Loki: Agent of Asgard #1

Loki: Agent of Asgard #1 by Al Ewing and art by Lee Garbett

To give this review some context, this was one of the marvel NOW series I was really looking forward to that I didn’t get a chance to pick up. I decided to pick up a digital copy and see how it goes. I’m probably going to end up reading issue #2 even if I don’t like the first, because I am actually interested to see what’s going to happen with this new Teen Loki character. The title is a play on the old marvel spy titles (ie: Nick Fury, Agent of Sheild) so it seems cool to have this whole “magical spy” kind of feel, an interesting blend of genres.

We saw him receive a new sword in the Point One issue. And what’s the first thing we see him do with it on page one? Impale thor through the chest! Loki has decided to take assignments from the All Mother, a group of the three ruling women of Asgard (Gaea, Freyja, and Idunn). Loki actually makes a cool point about magic as he explains it, saying that it “takes a lie and makes it the truth.” very fitting of a trickster. We see him explain this as he magically runs up a building using his enchanted boots that he stole from some elves. On top of that, he also procured himself a vanishing coat to make himself invisible. In doing so he mocks other secret agents and their primitive gadgets. Man, I’m starting to feel the same way about Loki as I did about Doctor Who. In the new season, The Doctor has all these gadgets he never used before, like an invisibility watch and temporal explosives and ect.

Why does loki even need gadgets and stuff to get up a building anyway? I saw him use teleportation magic in Young Avengers, so why can’t he just do that?! Showoff! He just wants to run up a building to look cool and then turn invisible. We discover that he is running up Avengers Tower, but thor quickly detects him via his smell (I wonder what loki smells like?) and throws his hammer to knock the trickster off the wall. Hawkeye shoots a grappling arrow down to save him, and we are given an awesome flashback cover to Avengers #1 to show what his relationship is like with the team. They even make reference [in comic and in the recap] and justify how loki was called the God of Evil back then, he was doing much worse than minor mischief, which is a cool touch. Anyway, when Thor arrives, Loki brings up that his mission has to do with the clone thor from civil war (aka Ragnarok), to which Tony says “uhh...let’s not bring that up again.”

Loki explains that he is trying to make sure that Iron Man removed the DNA from his database, and escapes by using the hulk as a distraction. He runs down and deletes the old files of his older self from the database, continuing the theme of him trying to have a clean slate. He then runs behind Thor once the god catches up and stabs him through the back like on the first page (for some reason Thor has trouble using his hammer). The sword has the ability to reveal truth, and apparently Thor was unknowingly corrupted in his own God of Thunder series (which I really should read also). “To suffer at this blade is to suffer from all the truths you hide.” sounds very epic. Anyway, Loki extracts the corruptive magic, but gets chained up and thrown in jail anyway. Thor jokes with him and they make up since thor only attacked him due to being possessed...he also knows that Loki will escape, but recognizes that he can in fact do good things.

We learn that Loki made a deal with the All Mother in order to earn forgiveness from his crimes. However, they unleash the corruptive magic (The art doesn't really make it clear if the magic turns into loki or if it is in fact possessing the younger loki, but whatever) and out comes the original image of Loki, evil grin and all!

I thought this issue was alright, and pretty decent setup for a series. The writing is very cheeky and funny, with cultural references and snappy humor along with some interesting introspection into loki’s character and the world around him. I enjoyed it a bit, and there weren’t many flaws. The art was fairly well done, and the writing was solid, so for me it is a 7.5/10. I actually don’t like the cover, it’s pretty bland and does little else besides show off the costume and the sword, which is fine, but it could do a lot more to stand out (this even includes the variant cover). It’s a 1.5/5 for me. I admit the logo pops out quite nicely though and I want to read the next issue mostly to clear up the confusions of this issue.