Journey into Mystery #85

Trapped by Loki the God of Mischief!

By Stan Lee with Larry Leiber, Jack Kirby and Dick Ayers

Villains: Loki

Guest Appearances: none

So, What Happens?

In Asgard Loki has been imprisoned inside a tree for centuries, and will be until someone sheds a tear over him.

He eventually manages to gain a level of control over the tree and causes one of its leaves to float off and hit Heimdall in the eye. The resulting tear is enough to break the spell and free Loki. He instantly decides to get his revenge on Thor but can’t find him anywhere in Asgard and heads down the rainbow bridge to Earth to find him.

On Earth Loki sets a trap for Thor, turning some passersby into negative images of themselves. Thor arrives to put things right with a quick twist of his hammer. Loki announces his presence and demands vengeance for being trapped in the tree.

However Thor has no memories of Asgard at all and doesn’t know what he is on about. Loki quickly manages to hypnotise Thor but can’t get him to give up his hammer. Eventually Loki hits upon the idea of creating a magical double of Thor and the real god happily hands his hammer over to his duplicate.

He sends Thor off to open some zoo cages to cause more mischief. Unfortunately once he has been away from his hammer for sixty seconds Thor becomes Dr Blake and is free of Loki’s hypnosis.

Blake quickly returns and retrieves his hammer, and with it the power of Thor. Loki flees, managing to keep ahead of Thor until he is eventually downed from the sky by a tossed length of piping and knocked into the sea.

Thor knows that Loki cannot cast spells whilst wet and keeps him from drying himself while he brings him to the top of the Empire State Building. Attaching the still dripping Loki to his hammer he tosses it into the sky, delivering Loki back to Asgard. The hammer returns just in time, a few seconds longer and Don Blake would have been stood on top of the sky scraper waiting for the deadly hammer.

So is it any good?:

After two issues focusing on commies and aliens it introduces the rest of the Norse gods to the title. Loki is immediately interesting, of the antagonists who predate him probably only Doom and Namor in Fantastic Four had anything like his level of personality.

Kirby has him leaping around clearly having huge amounts of fun with the possibilities for mischief in the modern world. He turns people into negatives, tosses people onto train tracks, tries to free dangerous animals from cages and flies through the air on the backs of pigeons.

His body language is also great, loads of exaggerated poses like a pantomime villain. He is lithe and sneaky and it comes through in the artwork. I particularly liked his outfit when he dressed in modern clothes, a dapper man who charms everyone he comes into contact with despite the evil in his eyes.

Thor seems slightly boring by comparison, constantly chasing after Loki, trying not to be put off by his latest diversion and the other Asgardians who are introduced don’t really do very much but Loki works right from the start.

He is perhaps a little less verbal and a little less evil than he would become, Stan obviously couldn’t have him coming up with multi-issue plots or anything just yet but I do like just how inventively mischievous he is. It’s not the way later writers went with him of course but it has its grounding in Norse myths all the same.

I think a large part of the different characterisation of Loki actually comes from the fact that Thor still isn’t really Thor. He doesn’t know about all the Asgardian things Loki references, to the extent that it comes as quite a surprise at the end when he can throw his hammer to take Loki back to Asgard, with Thor having to wait on earth and hope he doesn’t transform back into Blake while the hammer is away.

Of course the hammer has any number of plot resolving features, but in this story it is clearly still Don Blake’s mind in control with only the level of awareness of Asgard that Blake could gain from books. It makes the initial encounter between Thor and Loki when Loki is amazed Thor can’t remember him a bit odd.

A fun issue for the villain and some nicely inventive clashes with Thor and for the way it shows us a concept in its embryonic form. Stan seemed to see that the other Asgardians could add interest to the strip but doesn’t quite know how to square them with Thor being Blake’s alter ego.

Are there any goofy moments?

A fast rotation of Mjolnir produces anti-matter particles which can undo magical transformations.

Fickle Jane Foster gets an instant crush on Loki due to his lovely name and dashing, romantic nature.

Trivia:

Loki is shown to have been trapped in a tree for centuries prior to this story. He also comments that Thor hasn’t been in Asgard for a long period of time. I’m not sure how strictly these ideas have been stuck to over the years, Thor’s relationship with Asgard was really up in the air in the early stories, in this one Thor clearly doesn’t actually remember anything about Loki beyond the name which he remembers only from Don Blake’s reading of legends.

Is it a landmark?:

Yes, Loki is a major villain but more importantly it introduces the whole Asgardian mythos to the Marvel Universe.

Where can I read it?:

The first Thor Essentials and Masterworks and Omnibus volumes.