Loki Appreciation 2018

[Rosebunse]

Thanks! I was looking for the spoiler tag things everywhere yesterday!

As for Loki's plans...is there a chance that Loki is tryin to not really be the "best" Loki so much as he is trying to separate himself? We know that Loki seems to have a very, very disjointed personality. We saw it in YA and we saw it in Aaron's earlier post-Secret Wars issues. Thus he doesn't have to kill himself and risk an even worse Loki running around on its own. It gives him a fair bit of autonomy as well and we see that the Soul Gem was able to isolate Hank Pym from Ultron. Loki can also bring back kidLoki and maybe everyone will love him again!

Sounds like a good plan, but it will most likely fail.

[Raye]

I think that's what Riimi was getting back a few posts back. Using the Soul Stone to separate off the bad bits. But I think it's just him looking for a light siwtch option, when that's just not how it works. Those bad parts, all the bad things he's done, why he did them, are part of him, and he's got to accept that. Being better isn't a matter of pretending none of that counts any more, it's trying to learn from those things and move past them. The fact that he was bad back then, and that's still a part of who he is, doesn't mean he can't be good now. I'd be really disappointed if that's where they are going with this, really. Though, I could see him trying that, i just hope he learns that it's not going to really work out that way.

[Rosebunse]

I just think there's a part if Loki that is always looking for the easy way out. That's a pretty classic trait of his. Heck, this all started because Old Loki found it easier to kill himself than it was to change.

And it's nit just Loki who's trying to change. Magneto, Dr. Doom, Galactus, and Venom are trying to move past what made them unhappy in the past. The question is if they can succeed and for how long. Will they all one day completely revert?

But one thing I do wonder during this is what punishment Loki is going to get from this. That sick Celestrial sounds pretty mad and it's not like Loki is freeing it.

[Raye]

Well, it sounds like Doom is reverting in Slott's FF. He has described him in interviews as dangerous, misunderstood, and other things you'd use to describe a villain. Venom, I dunno, he kinda reverted for a while there but it was a twist of the host being the bad part, so it was different, and the symbiote is back with Brock now, as far as I am aware. And in the hands of Donny Cates too, who from what I have seen likes to move things forward rather than backwards, so I think that one is safe. Magneto I would argue is a complicated case because he flip flops CONSTANTLY due to creator tug of war over his direction to the point where it is actually a part of his character now; he tries, but can very easily be pushed over the edge, it doesn't take a lot. But for the past several years I would most often put him in the anti-villain camp. A villain, but a sympathetic one whose goals sometimes align with the heroes. So a mixed bag, but overall going fairly well.

While it may once have been absolutely true that face turns don't stick with a few rare exceptions, I think that characters now are more complex, which makes it easier for face turns to stick, because they don't have to do a complete flip of their morals. Older books treated 'good' and 'evil' as palpable forces, opposing sides, and a character could only ever fall in one side or the other, it was very binary. Though with a rare exception here and there like Punisher. More modern books explore the motivations for the acts etc. Which puts things in a different light, it becomes more about perspective. (with exceptions of course, like Carnage is just... evil, there isn't really any other word for him... them, whatever ) It is harder to make that binary distinction of good or evil in modern books, because they often have a more nuanced view of morality. Since fewer characters reside at the extreme ends of the spectrum now, more characters can live in that gray area, because anti-heroes and anti-villains are far more common. Though, still have to overcome the pull of status quo, and the more iconic the character the harder this is (this is likely what got Doom, Slott also described him as 'iconic') but the less binary view of morality does help, because the change can be gradual and they don't have to completely abandon their previous characterization.

[Rosebunse]

But Doom, Galactus, Venom, Magneto, and Loki are all some of Marvel's most iconic villains and they do change. I think it just works better with some characters than others. Like Osburn and Carnage: those two probably aren't going to be joining the Avengers anytime soon. Same with Mr. Sinister.

