Reading Friday: Agent of Asgard edition
The preview for the new Lucifer comic is out (starting page 15) and it is most definitely a sequel and not a reboot, so I am ridiculously excited for it! (Look, Lucifer has a bar called Ex Lux and in this context it works on at least three different levels, to which I can only say: Lucifer, you giant dork.) I don't know if the series is going to be any good, but I know it'll be gorgeous, because Lee Garbett is on art.
I'm familiar with Lee Garbett's art from his most recent work: as the artist for the majority of the recently concluded Loki:Agent of Asgard, which reminded me that I need to post about my thoughts about it.
Dear flist, I am requesting this comic book for yuletide and I am requesting SO HARD, because it is everything I wanted this book to be and more.
Agent of Asgard is a comic book series set in the main Marvel comic universe, 616. The entire run is penned by Al Ewing and, as said above, the majority of it is drawn by Lee Garbett. It's the culmination of a story arc 10 years in the making and it's one of my very favourite stories about Tricksters ever.
A bit of background: I've been following Marvel's Loki in real-time-as-the-issues-come-out since Journey into Mystery 630 or so. That's about nearly five years of checking on this character (almost) every month, be that through Journey into Mystery, then Young Avengers v2, then Loki: Agent of Asgard. Before that, I was following Loki since Ragnarok as the trades came out in french and I found then at the library. I am not kidding when I say this story arc was 10 years in the making -- I know, I read pretty much all of it. It should go without saying that I was invested in this storyline (even excluding my Thing for tricksters).
Young Avengers v2 was a major let-down, on every single possible front. Agent of Asgard was not.
It is so good.
I've been having a conversation about tricksters with lunik_the_bard for years now. I love tricksters so much. For one thing, I love smart characters and there's no such thing as a stupid trickster. (I like entertaining assholes, too, and tricksters often fall under this.) For another thing, the essence of Trickster, to me, is about taking what you have and making something new out of it.
It's about creation. Creation-through-deception, often, but not always. It's about stories, the ones we tell ourselves and the ones we tell others. It's about transformation (it's no coincidence that tricksters are often shape-shifters). Renewal. Rebirth. Change.
That's something I've needed all my life, this idea that you can change who you are. That you could be, if not more, then different. To take the third option and make a way where there wasn't one before. That you can be smart and that there's no shame in that. That you don't have to be what others think you'll become. That you're not stuck in the prison of other people's expectation. That people can be wrong about you, but that doesn't make you wrong.
What you become is more important than what you were born to be.
It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that I was also very invested in both the Trickster and redemption parts of this book. I've always loved Loki (any Loki, Marvel or myth) best when he uses wits, not magic, to solve a problem. It's part of what made the Loki in Journey into Mystery (kid!Loki) so interesting, that he didn't have magic and so had to rely entirely on wits and the kindness of strangers. It brought him closer to myth!Loki than Marvel Loki had been up to that point.
Marvel!Loki isn't really a trickster. He's a villain, often the designated villain. Well.
He was.
Starting with Siege v1, Loki decided he was tired of being the villain, because that made him predictable. He engineered his own death and rebirth to escape the cycle of his fate. He was reborn as an amnesiac street kid in Paris (and I am still laughing the highway in Montmartre of all the fucking places -- clearly this is an universe where Pompidou's Plan autoroutier pour Paris came to fruition). Long story short: the new Loki regains his memories and sets about redeeming himself in the eys of Asgard, which goes about as well as you'd expect, which is not very. The ending of Journey into Mystery is him suffering a major setback of the "now possessed by the ghost of his older self" kind, something that came as a complete antithesis to what had gone on before and soured me on Kieron Gillen's writing possibly for ever. In Young Avengers v2, this new Loki turns into a member of a boyband and regains his magic. Turns out he's haunted by what he's done -- even though he's not Loki the murderer as Loki the murder weapon.
Agent of Asgard is what happens after.
It's about this Loki who is once again back at step 1 of redemption having to fight everyone's expectations of him, the weight of destiny (and this is Norse myth we're talking about, destiny is a heavy thing) and his own self, both figuratively and literally, to get to be himself. Not a villain. Not a hero -- of course not, he is Loki, after all -- but someone new.
Loki does become this new self. It's not easy. It hurts a lot, there is so much anger to set aside and there are setbacks and unknowns, but he manages. Of all the characters on the Norse side of Marvel, if there ever was one who was defined by his narrative role, it was Loki. There isn't a single Loki I can think off, be it myth or Marvel -- hell, even from the one from Dogma! -- that couldn't be defined as being "a tragedy in waiting". He's The Villain. The Monster At The End Of This Mythology.
He's Loki, and he breaks free. He does it mostly alone, but not only. He has a friend, Verity Willis, to help him, not because she's the girl no one can lie to to his God of Lies, but because she's his friend. It's as simple and as powerful as that.
There were so many, many ways this could have gone wrong or the tale been told badly, which, for a story so concerned with stories themselves, there is almost no greater sin, but it wasn't.
The comic manages to do so with incredible gusto. It delivers an awesome tale of redemption and friendship and the role of stories in our lives and it does so while being consistently entertaining and a delight to read, with incredible art to boot.
