Meet The Team: Loki

kierongillen:

Oh Heaven, I wake with good intentions.
But the day it always lasts too long.

Loki is tricky.

To state the obvious.

Will you recognise me, in the flashing lights?
I try to keep my heart clean, but I can’t get it right.

Young Avengers follows a thirty-odd issue series I wrote for Marvel called Journey Into Mystery, which starred a reincarnated Loki. It was pretty successful, and taught me much that I’m trying to bring to bear on Young Avengers.

Despite the fact Loki is in both books, I don’t consider Young Avengers its sequel. I consider it another work in the shared universe that both works are embedded in. Journey Into Mystery left no room for a sequel. Journey Into Mystery was conceived as a novel. Young Avengers is conceived as a series.

Our first “season” of  Young Avengers comes to a conclusion that leaves it open for a second season.

There was never hope for a sequel to Journey Into Mystery.

I repeat: write your own happy ending.

Will you recognise me when I’m lying on my back?
Something gone inside me and I can’t get it back.

The ending of Journey Into Mystery is an open secret. Those who want to know will know. But, as I said, it’s a new series not a sequel. There’s no way I’m going to front load an explanation of the complicated knot of everything-in-my-head that was JIM.

It’s written assuming the reader primarily knows what’s on the page.

A new reader will see Loki and see someone who looks a lot like the villain in the third-biggest movie of all time and is famed for manipulating, lying and generally being a charming shit. They will be suspicious about his motivations, and understand why the cast are suspicious.

A reader of Journey Into Mystery will know the truth. They will be suspicious about his motivations, and understand why the cast are suspicious. But even more so. Possibly to screaming THERE IS A SERIAL KILLER IN YOUR HOUSE at the book, or the local equivalent.

Both should be wondering what the hell Loki is really up to, which is exactly how I want it.

Will you recognise me when I’m stealing from the poor?
You’re not going to like me. I’m nothing like before.

There’s various mysteries in Young Avengers, but Loki’s motivations and aims are one of the big ones. What does he want? What does he need? What’s the snake doing in the garden of Eden?

And the truth about what happened to Loki at the end of JIM will eventually explicitly work its way in, which will be a surprise to those who don’t like googling stuff and/or buying my older comics, and still a revelation to those who do. As always, there’s things people don’t know.  In time, we’ll tell everyone about Loki’s guilty little secret and what it actually means for the Young Avengers. And Loki. And everyone.

In short: he’s on the team. But is he on the team’s side? We’ll see.

It will be a fun time. No-one will cry. No-one will be upset. No-one will die unmourned and unloved.

Honest.

No, really.

Why do people always presume I’m lying?

Will you recognise me when I lose another friend?
Will you learn to leave me or give me one more try again?

Heaven by Emeli Sande was on JIM’s soundtrack and it’s the only one which moves onto Young Avengers. It believe it was added when I realised I’d be doing Young Avengers, and picking up there what I did with Loki and running with it to its next destination. It’s one of the tracks which came loaded with meaning and has only accumulated more as I’ve obsessed over it for hundreds of time. Of all the tracks on the playlist, it’s the one which sums up the heart of its character most precisely.

Oh Heaven, I wake with good intentions.
But the day it always lasts too long.
Then I’m gone.