By Katherine Locke (Titan Books)
ISBN: 978-1-80336-254-0 (HB) eISBN: 978-1-80336-255-7
Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Marvelous Mischief and Merriment … 7/10
Modern Marvel is a truly multimedia entertainment colossus but all those many branches and subdivisions ultimately derive from stories in comic books. Thanks to recent developments in movie and television interpretations, primal Marvel Age villain Loki is now a hot property, which no doubt inspired this prose reinterpretation based on his comics reinvention in the early 21st century…
Marvel’s sustained presence on non-graphic bookshelves began in the 1990s with a string of hardback novels. Since then, those who want to supply their own pictures to gripping MU exploits have enjoyed a successive string of text-based thrills in all book formats. Titan Books has been supplying such powerhouse prose publications and here addresses the interests of fans brought in by the Thor and Avengers movies as well as those lifelong devotees of the ever-enlarging continuity who can’t bear to miss a single instance of their fave raves.
Written by Katherine Locke (The Girl with the Red Balloon, This Rebel Heart, The Spy with the Red Balloon), Loki: Journey into Mystery magically transforms a classic comic book saga: component parts of 2011’s publishing event Fear Itself and later tales spinning out of it. Primarily interpreting expanding and elaborating upon work by Keiron Gillen, these delve into what happened to an inveterate villain desperately seeking renewal and salvation… or is that one last Hail Mary ploy to escape an apparently inescapable fate?
All You Need to Know: as his last wicked scheme was spectacularly failing, the Asgardian God of Evil seeming had a too-late change of heart, but perished anyway and was reborn as a young boy…
What May Help: running from April to November 2011, Fear Itself shook up the Marvel Universe. In its wake, Gillen’s spin-off Loki Series appeared in Journey into Mystery starring a rejuvenated and mostly repentant (for which perhaps read forewarned and “once-bitten-twice-shy”) juvenile and rejuvenated God of Mischief, Stories and Lies, trying to be helpful, and keen to not end up like and dying just like his previous self …
The multi-part, intercompany braided comic book megasaga Fear Itself focused on Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and The Avengers, recounting how an ancient Asgardian menace was aroused by the Red Skull. Awake and hungry Asgard’s primordial fear-god possessed seven of Earth’s mightiest mortals, compelling them to wreak unimaginable death and destruction on the global population whilst he drank in the terror the rampages generated. In response, Odin decided to deprive The Serpent of sustenance by destroying Earth…
The core miniseries was supported by dozens of sidebar series and tie-ins focussing on peripheries of the main event. The saga of an antediluvian Asgardian menace sparking a terrifying bloodbath of carnage to feed on the fear of mankind and topple the established Norse pantheon was the stepping stone to Loki’s advancement. With all that spiritual energy unleashed other supernatural entities felt threatened and boy Loki realised that it was up to him to do what he could. The Nine Realms were grievously disrupted and the nation-city of Asgard crashed to Earth in Broxton, Oklahoma. The merging of human and godly culture was a shock to all but at least now “Kid Loki” could get Wi-Fi and good phone reception…which was immeasurably helpful as his old magic was curtailed by his new principles…
By tangentially recapitulating, extrapolating and embellishing what a scared, guilt-ridden and forewarned potential universal nemesis did next is observed against a background of crises that saw the destruction of Odin’s Asgard, imprisonment, death and resurrection of Thor and other heroes (don’t panic: in comics nobody dies forever) and the rise of opportunistic mystic forces seeking to capitalise on the upheaval.
Just how self-interest and self-revulsion in equal measure drive the magical lad in a vastly changed multiverse is the meat of this missive: encompassing teen Loki’s diligent struggles against his own nature as he tries to be better, tries to be different and tries to avoid making all his old mistakes again. It would have been far easier if he wasn’t taking advice from his old adult self (manifested as bird of ill omen Ikol) or increasingly infatuated with Leah, an age-appropriate and distracting potential paramour who is also a handmaiden of death goddess Hela ordered to keep him on mission and report any problems to truly unrepentant villains…
Loki’s rite of passage sees him face the consequences of The Serpent’s fall, and scam dream demon Nightmare and a coterie of rival fear-lords whilst manipulating Asgard’s death goddess Hela and her nemesis – multiversal arch-devil Mephisto. He then – as a secret agent for Asgard-on-Earth/Asgardia and its devious ruling triumvirate The All-Mother – must mediate between predatory new pantheon The Manchester Gods and the realm of Otherworld to redefine the spiritual identity of Britain: allowing the concepts of Faerie, Avalon, Albion, Celtic gods, Industrial Revolution, Capitalism, Marxism, Pop and Punk to co-exist. It does not go according to plan and in the final reckoning everything burns when the well-meaning kid unleashes and refuels ultimate universal ravager Surtur…
Loki’s enigmatic voyages span the Nine Realms, a range of Hells, the Dream Dimension, Camelot and even wilder places with MU guest-stars including Daimon Hellstrom, (The Son of Satan), Captain Britain, and all Asgardian favourites but I fear that this might be one of those rare occasions where fullest understanding and enjoyment might require a brief refresher course via the original comics. At least everything you need is readily available in collected editions and it will definitely enhance your enjoyment of this skilful and evocative peek inside the head of a Lordly boy who wants to be good and not misunderstood…
© 2023 MARVEL.
Loki: Journey into Mystery will be released on December 19th 2023 and is available for pre-order now.