I cannot tell you how incredibly cathartic reading this was.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/104909.html and has
comments over there.
I'm familiar with Lee Garbett's art from his most recent work: as the artist for the majority of the recently concluded Loki:Agent of Asgard, which reminded me that I need to post about my thoughts about it.
Dear flist, I am requesting this comic book for yuletide and I am requesting SO HARD, because it is everything I wanted this book to be and more.
Agent of Asgard is a comic book series set in the main Marvel comic universe, 616. The entire run is penned by Al Ewing and, as said above, the majority of it is drawn by Lee Garbett. It's the culmination of a story arc 10 years in the making and it's one of my very favourite stories about Tricksters ever.
A bit of background: I've been following Marvel's Loki in real-time-as-the-issues-come-out since Journey into Mystery 630 or so. That's about nearly five years of checking on this character (almost) every month, be that through Journey into Mystery, then Young Avengers v2, then Loki: Agent of Asgard. Before that, I was following Loki since Ragnarok as the trades came out in french and I found then at the library. I am not kidding when I say this story arc was 10 years in the making -- I know, I read pretty much all of it. It should go without saying that I was invested in this storyline (even excluding my Thing for tricksters).
Young Avengers v2 was a major let-down, on every single possible front. Agent of Asgard was not.
It is so good.
I've been having a conversation about tricksters with lunik_the_bard for years now. I love tricksters so much. For one thing, I love smart characters and there's no such thing as a stupid trickster. (I like entertaining assholes, too, and tricksters often fall under this.) For another thing, the essence of Trickster, to me, is about taking what you have and making something new out of it.
It's about creation. Creation-through-deception, often, but not always. It's about stories, the ones we tell ourselves and the ones we tell others. It's about transformation (it's no coincidence that tricksters are often shape-shifters). Renewal. Rebirth. Change.
That's something I've needed all my life, this idea that you can change who you are. That you could be, if not more, then different. To take the third option and make a way where there wasn't one before. That you can be smart and that there's no shame in that. That you don't have to be what others think you'll become. That you're not stuck in the prison of other people's expectation. That people can be wrong about you, but that doesn't make you wrong.
What you become is more important than what you were born to be.
It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that I was also very invested in both the Trickster and redemption parts of this book. I've always loved Loki (any Loki, Marvel or myth) best when he uses wits, not magic, to solve a problem. It's part of what made the Loki in Journey into Mystery (kid!Loki) so interesting, that he didn't have magic and so had to rely entirely on wits and the kindness of strangers. It brought him closer to myth!Loki than Marvel Loki had been up to that point.
Marvel!Loki isn't really a trickster. He's a villain, often the designated villain. Well.
He was.
Starting with Siege v1, Loki decided he was tired of being the villain, because that made him predictable. He engineered his own death and rebirth to escape the cycle of his fate. He was reborn as an amnesiac street kid in Paris (and I am still laughing the highway in Montmartre of all the fucking places -- clearly this is an universe where Pompidou's Plan autoroutier pour Paris came to fruition). Long story short: the new Loki regains his memories and sets about redeeming himself in the eys of Asgard, which goes about as well as you'd expect, which is not very. The ending of Journey into Mystery is him suffering a major setback of the "now possessed by the ghost of his older self" kind, something that came as a complete antithesis to what had gone on before and soured me on Kieron Gillen's writing possibly for ever. In Young Avengers v2, this new Loki turns into a member of a boyband and regains his magic. Turns out he's haunted by what he's done -- even though he's not Loki the murderer as Loki the murder weapon.
Agent of Asgard is what happens after.
It's about this Loki who is once again back at step 1 of redemption having to fight everyone's expectations of him, the weight of destiny (and this is Norse myth we're talking about, destiny is a heavy thing) and his own self, both figuratively and literally, to get to be himself. Not a villain. Not a hero -- of course not, he is Loki, after all -- but someone new.
Loki does become this new self. It's not easy. It hurts a lot, there is so much anger to set aside and there are setbacks and unknowns, but he manages. Of all the characters on the Norse side of Marvel, if there ever was one who was defined by his narrative role, it was Loki. There isn't a single Loki I can think off, be it myth or Marvel -- hell, even from the one from Dogma! -- that couldn't be defined as being "a tragedy in waiting". He's The Villain. The Monster At The End Of This Mythology.
He's Loki, and he breaks free. He does it mostly alone, but not only. He has a friend, Verity Willis, to help him, not because she's the girl no one can lie to to his God of Lies, but because she's his friend. It's as simple and as powerful as that.
There were so many, many ways this could have gone wrong or the tale been told badly, which, for a story so concerned with stories themselves, there is almost no greater sin, but it wasn't.
The comic manages to do so with incredible gusto. It delivers an awesome tale of redemption and friendship and the role of stories in our lives and it does so while being consistently entertaining and a delight to read, with incredible art to boot.
I cannot tell you how incredibly cathartic reading this was.
This entry was originally posted at http://dhampyresa.dreamwidth.org/104909.html and has
comments over there.