Loki Appreciation 2019

[Lambadelta]

Yeah, I think some of it is that Loki is supposed to be (physically) weaker than Thor, and some people take that to just mean weak in general, even though 'weaker than Thor' still leaves a lot of room above your average mortal. It may also be some people equating sorcerers with being fragile glass cannons, because that is a common trope, but Loki isn't fragile. Plus, he's spent a long time as a villain which led to him getting bet up a lot.

That makes sense. I think it’s that whole narrative of physical strength = Power while mental strength and being smart doesn’t. It’s an old-fashioned narrative that some seemed to still have. It’s also mixing up physical strength for power, the two often times are mutually exclusive especially when it comes to comics. And yeah Loki being “weaker” than Thor physically doesn’t mean he’s actually weak. That’s downplaying not only Loki but Thor’s physical abilities

And Yeah, Loki has dealt with a lot both being a villain and even after his reincarnation as Kid-Loki and beyond. Actually Loki can probably take a lot of damage from 99% of characters in Marvel and either walk away without a scratch or with very little damage done.

that's one thing i know will be handled well if Cates gets the Thor book though, he gets it, he knows Loki is supposed to be powerful, he wrote him as such in his Dr Strange run. But even there you had some fans interpreting it as if him stealing the title granted him powers, even though that wasn't the case, and it will be the same siuation with Mjolnir. I still think the story would be worth doing, but it will be some work to convince some fans that he can be powerful without the hammer.

Yeah, I really liked Cates take on Loki in Dr Strange, and yeah unfortunately you do have those fans who generally believe or want to believe that Loki becoming SS granted him more power, even though it was clearly stated, time and time again that SS was merely a title. A title doesn’t gain you more power, maybe in a responsibility sense but that is all. Loki did not gain any extra powers just like Strange didn’t. Another thing I see if how GOM Strange easily defeated Loki when it was a stalemate which just shows how impressive Loki’s magic skills and powers are if he can stalemate Doctor Strange at his most powerful.

Tbf though, I think only Jason Aaron was the only one, so far to really weaken Loki, for some unknown reason. It felt like he forgot that Loki is quite powerful.

Yeah, like the SS thing, some fans will think that the hammer gave him a power boost so once again they would need convincing, but I do agree it’s a story that they should do. I’m more about Loki’s character development than anything else.

I don't think Thor would be mad, as long as it wasn't a case where Loki came and stole it somehow. I think he'd be surprised, I think he wants the best for Loki but I also don't think he fully believes Loki is capable of being who he hopes he can be.

As for the responsibility I think Loki can handle it (he did fine as the Sorcerer Supreme, tricking his way into the title aside) but it will take an adjustment period. But not like that's unusual, it's not like Thor didn't still have a lot to learn when he first was able to lift the hammer, I think learning on the job is PART of the role.

That’s true. Thinking on it I don’t think Thor will be mad either, maybe Thor back in the day would have been but this Thor, no. He’s grown as a person and matured a lot, just like Loki.
And yeah, you’re right again I think Loki should be able to handle the responsibility of the hammer even if he does struggle at first. I think it’s more he might struggle more than Thor did but in the end he will take to the responsibility well.

I think it’s also good that Loki has all these responsibilities to, like being King of the Storm Giants, being worthy of the hammer and maybe even becoming an Avenger, which I can’t help but think he will be. Loki’s never really had this much responsibility before not even as SS.

[Rosebunse]

I think Aaron's Loki was just really super depressed. And if he's depressed, he isn't going to be able to access his full power. Or his full power will manifest in ways that he can't control.

So I can sort of see why Aaron went with the more safe route. Plus, the other issue is that the best Loki stories don't normally have him as a very physical fighter, not because he can't but because that's just not his focus.

It doesn't help that our current Loki is drawn to be fairly slim and small, unlike classic Loki who was often drawn to be pretty muscular.

God, I wish we had more news! Dammit, you think this would be released by now!

[Lambadelta]

If you mean by news about whether or not it's going to be cancelled then I think no news is good news. They aren't going to come out and say that something isn't cancelled, unless it's maybe Kibblesmith on twitter.

As I said before I would be extremely surprised if it got cancelled though. It's only been 3 issues, 2 if you only count the sales figures going through. I feel the comic would have had to do extremely bad for it to get cancelled right now and that has not been the case. The sales as been decent in paper sales and it seems to hit the top 10 digitally. I mean I'm not ruling it out because you never know with these things but I would still be very surprised.