Maybe these villains can be reformed, but it takes a ton of work. Just look at the level of planning and care that was taken with Loki. Slott is an interesting writer. He very much likes to put his own spin on characters, though that often includes using classic ticks and characteristics that haven't been seen in years, such as we saw wit his Loki.

I mean, I know we get on Duggan a lot, but Slott'Slott's Loki was just a confusing mess and I'm happy we won't see more of him.

However, as a dan, I sort of get it. Slott probably wants to use classic Loki and now can't really do that.

[Raye]

They changed recently though. Galactus and Doom practically happened yesterday in the grand scheme of things. If Slott does revert Doom, this whole Iron Doom thing will amount to little more than a brief anomaly. With the exception of Magneto who first started having face turn moments in the 80s. Even there, though, it stuck because of moral complexity VS simplicity. When Magneto first appeared, he was your standard mustache twirler doing it for the evulz, his team was even called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, because it was just good VS evil, and bad guys back then were just evil, they knew it and reveled in it. It was Claremont giving him a sympathetic backstory and motivations you could kinda understand, basically treating him as a person rather than a big bag of evil, that led to him seeing some change. Like I said, it is easier now that sort of character treatment is the norm rather than the exception. The fact that some of the iconic bad guys have been around so long actually makes it more likely that they will get this sort of development sooner or later. It's also kind of like, how many times can we do a story about Galactus trying to eat the Earth, really? At some point it is either change the character or let them fall into limbo because they are played out.

And Slott seems to have a strange relationship with changing characters. He only seems to like changes he made, and he generally puts things back the way they were afterwards. He has made some big changes in his time on Spider-Man, I mean, Superior was a massive shakeup, and had consequences even after Peter was back in control, with the company Ock had built making him wealthy etc. But in this final arc, everything is being but back to 'classic' status quo, Peter has lost the company and is back to being a down on his luck loser, and Green Goblin is being brought back, sure it is with a twist, but the end result seems largely the same.... So it does not surprise me much that he favored a more classic Loki and Doom. He may shake Doom up somehow and his recent development may have some lasting consequences, but it will be in a way that he decides, rather than Bendis or Hickman, and will start from the 'classic' base. Personally, I prefer to see changes carry over between creative teams, it shows respect for your fellow writers, as well as fans of preceding runs.

[Darkspellmaster]

They changed recently though. Galactus and Doom practically happened yesterday in the grand scheme of things. If Slott does revert Doom, this whole Iron Doom thing will amount to little more than a brief anomaly. With the exception of Magneto who first started having face turn moments in the 80s. Even there, though, it stuck because of moral complexity VS simplicity. When Magneto first appeared, he was your standard mustache twirler doing it for the evulz, his team was even called the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, because it was just good VS evil, and bad guys back then were just evil, they knew it and reveled in it. It was Claremont giving him a sympathetic backstory and motivations you could kinda understand, basically treating him as a person rather than a big bag of evil, that led to him seeing some change. Like I said, it is easier now that sort of character treatment is the norm rather than the exception. The fact that some of the iconic bad guys have been around so long actually makes it more likely that they will get this sort of development sooner or later. It's also kind of like, how many times can we do a story about Galactus trying to eat the Earth, really? At some point it is either change the character or let them fall into limbo because they are played out.

And Slott seems to have a strange relationship with changing characters. He only seems to like changes he made, and he generally puts things back the way they were afterwards. He has made some big changes in his time on Spider-Man, I mean, Superior was a massive shakeup, and had consequences even after Peter was back in control, with the company Ock had built making him wealthy etc. But in this final arc, everything is being but back to 'classic' status quo, Peter has lost the company and is back to being a down on his luck loser, and Green Goblin is being brought back, sure it is with a twist, but the end result seems largely the same.... So it does not surprise me much that he favored a more classic Loki and Doom. He may shake Doom up somehow and his recent development may have some lasting consequences, but it will be in a way that he decides, rather than Bendis or Hickman, and will start from the 'classic' base. Personally, I prefer to see changes carry over between creative teams, it shows respect for your fellow writers, as well as fans of preceding runs.

