Loki Modern Era Epic Collection: Journey Into Mystery

If you only know Marvel's Loki from his movie and television appearances, you might get the impression that the character has always been this multifaceted character. Movie Loki has layers like an onion.Comic Loki, on the other hand, has been more one dimensional. Originally appearing as a villain in Thor's Journey Into Mystery comics, Loki has used his powers in service of evil with barely any real motivation beyond, y'know, doing evil stuff. He's a Marvel character so at certain points, he has shown some nuance but, usually, he's a Silver Age bad guy doing Silver Age bad guy stuff.Even Loki realized he was trapped in a basic role and this Modern Epic is the result of Loki freeing himself from that trap. Featured in these pages are the tales of Kid Loki, a reborn God of Mischief with a heart of gold, using his treachery to serve the greater good with sometimes disasterous results!Kid Loki was a term I used for the character back when he was introduced but I don't believe it ever comes up in story. This version of Loki came about after the older version sacrificed his life during Marvel's Siege event. This book starts out with the Siege: Loki One-Shot that sets up his death and all his machinations that would free him from being a basic bad guy. It just means he had to die, first.After that, we get the first solo adventure of the brand-new Loki. Sadly, it begins during Marvel's Fear Itself mega-event which means there are going to be lots of bits not fully explained in this collection. Or maybe glossed over. The basic plot is that Odin's older brother (given the name "Serpent" and I don't think ever give a more appropriate Norse God name) has returned and as a God of Fear, has recruited a bunch of "worthy" agents of fear using hammers and is terrorizing Earth.It's important to note that Fear Itself was a terrible event. I used to write these online articles about big mega-events as they happened. I love those things. Big team ups? Heck, yeah. Fear Itself nearly broke me. There are parts of it that still annoy me even a decade later.But Loki was a highlight. It sets up a crazy heist that is really just a lot of other heists all mixed together. Loki is a joy. It's a great cast. Mephisto has a whole chapter of his own that works into the entire narrative. It's just fun. It even makes some parts of Fear Itself work better than the main book did on its own.But the best thing this book accomplishes is just making Loki into an actual character. He isn't evil, anymore. That also means that he isn't as powerful as he used to be because... that's kind of the rule when a bad guy becomes a good guy. What works is having a god of mischief USE that chaos and cleverness to do more than just be evil. And even in doing good, Loki manages to do a lot of "evil" things. It's fascinating. It's great. I'm glad I reread it.I'm not really up to speed on what's going on with the current Thor comics and what version of Loki is running about but I'm pretty sure that Kid Loki isn't still around. I'm PRETTY sure 2023 Loki is older and probably not as altruistic as Kid Loki. This version of the character wasn't going to last because we all know Loki is a Thor villain and some time after this book came out, some writer definitely would want to do that classic Thor vs. Loki type of story. But I'm also betting that the current Loki isn't the Silver Age guy, either. Kid Loki helped make Loki an actual character rather than an archetype. When you combine that with the excellent Loki that showed up on the silver screen, you just know that Loki was never going back to being a one-note villain.This is where Loki's modern adventures truly begin and even though the Fear Itself tie-ins that comprise the bulk of this book have a higher bar of entry than you would like, this book is absolutely worth your time.We also get some fun extras! It's mostly variant covers to pretty much every included issue but we also have a one page synopsis of the original version of the character that appeared in 2010's Origins of Marvel Comics #1, a timeline of Asgardian events (beginning after that Final Ragnarok) from 2011's The Mighty Thor Saga, an interview with writer Kieron Gillen from Thor Spotlight, an interview with Kieron Gillen, Robert Rodi, and Roger Langridge from the Fear Itself Spotlight, a Character Profile page featuring the Fear Lords from Journey Into Mystery by Kieron Gillen: The Complete Collection vol 1, a bunch of pencilled pages by artist Doug Braithwaite, and a written description of the Fear Lords board game by Kieron Gillen.Kid Loki is one of those things that you have to enjoy for as long as you can because you know that time is fleeting. All the same, you also know that there's no going back to that original Loki mold. This is the start of something special and you should certainly give it a look.