You have a good point about Loki being depressed and that being the reason his powers were all over the place. I actually don't mind Loki being drawn slimmer, but yeah it doesn't help with others perspective who deem as physically weak.

[Raye]

Aaron I think just wanted to focus on Loki being more of a talker and manipulator than using his magic etc. Because though he did less magic overall, when he did break it out, it tended to be very powerful. I mean it was Aaron that had Loki create a forcefield strong enough to shield him and Cap from being inside the sun. his army of illusions was some pretty impressive magic. He also literally pulled himself back together after having died. Heimdall's sword may have helped cut him out of there and may have let him know what was happening on the outside, so he knew he had to end Laufey to help win the war, but that sword would have been useless when it came to actually magicking himself back together. Depression may have come into it but, I think mostly it was just a different focus. Also, frustratingly, Aaron had some of his biggest feats happen off panel, so we we have to infer what happened, such as the whole pulling himself back together thing, or the two times he took down a horde of giants solo. One time he said he did it by talking them to death (as i said, I think that's what Aaron wanted to focus on) the other time... undetermined, we just know that there was a big pile of bodies afterward. Also the thing with sending Thor to Valhalla with a fake death was powerful magic, but it wasn't very flashy or something that involved combat.

and yeah, the frustrating part about the speculated cancellation is that Marvel doesn't make announcements to say books aren't cancelled, Kibblesmith might, if enough people ask him about it, but i think we just have to wait for future announcements. with NYCC or future solicits. Kibblesmith will also be on some kind of live podcast tomorrow, he may address it there. https://twitter.com/DrGameshow/statu...14153877032962 It would seem super weird to me though for them to not let Kibblesmith put some kind of finish on the Children of Eternity story by giving him the required issues to do that, given that it's sales are not bad enough that it would be bleeding money. And I really don't think Loki traveling back in time to the old west would really do that. It feels like that is the middle of the story. also i f 5 was the final issue, you'd think it might be mentioned in the final page of 4 instead of just "Loki is a cowboy now"?

[Rosebunse]

I think Aaron wrote himself into a hole snd it was easier for him to just have things happen off-screen. For this, I can't blame him, especially since he had a lot on his plate.

It just happened way too often.

I still think that if it was cancelled, it was probably because the next Thor writer came at them with such a great story that they couldn't refuse.

[Raye]

don't see how it was writing himself into a hole, I can't see how any of those things technically couldn't have happened on panel. It's actually pretty simple to infer what happened in those scenes if you paid attention, there's really nothing there that had to be handwaved away because the situation couldn't be resolved on panel. Just either ran out of room, or didn't bother in order to keep things mysterious or whatever. I think he wanted to keep some mystery to Loki's actions, so gave enough hints that you could figure it out if you cared enough, but a lot of people wouldn't bother. Or the details just didn't matter a whole lot, like with him beating up the giants, the hows were not important to the story, really. It's just a bit frustrating as a fan because as mentioned above, sometimes it makes it difficult to work out exactly what Loki can and can't do and point to examples. But in the grand scheme of things, what Loki can and can't do was not important to the particular story being told at all, except when it was, and we WERE shown what he can do.

And that is possible, but you'd still think they could manage to let Kibblesmith have a few issues to wrap things up properly.

[Lambadelta]

I haven't got around to reading it yet but I heard that Kid-Loki was in Asgardians of the Galaxy. Does anyone know how he came to be and how he died?

On Jason Aaron's Loki though. Yeah, I think most of what happened off panel you can guess what happened. Loki defeats giants on his own. Loki manages to magic himself back together. I think it's more the how he does all of this. How does he defeat the giants single-handed. How did he manage to use magic to put himself back together after being eaten and digested by Laufey. From the images of Laufey eating Loki, it doesn't seem that he eat him whole so he was already chewed up before getting digested. At least that's how it looked. Loki's powers have always been a mystery and it changes from writer to writer but thinking on it I don't think there has ever really been any inconsistencies with Loki's powers, except that time he flew, it's more Loki has so many applications of his magical power and even his innate power which is more hinted towards reality warping than magic, that writers can do all types of things with Loki and his powers. Aaron did seem to go for Loki using his intelligence more than his powers which is fine as Loki's intelligence is just as important to Loki's character than his magic.