Thing about Slott is that he seems to like to play a lot with the Villains in a weird way. Doc. Ock's role as the Superior Spiderman played him up to being a good guy "better" than Peter ever was as a hero. Galactus I would say tends to be more neutral than good or bad. Seeing as he eats anything and everything. And it's not like he's really going "Good planet" and "Bad planet" when he's picking what he's going to devour. I would agree that reverting Doom back would be a bad idea, but I also think that Slott is going to play more with the mixed bag that Doom is, much like how he played with Octavious. Also I'd point out that Magneto has been used as heroic in various alt. versions of the X-men at times, and for a while was considered such a "heroic character" that Rogue dated him.

I think one of the reasons why they started to change over Loki after they killed him was that writers had written him to the point where they really weren't sure where to go with him. He'd up to that point in time: Stolen Sif's body, worked with Norman and the bad guys to create a situation where there was a all out war on their hands, allowed Doom to experiment on Asgardians, and the list can go on. Honestly there was no where to take him except farther down and the issue with that is then you get Red Skull level evil and I don't think they wanted Loki to become that, not after the movies with him pushed a new narration and Matt had given him a new lease on life. That's the thing, there are some villains that you can't change because the evil in them is so deep (see Red Skull or a character like the Ultrahumanite from DC) but characters like say Loki or Lex Luthor you can alter and show in a different way. You kind of need to because making them bad for so long will make them boring. It's one of the reasons why characters like Ivy, Harley, Selena, Edward Nigma and the Penguin can and do stick around in a more positive way even if they get used a heck of a lot in stories, and why say the Joker tends to need a rest because there's only so far you can push him being evil before people get tired of his game. Same can be said of Loki, and why I think that changing him will give him a longer shelve space.

On the one hand, I agree with you, on the other, there are sometimes when the classic version needs to come back or at least the back to basic version. Recall that they made Tony for a while not a Stark, and really has that carried over? I think that on the one hand, character development needs to for the most part stick around in some ways, but if the change to the character is so drastic in such a fast way that it makes them unrecognizable or the actions don't make sense, then, yes, cast it aside for a bit.

Regarding Infinity war, two options for Loki for his return, since Tom still has either two more movies on his side or one more, he can either come back when they hit the reset button, or, what we saw was a spell deal and he set it up so that he would freeze in space and not die (given his skills in magic), and thus, show up when they do Thor 4. Keep in mind that part was a large Cameo so that might not even count for his contract count.

[Raye]

Thing about Slott is that he seems to like to play a lot with the Villains in a weird way. Doc. Ock's role as the Superior Spiderman played him up to being a good guy "better" than Peter ever was as a hero. Galactus I would say tends to be more neutral than good or bad. Seeing as he eats anything and everything. And it's not like he's really going "Good planet" and "Bad planet" when he's picking what he's going to devour. I would agree that reverting Doom back would be a bad idea, but I also think that Slott is going to play more with the mixed bag that Doom is, much like how he played with Octavious. Also I'd point out that Magneto has been used as heroic in various alt. versions of the X-men at times, and for a while was considered such a "heroic character" that Rogue dated him.

Oh I know, but Magneto has gone back and forth several times, in part i think because the creators disagreed on what he should be (Morrison was pretty vocal about how he thought he should be a pure villain, while others like Claremont thought he should be more heroic) and that flip flopping born of creator disagreements sort of evolved into being a part of his character. And at the moment I'd call him an anti-villain, even if he has been more heroic in the past. A borderline one, he's damn close to being center of the morality scale, but I still think he tips more into villain territory right now by a bit. but it's Magneto, so that could change at any time. Same thing may happen with Loki (or Doom, or any other face turned villain) but I kinda hope not, I'd prefer a more solid direction.

and yah, Galactus may not have villainous intent, but he's was still very definitely the antagonist, not like anyone living on Earth wanted the planet devoured... He was still kind of a one trick pony, (though, a very powerful one) and there's still only so many times you can tell that story, no matter what his intent was.

