As I wrap up work my next publication, I want to spend the next few weeks sharing my thoughts about recent and popular interpretations of Marvel’s god of mischief and lies, Loki.
This is a new podcast: this is the LokiCast.
Episode #1 of the LokiCast is available for free on SoundCloud. Below is the script for this first episode, in which I look at Loki: Agent of Asgard Issue #1 by Ewing and Garbett. The podcast sticks mostly to this script, so if you don’t have 20 minutes to listen, feel free to skim the script below.
I’m going to record a few more episodes as I wrap up work on publishing about Loki. Let me know what you think about the podcast in the comments section or on Twitter.
(There is a short gap without audio early in this track; skip over that dead air.)
Loki: Agent of Asgard Issue #1 is certainly a product of the Marvel film adaptations, reconciling the newer cinematic portrayal of the character with his classic origins. The first issue in many ways replays details from the first Avengers film, whether the use of Stark Tower rather than Stark Mansion, this iteration of the team consisting of their cinematic counterparts, Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Captain America dressed in the same outfits that they wear in the films, even Bruce Banner offering an incomplete form of the “I’m always angry” line.
It can rangle fans to have a more attractive, younger, more Hildeston-esque Loki on the pages, a point not lost upon Clinton Barton who describes the newer character as “One Direction-y.” The attractive smooth skin of this Loki is accentuated in contrast to the illustrations of Loki Classic, who arrives on the last page of Issue #1 and who pops up in a flashback in his first fight against the Avengers. This Loki differs greatly from how Jack Kirby was drawing him: the wrinkles and dead eyes are exaggerated, his gleeful smirk transformed into a frightening gaping maw.
Initially, this contrast in physical appearance seems like a cynical attempt to make New Loki look all the more interesting than Loki Classic. But, thank Odin, it’s not. Loki’s two sides are going to be front-and-center to this series. That structure to Agent of Asgard touches upon a point I traced in my earlier article, and which I’m working on in a new publication: what is Loki’s role? Issue #1 of _Agent of Asgard_ summarizes how Loki wrestles with his past self and his future potential, when he imagines his initial fight with the Avengers, way back upon their formation, as like a play:
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