Loki: Agent of Asgard #3 - "Your Life Is a Story I've Already Written"

[arbre_rieur]

'How the truth can hurt -- and how it can be used as a weapon -- is a theme that seems so obvious now that I can't believe I didn't intend to have it in there from the start. I mean, In "Loki: AoA" the truth is literally a sword, for goodness' sake. I have no idea where my mind was.' -- Al Ewing



Old Loki travels back in time to the Old Realms, where he becomes the traveling companion of a young Odin and gets him into a blood feud with some innkeepers.













One day, the hero Sigurd stays the night at Regin's inn, and the two make a deal:



Sigurd slays Fafnir, and Bram, having been plunged through the dragon's truth-magicked blood, gains the power to pierce any lie.

Comments

[janegray]

...I'm confused.

[protogarrett]

As much as I enjoy Loki I must admit I am terribly confused to his changes. He was Loki, then Girl Loki,back to Man Loki, then Kid Loki, now Teen Loki...

Can someone explain how/why he went from Man to Kid, and Kid to Teen, because I am teribly lost and the internet isn't providing a very clear explanation.

[obsidianwolf]

Okay Original Reciple Loki was Thor's adopted brother and enemy. He got killed by Thor and the possessed Odin's body for a while and banished Thor. After Thor returned and Odin got his body back he was a nuisance of a ghost for a while sometimes managing to be alive again some times not.

Eventually Ragnarok happened again and this time Thor managed to end the cycle of Asgard getting wiped out and eaten by Those who sit in shadow and then reformed in a new form. So instead all the Asgardians were reborn on Earth. Thor didn't intend for his enemies to make it to Earth but Loki cheated by stealing the body meant for Lady Sif. That's how Lady Loki came to be for a while.

Eventually after much more comic shenanigans Loki regained his male form and eventually died but he'd cheated again and removed his name from the book of Hela. So he reincarnated as a kid who managed to do the impossible and actually changed to become a better person. Of course old Loki had forseen that possibility and set up a trap that would force Kid Loki to voluntarily over write his mind with Original Loki's restoring him.

Kid Loki Version 2 then manipulated the young avengers for a bit and then got aged up into his current young adult form. He also feels incredibly guilty about being the murder weapon that killed Kid Loki so now he's out to change things. He erased all his history from the internet and made a deal with the All Mother for every mission he completes for them one of his old stories will be deleted from the vault so all that narrative history won't force him back to his old ways.

He freed Thor from possession only for it to be revealed that he was possessed by Original recipe Loki who is somehow still around. So currently two versions of Loki. The Agent Loki who is trying to change and Original Recipe Loki is still an evil bastard and is out to manipulate events and his other self for most likely a very nefarious goal.

Not featured in this post Franklin Richards created Counter Earth Loki who thought he was real Loki but was just a creation of Franklin Richards.

[protogarrett]

Thank you and *head explody*
;)

[shadowpsykie]

So in effect you actually have three Lokis

Original recipe Loki: (the god of evil)

Kid Loki: (the reincarnated loki free of the role that he was cast in, earning his redemption)

Teen Loki: (the murder weapon Old Loki used to kill his Younger self but unknowingly created an amalgamated version possessing the old loki's memories and the young loki's conscience.)

the last two are my favorite as they are much more closely related to what i conscider a chaotic neutral trickster ":D

[obsidianwolf]

Four if you count Counter Earth Loki but no one ever does.

[shadowpsykie]

is he still around? i thought counter earth was the one Franklin created... i thought that became null and void?

[obsidianwolf]

He's dead I think been a while since I read the issue where he grew to a giant and Counter EArth Thor and Real Thor teamed up to turn Counter Earth Thor into a giant Odin to beat him.

I mean Counter Earth it self is still around so if someone really wanted to use him they could easily resurrect him and have him skip over to 616 Earth.

[venatosapiens]

You know, when you write it all out like that it sounds silly.

....comics!

[obsidianwolf]

Most long running comic plot lines do.

I once tried to explain the Origin of Billy and Tommy once to a non comic fan.

[his_spiffynesss]

Even more fun is trying to explain to muggles the story of Cable and the Summers family in general :)

[razsolo]

One of my friends from work asked me who Ant-Man was after hearing about the movie and after ten minutes of explanation she just looked at me in horrified confusion like she'd opened a box of Chthulhus. I was like "but I haven't even told you about the second and third ones yet!"

Comics ^_^

[q99]

That's the long of it. :)

To do a short form, possessed Sif's body for awhile, got kicked out, died, came back as a kid, used a spell to age to teenage.

[shadowpsykie]

hey did anyone happen to read the colums? i sent in a letter to the colums and wanted to know if they wrote on it. I asked about Loki's bisexuality/

[darth_cloudo]

I believe they sold out of ad space; in any case the letters column for some comics have been moved online. Here's the one for issue #4: http://marvel.com/news/comics/2014/5/7/22260/read_marvels_lost_letters_pages_online

[althechi]

Wait.

The title right there?

I think that's a reference to, of all things, the end title tune (and rejected main title) of Tomorrow Never Dies. That is ridiculously specific for a reference.

Al Ewing, I salute you. And not just because you have a radical first name. :P

[md84]

It's kind of weird thinking of Old Loki, Kid Loki, and Teen Loki as different people. They are the same person, just with different sets of memories. Is a person really nothing more than the sum of their memories?

And Teen Loki receiving a sword forged to be Asgard's bane? That's gonna end well.