I think one of the reasons why they started to change over Loki after they killed him was that writers had written him to the point where they really weren't sure where to go with him. He'd up to that point in time: Stolen Sif's body, worked with Norman and the bad guys to create a situation where there was a all out war on their hands, allowed Doom to experiment on Asgardians, and the list can go on. Honestly there was no where to take him except farther down and the issue with that is then you get Red Skull level evil and I don't think they wanted Loki to become that, not after the movies with him pushed a new narration and Matt had given him a new lease on life. That's the thing, there are some villains that you can't change because the evil in them is so deep (see Red Skull or a character like the Ultrahumanite from DC) but characters like say Loki or Lex Luthor you can alter and show in a different way. You kind of need to because making them bad for so long will make them boring. It's one of the reasons why characters like Ivy, Harley, Selena, Edward Nigma and the Penguin can and do stick around in a more positive way even if they get used a heck of a lot in stories, and why say the Joker tends to need a rest because there's only so far you can push him being evil before people get tired of his game. Same can be said of Loki, and why I think that changing him will give him a longer shelve space.

I think it's more than just one reason, but I do think the fact that there wasn't much place else to go was definitely part of it. Sure they could come up with new specifics in terms of actions and such, but if it's just the same old motivations over and over, and he never grew, what does it really add to the story for Thor or anyone else? He just becomes this plot device to get bad things to happen, and any villain can do that. It may work on a story by story basis, but it certainly doesn't make him very interesting as a character, and as Thor's brother, I think he deserves to be interesting. And yeah, at some point if you just have him continue to spiral downward, you get a character that is just irredeemable, honestly, he was kinda pushing that line already, and I don't think that really works for Loki in the long run, both because of his relationship to his brother could be so much more interesting if they could actually interact on a more meaningful level, and there was this weird disconnect with the myths. I know a lot in the comics doesn't match the myths, but still.

I don't think the movies had a lot to do with the new direction though, the beginning of JIM actually came out before the movies. and while he was fairly sympathetic in thor, in Avengers he was a straight up villain. But I do think it influenced his look some when he got aged back up, and I think that Ragnarok in particular could help the face turn stick.

On the one hand, I agree with you, on the other, there are sometimes when the classic version needs to come back or at least the back to basic version. Recall that they made Tony for a while not a Stark, and really has that carried over? I think that on the one hand, character development needs to for the most part stick around in some ways, but if the change to the character is so drastic in such a fast way that it makes them unrecognizable or the actions don't make sense, then, yes, cast it aside for a bit.

Well, yeah, there's always some room for exceptions, if a story is particularly poorly received, or damaging to a character. I just get frustrated when the stories don't have any lasting impact because everything gets reset.

Regarding Infinity war, two options for Loki for his return, since Tom still has either two more movies on his side or one more, he can either come back when they hit the reset button, or, what we saw was a spell deal and he set it up so that he would freeze in space and not die (given his skills in magic), and thus, show up when they do Thor 4. Keep in mind that part was a large Cameo so that might not even count for his contract count.

I don't think the contracts guarantee the actors need to come back, just that they have to answer the call IF Marvel wants them back... But there definitely are ways he could come back. Even if it is just for a cameo if they did a JIM type deal as a ghost before being magpied. But he could have also done something to just make it *appear* he had died, or he could be brought back with everyone else, because we know at least some of them will be resurrected. I mean, there's another Spider-Man movie coming, so... If it's the Time Gem that does it, then it could set it back before Thanos arrived on the Asgardian ship, but then everything after that wouldn't really count and that would piss people off. Or it could be that all the characters that were turned to ash were stored in the Soul Gem, and they can be brought back out of it. But then Loki (and the other Asgardians like Heimdall) wouldn't be among the resurrected. They could be rolling JMS' run, where Thor had to resurrect everyone, and JIM together though, and it's just that instead of Lady Loki we get Kid Loki. In both cases, very broad strokes, obviously.

