutherland, who played Hawkeye Pierce.
    Now that I’ve just learned Siskoid’s made hyper-texts for the images, I’ve got to go back and look at all the previous supplemental pages!
    Oh, I forgot to weigh in on the previous ‘cast. All I wanted to contribute was my disappointment that Hawkeye’s original look was not included. I prefer the no sleeves, yet arm bands, look for Clint.

  12. Well that was – educational.

    Lots of fun, as always.

    I know I’m in the minority, but I like Empath – as a character. But I’m chalking that up as a credit to the writer and artist who created a character who, with a picture and a two paragraphs of description could create such a response. Do I want to grab a beer with him? Hell no. But as a character in a comic, he was a successful creation. But then again, I thought Sun Boy was interesting.

    As far a cans go, if you must do that, use a full size Pringles.

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