[darth_cloudo]

One could argue that their circumstances and therefore their motivations and what they chose to become were different. Does that make them different people? That's a really complicated question which I have no idea how to answer. Kind of reminds me of the Ship of Theseus question. The two main issues I can think of are:

1) Do people change with time? If someone changes drastically, are they still the same person they were? Is someone the same person they were 2 years ago?
2) How much does circumstance affect a person (nature vs nurture, I guess). There was a scene from (I believe) Avatar the Last Airbender where someone admits that while they're a good person now, but they may not have been if their circumstances had been different.

Who's to say that kid loki would not have eventually become old loki? Or that old loki would have become more like kid loki (except status quo, but ignoring that).

[cainofdreaming]

This reminds me of a quote from Planescape: Torment:

"If there is anything I have learned in my travels across the Planes, it is that many things may change the nature of a man. Whether regret, or love, or revenge or fear - whatever you believe can change the nature of a man, can. I’ve seen belief move cities, make men stave off death, and turn an evil hag's heart half-circle. This entire Fortress has been constructed from belief. Belief damned a woman, whose heart clung to the hope that another loved her when he did not. Once, it made a man seek immortality and achieve it. And it has made a posturing spirit think it is something more than a part of me."

I think that applies here too. Old Loki believed that he couldn't change, that he'd always remain Loki, so he couldn't change. Not without committing reincarnation. Kid Loki believed in making himself better than what his old self had been, so there's a good chance he would have been. He had other things going for him besides that too, like actually having feelings of brotherly love and such. Conscience. Friendship. And so forth.

Not that any of those are a guarantee in the literary world, or real one for that matter, but he had quite a bit better chances for avoiding the Old Loki's fate than Old Loki ever had.

[timefire]

Well, it's been a while since I read the origin of Kid Loki, but iirc it is a plot point that Kid Loki /didn't/ have the same memories as Adult Loki - Kid Loki is essentially reset to his childhood self, back when he was still a good brother to Thor and not feuding with anybody. He didn't have any memory of being a supervillain, only second-hand accounts of "Hey, remember that time you tried to invade New York?" and similar.

(As to your second point, I think it'd be hilarious if the sword's curse is now null and void because the Aesir are living in "Asgardia" instead :P )

[md84]

Would you believe there's a TV Trope entry covering this too? "Memory Gambit".

And yeah, it would be funny if the sword's curse can't actually hurt anyone since "Asgard" is technically already gone.

[timefire]

so Tvtropes literally has /everything/ :P

[glimmung]

"I shot a fish with a Bazooka"

Loki is now officially a redneck.

[drtechnobabel]

This entire issue is amazing, but this line...

"And Loki reached deep into his carrying bag... and brought out an M20 recoilless rocket launcher."

...made me laugh like a madman at its insane awesomeness.

[glprime]

I feel like the leg kicked up makes it that much greater. You can almost hear him in the background shouting, "yessssss!" to himself.

[beyondthefringe]

As much as I dislike the old Loki and don't want to see him revert back to the cackling villain of yesteryear, I will admit to liking how this version of Evil Loki is portrayed. He's still a liar and a trickster, and this way he has of moving in and out of old stories to manipulate things is rather fascinating. His shameless and straight-forward way of dealing with events is awesome. As is the part where he pulls out a rocket launcher, completely at random.

I'll never stop rooting for Kid/New Loki, but it's somehow fitting that his old self should be a possible thorn in his side.

[md84]

Loki's always been his own worst enemy.

[kosaginolegion]

From what I understand of the archetype, Trickster often is.

[arilou_skiff]

Are they mixing up a recoiless rifle and a rocket launcher there?

[cainofdreaming]

I've seen that designation - recoilless - with some rocket launchers. Always found it weird tho, since it kinda goes without saying. There's no back to the tube which would take the brunt of the blast, so it's recoilless by nature.

[lieut_kettch]

Pretty much. The M20 is a recoilless rifle-- the ammunition is propelled by the charge in the shell and contains no rocket motor.

It's also crew-served and usually tripod or vehicle-mounted, but Loki's Asgardian so it shouldn't be a problem for him to fire from the shoulder.

[arilou_skiff]

Apparently (so wiki says) M20 can also refer to the "Super Bazooka", so they might not be wrong there.

[violetclm.livejournal.com]

Regin and Fafnir, transforming into a dragon... suddenly a few of the side characters from Heroine's Quest make a bit more sense. Neat.

[timefire]

I was gonna make a rant about mythological accuracy, but my knowledge of Norse mythology is limited to some half-remembered Bulfinch's, so yeah...

... Actually no, I'm ranting anyway.

Yes the story is great and bazooka!Loki is fun but honest to gods the myth-fan in me is so uncomfortable about this. ODIN IS SUPPOSED TO BE A SLIPPERY TRICKSTER WIZARD HIMSELF. That's the points of all these wandering myths - Odin being the proto-Gandalf, proto-Dumbledore, all mysterious and questgiver-y. That's why Odin had Loki as his travelling companions - because they have similarities enough to bond over and make a good trickster-team.

Odin in the last few years of comics have been - I have the impression that he's been reduced into being a plot device, a /thing/ to be stubborn and obtuse for Thor to be against, rather than a three-dimensional character. And removing this unique "trickster" angle isn't gonna make him more interesting :/

(Also, how many times have Loki time travelled to influence his origin, so far?)