[Rosebunse]

I can totally see later movies going the JMS route, especially since they can bring in kidLoki. I'm not sure how the story would work, but Disney has shown that they are practical about their adaptations, so I have faith that they can make it work.

Before JMS, was Loki super popular? I don't remember him being a huge part of the cartoons or toys back in the day. If you knew the comics then he was important, but as a whole the Asgardians were sort of a niche.

That was why the Thor movies were such a gamble. Thor was at best a B-list character and Loki was often even lower than that.

But even before the films, before kidLoki, you had JMS and Lady Loki. And suddenly it felt like people began to take a critical look at Loki. It certainly helped the character that the movies and books played together so well.

[Raye]

Yeah Thor was actually cancelled for a while there due to lack of interest, so no, I don't think Loki was super popular. I mean, he was known, on the importantish side, he certainly did appear and cause trouble outside of the Thor corner of the universe. But I don't think he had a real fanbase to speak of, really, that followed his appearances and cared about him as a character and all that. And yeah, it was JMS' run that really revived the whole Thor side of things, including Loki.

And all the MCU movies were a gamble, it's not like Iron Man was super popular either. It's just that Marvel didn't have a ton of choice, the majority of their most popular characters were in the hands of other studios, so they worked with what they had... and it worked out pretty well.

[Rosebunse]

Yeah, JMS really revived Thor, though I can't help but think that so much of that was the art and the redesigns. They were all brought into the modern age in a way that still doesn't feel dated. In fact, I think most fans prefer the redesigns to the originals. Even Lady Loki, a design that might otherwise be pure fanservice, revived interest in Loki because, well, it's so iconic.

The lack of popularity of the characters in the film did work somewhat to the advantages of the directors and writers. It made them work harder. They couldn't hope for fans to get by on pure nostalgia the way more popular comic books characters had. They actually had to work for it and build these characters up. It's really sort of amazing.

And then you have Loki through it all who actually does change foe the better.

[Rosebunse]

So, I read the FCBD Avengers issue and I know you guys are probably not going to like it.

But I actually think it's a bit more complicated than "Loki is evil" again. We're forgetting that Odin is a character in this and it's becoming obvious that this story is about his many, many mistakes, such as murdering and imprisoning a sick Celestrial without trying to help it. And then you have Odin's idea to chain said sick Celestrial to the moon, which actually didn't sound dissimilar to what Odin had done to Loki by training him to a rock with his son's guts and letting poison drip into his eyes for how ever many years.

I mean, part of the reason Loki is how he is is because Odin isn't a great father.

Of course, even at his best, Loki is pretty petty and self-serving. So this thing with the Celestrial isn't quite out of left field. And it sounds like the Celestrial in question might actually be helping Loki instead of just Loki using it as a battery. I do have to wonder how Loki worked that out.

Also, I just realized, in the comics, the only one of Odin's children to give him any grandchildren is Loki. Nothing big, just something I noticed.

[responsarbre]

I'm finally reading through The Mighty Thor and Aaron's approach to Loki in-general has me suspicious of this story, but if you go back to Loki's actions in the Marvel Legacy one-shot where he's searching for the Space Stone and the Celestial, he says that he's trying to save the world. So, Loki at least thinks he's doing the right thing here.

[Rosebunse]

I'm finally reading through The Mighty Thor and Aaron's approach to Loki in-general has me suspicious of this story, but if you go back to Loki's actions in the Marvel Legacy one-shot where he's searching for the Space Stone and the Celestial, he says that he's trying to save the world. So, Loki at least thinks he's doing the right thing here.

This story is from Odin's persoective, so you're right there. Of course, there's also the fact that Odin is pretty mad about all of this and it's just easier for him to take that out on Loki when he's standing there. And there's the fact that Odin was seemingly giving Loki quite a bit of leeway earlier and now, once again, Loki has seemingly only used that to hurt Odin by stabbing Freya.

