'the heart' from 'the anatomy of the human body' by govard bidloo + gerard de lairesse, 1685 in the art of medicine: over 2000 years of images and imagination - julie anderson, emm barnes + emma shackleton (2011)
sorry I'm way too loki pilled right now to think of Les mis other than the occasional ami or egg valjean ............ Unfortunately becoming an even BIGGER nerd
Loki: Agent of Asgard is one of the best comics I've ever read and you'll never guess who fucking ruined it
Companion piece to my last ramble because I learned this while writing it. Once again, this is long and pointless and a waste of your time.
Comic books are slaves to the status quo. Everyone knows this. Even people who don't read comic books knows this. No matter how much writers try to move on from tired played out tropes and revitalise characters we're always one massive cross over event away from sending everyone back to square one. There was a period of time where Lex Luthor was the Vegeta to Superman's Goku, fighting side by side with him even though they still loathed each other. Even recently, Lex Luthor went through a whole amnesia thing and became a legitimately good person and ally to Superman. But these don't last. Superman's arch enemy is Lex Luthor, and if we're going to have a Superman comic we need to have him fight Lex Luthor.
So when Loki died and was reincarnated as a child, taken back to Asgard to be Thor's sweet little brother everyone was waiting for when this kid will become evil again. All of us, including Loki himself.
And it ends exactly how expected. The Old Loki hatched a grand plan to cheat death and return as the loved child, unburdened by his crimes.
Save one.
Overwhelmed with the guilt of what he's done Loki spirals into more tragic irony. Despite being the best example of how he can never change Loki resolves to try to change. To be a force for good and be loved by the people of Asgard for who he is. And to better shake off the baggage of his past crimes he makes a deal with the All-Mothers, he will do their dirty work and for each task one of his crimes will be stricken from the record. In his own words, he will be remembered for what he is rather than what he was.
Would you know more?
That's our synopsis, that's what Loki: Agent of Asgard is about, but that's not what it's really about.
Loki: Agent of Asgard is story about the status quo, and why it is the status quo. It's about what redemption looks like when no one wants you to be redeemed. It's a story about fighting against the story already written for you. It's a story about stories, and it's fucking phenomenal.
I'm going to skip over the whole comic and spoil the ending, if you haven't I highly suggest you read it, you don't need to know about the history of Marvel Comics and there's only one or two weird cross over moments.
At the end of the first issue the villain is revealed, Loki from the future. Evil again. From the start Loki's mission is marked as doomed. Even worse, it is doomed by the All-Mothers. The Evil Loki promises them a golden future for Asgard, with a worthy king Thor on the throne and an evil Loki for him to fight. He promises them the certainty of the status quo. He does this because he wishes to make his younger self into him earlier, to not waste all that time playing hero and get to what they're supposed to be quicker.
And why? Because even though Loki did everything right, even though Loki truly became the great hero he wanted to be. He was still, and always would be The God of Lies. They would never really forget what he is, never accept him as anything else. He would always be the villain, the arch enemy to the super hero Thor.
But just as the first issue revealed the villain it also reveals how this all ends. It ends with Magic, and Magic as Loki defines it is telling a lie and making it truth, telling a Story to the universe so utterly, cosmically perfect that it becomes true.
Loki actually, finally, really changes. He sheds the mantle of God of Lies and becomes the God of Stories. And he does so by telling a story so wonderful over the course of 17 Issues that the idea of retconning it, casting it aside, returning to the old status quo feels wrong to do.
It's a wonderful story, but what makes it my favourite is the ending. With all said and done all good stories need to end with the hero confronting the villain, right?
And so our big reveal. The old and evil future Loki was still the same Loki who genuinely did everything right and became a hero deep down. All the theatrics, all of the super villainy, was a literal mask to hide away a deeply hurt boy now aware that no matter what he did he would never be accepted by the people he wanted to be loved by.
He went back in time and tore down everything that made him into what he was, and in the process gave Loki the chance to actually change for real. There's no final battle between the twin Lokis, there's only a moment of self care. Loki embraces his "Evil Self" and tells him that it's okay. He understands.
It's beautiful, it's one of my favourite endings in anything and JASON AARON TOOK A BIG SHIT ALL OVER IT GOD DAMN IT.
How you might ask? WOULD YOU KNOW MORE?
By just, bringing Evil King Loki back. As an Evil King. Completely shredded of anything that happened in the ending.
And even fucking worse, now he's got a Symbiote, and it's tied to that dog shit villain "Knull" everything has been pushing so hard.
And even fucking worse? Jason Aaron also brings back Gorr the God Butcher, who totally beats up Evil King Loki because he's so cool and awesome do you like the villain I made up yet do you like the villain I made up yet do you like the villain I made up yet shut up Jason I don't CARE.
And then he dies, with the narrator spitting out the key words from Agent of Asgard like "burning" and "stories" as if it makes it all make sense now in the wider context even though if you know the wider context it makes it all make even less sense because the point of Loki becoming the god of Stories was that a Lie is a Story and he's still the god of lies so he would still be powering the sun with lies and GOD DAMN IT.
9 signatures, found on a damaged document in the backroom of the Cafe Musain. The core members of a group which almost became historic, known as Les Amis de L’ABC…
A calligraphy project I did, mostly as an exercise in different styles of handwriting and attempting to design distinct signatures! I had a ton of fun with it and there are a few more that couldn’t fit in this post so those will be up shortly.
baratheonpilled
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
prguitarman
gracieabrams
theartofmadeline