I think what the main problem with Loki, with the exception of his solo series, is that this Loki is not set up to win or lose in other people's comics most of the time. He's usually set up to help others win. Like Kid-Loki helping Thor to defeat Cul or Loki helping Doctor Strange realise that he must step outside his bubble to become God of Magic, there are other examples. That's not to say Loki never wins or loses, I mean he won against Laufey and against King Loki but it's just that he's more or less set up as a helping point for the other heroes. Which I quite like.

I think that will be different in any Loki solo series though where he is the main guy, the main hero.

I can definitely see Kibblesmith finishing his current arc.

[Rosebunse]

kidLoki was in Asgardians of the Galaxy and it was implied that he was some sort of...what was it? Like a mental or magical fragment of the current Loki whonwas supposed to help Angela.

He disappeared either because his purpose was done or because Loki's magic ran out from being eaten.

It wasn't made clear if our Loki even realized he had conjured him up.

[Raye]

Loki just... made him. He was a really fancy autonomous illusion, basically, which Loki made to go out into space to do what was needed there, while he was back on Midgard/Jotunheim, so he could be in 2 places at once. Apparently he will no longer need to do this. And when he had accomplished what needed to be done, acquiring the horn they were after (which, incidentally, was created with time travel shenanigans on Loki's part, so i am kind of half expecting a bit of a retcon there and having it be time travel initiated within his solo book, like the old west stuff) and fulfilling the bargain with Angela, Loki just... dissipated him. It's a bit unclear how far the autonomy went, or exactly what happened to him after Loki decided he wasn't needed any more. He did seem sad that he was being un-made, but i personally like to think that Loki wouldn't want to destroy a sentient child version of himself again so I'm going with it being more like an extension of himself, which he just called back, kinda like the illusions he used in Thor to attack Jane. He had all of Loki's magical abilities, and I think it's too powerful for Loki to be able to create a copy of himself complete wiht all the magic he has access to, not to mention creating a new person from scratch and then destroying them as mentioned has moral problems, at a time when he's trying to be better. So extension makes more sense to me.

And I just think the hows of those things are something we would like to know just for, like trivia reasons, basically, but since that didn't actually serve the story in a meaningful way, it was left out, and as mentioned I think Aaron wanted an air of mystery with Loki. I think he went a bit too far with that, he kept dropping little hints and clues but never bothered to explain how they fit together in the end, which was annoying, but I still don't think it was due to him not actually knowing how it happened, he just decided to not share it with the readers for a variety of reasons.

but I do hope that next issue Kibblesmith clears up some of the hows and whys of what happened inside Laufey's stomach. It's one of the situations where there are puzzle pieces, and if you put them together i think it makes sense basically what happened, but I would have appreciated confirmation. But the way I figure, Loki died a heroic death so was destined for Valhalla, but then the Valkyries died at about the same time, so he got stuck in his own dead body. We saw him break out of his little death dream, which I presume is something that happens to everyone when they die so they're not further traumatized until the Valkyries bring them to Valhalla, and maybe learn some lessons about their lives while they're at it. And after that point it's fuzzy, but we know he was in there until Daredevil threw Heimdall's sword, (fairly certain Daredevil knew he was in there thanks to Heimdall's powers, and was throwing it to Loki specifically) and what I think probably happened there is that he touched the sword when Laufey swallowed it, which granted him Heimdall's powers of perception, just like Daredevil. He could see/hear what was happening, and he knew at that point that Laufey was going to destroy the world by freezing it, and that the heroes could not stop him, and he was the only one who could. So he dug deep and literally pulled himself together with magic, and brought his body back to life so his spirit could inhabit it again proper like, he might have been working on this before then, but the sword kicked it into high gear. In any case, he then grabs the Casket of Ancient Winters and the sword, goes all chestburster on Laufey, has a symbolic rebirth moment, and we saw the rest. So it does all fit together, and it's something that technically could have been put to page and I am 99% sure all of this, or something similar, was going through Aaron's head when he wrote it. He just left most of it off the page aside from some hints to let readers piece it together. I think though, that he should have explained it more, I think this deserved more panel time and explanation. But I don't think it was left off because he didn't know how it went, since it fits together too neatly for that once you assemble the pieces. Not to mention, it fits the Hero's Journey pretty much perfectly, from answering the call, to the threshold guardian, magical (but horrific in this case) world, death and rebirth, returning to the regular world as a changed person with a boon, it's just on fast forward and partially off-panel, with some parts of it serving double duty on the journey. It was a textbook hero origin, if it had gotten more panel time. Think Tony Stark in a cave with a box of scraps, same thing, more or less.