However, when we found out that Loki was trying to use that Celestrial, I really thought that he'd have that thing hooked up to some magical devise, not letting it out and about.

[Raye]

I was actually fine with it the FCBD issue. I mean, if anything i am mostly disappointed in Odin. (and the disconnect between Ewing and Aaron's Odin comes up again) I do think Loki is on the right track here. I mean, Loki did not have to go confront Odin there. I mean, strip away all the aired grievances, what was accomplished? All he really accomplished was to let Odin know a threat was coming. Odin wasn't aware of it until Loki told him. Sure, he knew it was probably going to come back to bite him sooner or later but not specifically when. It had already been a million years, it could have been a million more for all he knew. And Odin then contacted Black Panther, getting the defense ready. This is bad.... how? If we operate under the assumption he's acting as the bad guy here, revealing his hand is a dumb move, which makes things more difficult for himself, and Loki is many things but stupid is not one of them. If Loki was actually trying to attack Odin and the Earth, it would have been far more beneficial to keep it a secret so he could take them by surprise, yeah? So he goes in there all goading him and all, but also warning him. That's not a bad thing. Also, remember that Odin himself admitted that they did the wrong thing all those years ago, so what Loki said isn't wrong. Loki has a history of pointing out others hypocrisies and mistakes in both the myths and the comics, this is all that confrontation was, really. And speaking of hypocrisies, note the irony and hypocrisy of Odin talking to T'challa about how he should have shown mercy a million years ago, that it was a mistake to kill that space giant because now it was going to come back and bite them in the ass. IMMEDIATELY cut to him telling Loki, his frost giant son, he should have killed him when he was a child. fucking hypocrite. And if Odin is mad at Loki about Freyja he should take a look in the mirror, he was prepared to execute her shortly before Loki stabbed her. As for HOW he warned Odin, it seemed to me that he was trying to goad Odin into attacking him, because... reasons... I don't know exactly what his plan IS here, but it must involve getting some kind of fight going. Maybe just to get the Avengers back together, I guess, he probably knew they needed a threat incoming to get together, that's how he got the team together (accidentally that time) the first time. And note that in Avengers #1, Tony even mentions that it was mostly Loki's doing that the team got together in the first place. Also, Loki clearly had the power to kill Odin right then, he had a freaking pet celestial, but he obviously didn't, which is another sign to me that he's just playing the part of the bad guy. And I think T'challa will have the level head here and judge the situation for himself, as he said he's not an assassin, and I suspect that by the end he will come to realize what Loki is really up to, since he doesn't have that same level of baggage with him that Odin does, and he's also a really smart guy.

also, Thor has 3 granddaughters in the future, so even if he doesn't have children yet, he obviously will. At least one, named Woden.

Back to the MCU for a bit, I was thinking and I think the JMS adaptation really could work. At first it seemed to me that killing off all the Asgardians kinda deflated the message of Ragnarok, that Asgard was the people. But if they go that route, it could actually helps strengthen that message. If they do have Thor as the last man standing and then he brings the others back because Asgard is the people... and that allows them to do a soft reboot of the Thor franchise and recast everyone who may have been aging too much to pull of immortal for much longer. If I were doing it, I'm thinking, 2, maybe 3 movies that kinda mush together a few of the more modern stories. First one is JMS' story, Thor finds a nice quiet spot int he middle of nowhere USA outside of Broxton to bring back the Asgardians, and it is a loose adaptation of JMS' run and Siege, but also bring in Roxxon, like maybe new Asgard is plunked down right over some oil deposits, so Dario Agger could take the place of Osborn. BUT swap out Lady Loki for Kid Loki, and bring in Cul to fill Lady Loki's place in the story. Second movie would be a mashup of JIM and Fear Itself. I know Fear Itself isn't very highly regarded by most, but this is a loose adaptation, and the MCU has polished up some meh comic stories before. And then, we can maybe get into God of Thunder and beyond.