heyjaycee's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
All Billy Kaplan—AKA Wiccan, son of Scarlet Witch and reality warping wizard—wants is to make his boyfriend happy. His boyfriend—Teddy AKA Hulkling, fugitive Skrull prince—just misses his mother, killed in front of him not long before. So Billy seeks out an alternate dimension where he finds Teddy's mother in the moments before her death, and pulls her out.
Unfortunately for everyone, it's not really Teddy's mother. She is, in fact, an alien parasite who can possess adults and turn them against teenagers like Billy and Teddy—even the Avengers themselves.
Loki, of course, knew something like this would happen. So he's getting a team together—for purely altruistic purposes, of course. (That's a lie. This is Loki we're talking about. And not just any Loki. This is all-new, all-magical Loki, with lots more secrets, though still stuck in the body of a kid.)
And therein—therein those parentheses, of course—lies the key to Loki's character in this arc. Spoilertime! This Loki? He's more than a liesmith—he's a lie himself. Having destroyed the mind and personality of the Loki that Thor brought back to life after Ragnarok and overtaken his young body, this is the Loki of old: subtle, capable of using magic, and thoroughly evil. Or... not?
Instead of catapulting us right back to where we were before Journey Into Mystery, Gillen gives us a Loki that's haunted by his crime and adulterated by the personality of the Loki he killed. Yes, this Loki is older, cannier, more malevolent—but there's a fragment of innocence in him, corrupting him in interesting ways.
This is a re-read for me, but is richer and deeper with the context I was missing from the entire JiM arc. I love this series, and can't wait to read it all again and appreciate it even more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gaslighting, and Emotional abuse
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