And yeah, part of the problem is that supporting characters just don't get as much development as the main characters, so Loki is naturally going to get kind of bare bones development in books he's not the star of, same as any other character playing a secondary role in a story. At least we already know that, assuming he is the new Thor writer, Cates was pretty good about giving Loki a lot of character moments in Dr Strange even though it was Stephen's story, technically. So while Thor will still most likely be Thor's story, with him learning how to All-Father, I think that, though he will have a larger cast of characters to juggle because there are a lot of Asgardians, he could still give Loki a lot of panel time.

[Lambadelta]

Thanks, AOTG is, I think, the only one I have yet to read with Loki in it. I plan to buy it this Saturday, hopefully.

I kind of guessed Loki created him, in some way or another but wasn’t sure if it was consciously or not since there was a panel, I saw on tumblr where Kid-Loki wasn’t sure if the real Loki was even consciously aware of him or not. I was thinking it might have been like a similar situation with Leah where Kid-Loki was created by Loki’s subconscious guilt, but it seems that Loki was consciously aware of him.

I don’t think it’s out of the realms of impossibility for Loki to create a copy of himself with his own powers and it having Loki's full powers but from what Kid-Loki said, on the panel I saw, he said that he was basically an extension of the real Loki.

It seems so that even the extensions of himself that he creates ends up having a mind of their own. I don’t know if that comes from Loki giving his creations more freedom, it being a segment of Loki’s own very mixed up thoughts or even they just end up having minds of their own by accident.

Yeah, one of my theories of how Kid-Loki died was that he vanished when Loki was eaten but I guess he just made him disappear. Also my guess though is that maybe Loki didn’t know that the Kid-Loki he created started to have thoughts and feelings separate from him and kind of just thought himself as an extension of himself only.

I don’t know. I look forward to reading it properly. It looks good and we need more Loki and Angela sibling bonding imo.

[Raye]

I hope Loki and Angela get some more panel time. Of her new brothers, she seems to get on with him the best. He seems to get where she's coming from and vice versa better than with Thor etc. Though I guess making Balder king of Hel was a nice gesture on her part.

Had a random thought. and keep in mind this is based on nothing but an idle 'what if...' but could it maybe be that they might be changing the artist on Loki's book and that caused a delay? the artist is.... fine. It's serviceable. It's not bad or anything (though, the teeny tiny hands and wimpy horns bother me a bit) but it's also not anything special, and it does seem he's finding himself a bit rushed. and then Babs Tarr comes along and does some fan art that leads to her doing a variant cover for one of the reprints.... and I just checked, it doesn't look like she's currently working on any other book at the moment, her exclusive with DC is over, she was doing a creator owned book at Image, but that ended last year. So there's this Eisner Award nominated artist, clearly enthusiastic about the character/book, we know Marvel noticed that because of the variant cover, and she's not doing anything (that we know of)... I'm just saying. Maybe she'd pull out another awesome costume design to rival her Batgirl costume. It's probably not going to happen, but.... I'd like it if it did.

[Prof. Aegis]

I'd be totally good with having Babs Tarr on art even for one arc. However, I just don't see Marvel having that much forethought. The often seem to be missing opportunities such as these or going a completely different direction that only they seem to understand. Buuuuuuutttt, if they need more support for this idea, I'm in on it! Babs Tarr on Loki!!!

I'm hoping we get some good news this weekend, from the NYCC.

[Raye]

Well, at least we know Marvel has already been in contact with her in regards to Loki for that variant cover, so that's a first step, at least. Though, of course it would depend on Babs as well, she may have something going on I'm not aware of. But as I said, just a fleeting thought I had...

And yeah, it definitely seems like the perfect time to announce the new Thor creative team, and hoping some Loki stuff is in that announcement as well, whether it's confirmation his solo is continuing, or that he's getting Mjolnir, or what. Just hopefully nothing bad, like he's gone full villain again or something. (and it's not a million or so years in the future)

[Lambadelta]

I actually don't mind the art in Loki (2019) that Oscar Bazaldua does. It's a bit rushed but it's better than a lot of other stuff I have seen. That said I wouldn't mind Babs Tarr coming in as the new artist either.

Also NYCC is next weekend so we still have 9 days to wait. I don't know what would be worse, the solo getting cancelled or Loki being reverted back to being a full time villain.

[Rosebunse]

Why turn him into a villain now, though? Seems like a step backwards for the books, especially at a time when fans are interested for the TV show.

Just seems like a weird time to do it.