I dunno why there are so many people saying that Loki definitively died in Agent of Asgard #13 and that all his character development has been lost. In #13 Loki was presented with a choice: annihilate himself or go back to being the God of Evil. He rejected both choices and took a third option. If he refused oblivion how can he be dead?
Ever since Kieron Gillen’s Siege one-shot Loki’s been endeavouring to break free of the chains of his static godhood and become a true chaos god; a being that is capable of change. The way I interpreted #13 was that Loki realised that there was a loophole in his role as the God of Lies in that he could redefine what is meant by “lie” and call it a story instead. As the gods in Marvel are quite literally shaped by the role they play, this redefinition caused a corresponding change in appearance and demeanour.
Did this redefinition kill the Loki we’ve come to know and replace him with a stranger? Well that all comes down to the age-old question of personal identity. Some would say that the child I was years ago is dead. Some would even say that we exist only for a single moment in time and that our ongoing existence is a really a sequence of true individuals existing momentarily, dying, and being replaced with near identical copies. Still others would say that’s all poppycock. Either way, I thus far find Loki’s transition into his new identity no more alarming than the existential terror that comes with simply being alive.
This is all true. The child you used to be is still you, but you’ve grown out of that phase in your life.
The problem is, children don’t become teenagers or adults overnight. They grow up, they experience things and start to feel differently gradually. It’s not: I’m a child, I want to grow up BUM I’m an adult. It doesn’t work that way.
A child can and should become an adult, but in any media as in life, if you just go from child to adult without showing the path you took to get it, it feels unrealistic and unrewarding. If feels like you replaced the character with a new one.
During issue #13 I agreed 100% with Loki’s dialogue of not giving up on himself, of not letting that part of him control his life. It was all great and wonderful, he finally realized how he had to change. The problem was how he decided to do it.
He thought of the person he wanted to become and instead of fighting and growing to become said person, he put on the crown and BUM New Loki is here. Out with the old, and bring in the new. Look how badass I am now! The old one? That one it’s gone.
That is the reason why me and other readers saw this as a death. Because we didn’t see growth, but a transformation. And there was no need for Loki to do this. He still could have changed by finally taking on King Loki and refusing to give in into his self hatred. There was no need to erase his past as Ikol, as part of the Young Avengers, what he went through as Agent of Asgard. He could have used this experiences to grow and still become the New Loki.
Maybe it was Al Ewing’s experience as a Doctor Who writer that lead him to use this plot-device, maybe it’s because of Secret Wars being so close and they have no time to show Loki go through a slower character development, maybe it’s because they needed to power him up quickly to defeat King Loki without wasting a lot of time…
There could be a lot of reasons, but I’m disappointed they choose this one. Unless New Loki starts showing so signs of regaining some of his memories (for example, when Verity ended telling him her tale and he suddenly remembered when he met her or some other significant event that showed how important his friend is to him), this will feel like Loki/Ikol really died, leaving this improved version of the Loki character to fight his battle.
Just to address a couple points. first of all, I pretty much agree with brandxspandex, and that was elegantly put.
No, WE don’t change overnight, but we are dealing with mythology and superhero comics rolled into one, here. The rules are just different for them, and you gotta roll with it. Also, we do have to take comic book time into account. It necessitates characters either stagnating forever (which is what Loki was fighting against) or if they do change, it tends to be a bit abrupt just because of logistics. You realize that since 1962 our time, only 13 years have passed in MU canon? If he fought to change in a more organic manner it would take literally years of our time to tell that story. It’s already fairly remarkable that his face turn has been going on for about 5 years now, and that Marvel has allowed this, since it prevents him from being used very much outside his own book (or Young Avengers which was kinda-sorta ‘his’ book at the time) because he is in a permanent state of flux. He has been used in a guest appearance way occasionally, but if you look at them, they’re almost always wrong in some way because there is no solid characterization for other writers to use because it is always changing. But that 5 years of our time only covers about 9-10 months of his life. What you are asking for just isn’t something that can be done while still keeping his story in sync with the rest of the MU, and letting him be a character that can be used outside of his own book in a big way. And we know Jason Aaron has big plans for him in Thor, I mean he just resurrected Loki’s father, not to mention Secret Wars, so this just has to be wrapped up sooner rather than later. Marvel has already been very generous in regards to how much time this story has taken, and allowing one of their biggest players to be removed from the board while it was resolved.
Also *technically* the change did take 8 months, we just never saw a lot of it. There was a time skip because of the incursion leading into Secret Wars, and there will be another 8 month time skip AFTER Secret Wars. It kind of forced the change to be now or never, otherwise he’d have been stuck in an awkward place for 16 months of his life and been unable to participate in Secret Wars (pretty sure the Loki in Thors is OUR Loki, or if not, he will have a role to play in Secret Wars. His new ‘god of stories’ role is just too convenient to not be used).
Agent of Asgard Loki was fun, I like him a lot. I’d have been totally cool with keeping him around forever. But the point of the story was that his plan was doomed to fail, King Loki showed that. It may take a few hundred years for it to all go sour, but it will. That was the story being told, and that’s just the way it is.
Imported from Tumblr: http://ift.tt/1cWMTds
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