Stan Lee has often compared comic book superheroes to a kind of modern day mythology which will be looked back on hundreds or thousands of years from now just like Norse legends currently are. Either way, the writer combined those two worlds when he created Thor alongside Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby, but only did so because he was struggling to think of a human character who could be stronger than the Hulk. Feeling that Greek and Roman Gods had been done to death, Lee decided to come up with a superhero twist on the Norse God Thor and changed the shape of the Marvel Universe forever in the process.
