Journey into Mystery #88

The Vengeance of Loki

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

Villains: Loki

Guest Appearances: none

So, What Happens?

Having been returned to Asgard after his encounter with Thor Loki spends his time spying on Thor’s earthbound activities and soon learns the secret of his dual identity.

Transforming himself into a snake he sneaks past Heimdall and down the rainbow bridge to Earth. Heading in disguise to Don Blake’s surgery he hypnotises Jane Foster and confronts Thor to announce that they will compete in Central Park in an hour.

Thor heads to the meeting place, secretly followed by the hypnotised Jane. On arrival Thor’s attempts to attack Loki are hampered by the arrival of the entranced Jane who loki menaces with a conjured tiger.

Thor is forced to battle it to save her and in the process loses his hammer for longer than the allotted 60 seconds. As soon as Thor becomes Dr Blake Loki traps the hammer in a magical cage and then flies off to commit mischief.

Loki amuses himself turning the city into candy, messing with a soviet nuclear test and causing the weapons of the soldiers sent to face him to fly off into the air. His fun is only stopped by the newspaper headlines telling him that Thor plans to stop him. Loki immediately goes to check on the hammer in its magical box but when he gets there he is faced by Thor with his hammer despite the continuing presence of the magical box.

Unable to belief his eyes Loki dispels the box to check what had happened only for Don Blake to dive out and grab the hammer.

Thor had in fact been a model decoy.

Loki tries his best to escape in the form of a pigeon but Thor soon works out which bird is his transformed foe and traps him in a tennis net long enough to bring him back to Asgard.

So is it any good?:

It was fun, it is extremely similar to the first Loki story, both involve battles in the park, the threat of released wild animals, Loki escaping in a flock of pigeons and Loki transforming passersby into 2d images.

I didn’t really mind this, both issues have a good take on Loki. Depicting him as just delighting in creating trouble wherever he goes. His spoiling of a soviet nuclear test just for the fun of it stood out in this issue.

I guess the whole plot of both issues really just stemmed from someone reading somewhere that Loki was the god of mischief and not looking far beyond the name. There doesn’t seem to be a really evil side to him in these issues, sure he wants to defeat Thor and his tricks are all fairly destructive but as cunning as he is he isn’t really the evil mastermind of later appearances.

Asgard is slowly getting fleshed out with Heimdal on Bifrost and Odin ordering Loki to stay in Asgard, both of them easily bypassed when Loki puts his mind to it.

I really liked the scenes of Loki in Asgard, the spells he has to cast to watch Thor on Earth and the fake penitence he has to show to Odin. I also liked the way he used Jane Foster to get at Thor. Foster hasn’t really been developed very much yet, she really is only there to provide villains with an opening and to put down Blake in comparison with Thor. It isn’t really surprising that when the title hit its stride it was by concentrating on the Asgardian and moving past the clichéd love triangle of Blake, Thor and Foster.

The art is far better here than on the last few issues despite coming from the same team. Kirby seems to delight in drawing Loki and imbues him with a really gleeful body language. It also provides him with the opportunity to go a little nuts and draw whatever strikes his fancy.

It’s not the deepest story and it doesn’t have the operatic feel of the best Thor stories but it is a lot more fun than the Zarrko and Russian stories that preceded it and joins Loki’s first appearance amongst the best stories in the title so far.

Are there any goofy moments?

Thor’s, or rather Don Blake’s, use of a Thor dummy that is so convincing Loki has to check on the whereabouts of the hammer is pretty dumb.

Admittedly they had written themselves into a corner where Loki had pretty much won the day and had to do something but like some of the moves used against Zarrko last issue it is both really dopey and comes across as a bit of cheap trick on the readers.

Trivia:

Having Loki in Asgard watching Thor’s earthbound exploits would become quite familiar but here we see it for the first time and by having him watching and learning from the events of the previous issue it introduces the first issue to issue continuity we have seen in the title.

Each story is still fairly discrete but it does introduce the idea that the non-feature characters continue to have lives behind the scenes in the stories that they don’t appear in and that events in one story could have fall out in another. This has already been true to a certain extent in the Fantastic Four in the run of issues from 3 to 5 but it is new for this title.

Is it a landmark?:

No.

Where can I read it?:

The first Thor Essentials and Masterworks and Omnibus volumes.