Journey Into Mystery #645 *Spoilers*

**KingofMadCows** · 11-09-2012, 06:42 PM

I get the feeling that Gillen played a few games of Dungeons and Dragons in the Planescape setting or maybe did a playthrough of Planescape: Torment and Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer before he wrote this story.

**wolfbird** · 11-09-2012, 08:36 PM

I do think Ikol saw all the goodies Kid Loki was experiencing and decided to come out and be part of the action.

I don't think Ikol had that much free will. And Kid Loki didn't really have much in the way of goodies. Everyone still hates him except for Thor and Hela, and they always loved him anyway.

I see it as more that the status quo was unstable, especially since Kid Loki had just found out the truth about Ikol being a delusion. Ikol had to be reabsorbed but Kid Loki was afraid, so he convinced himself through Ikol that he was getting obliterated as that was actually preferable to him than getting his memories back. Then the obliteration didn't happen as he expected so he damned himself and damned everyone for not killing him like he begged them too.

He's gone right out and said that Kid Loki is gone, utterly, and all we are left with is a Loki who will make his own fate.

Some people are just ignoring that in order to entertain their own fantasies.

What Gillen is saying does not make logical sense by his own canon.

It may be a bit tin-hatty to claim he's deliberately lying to us, but he also said Loki would be 13-14 years old in YA, so no matter what way you interpret it, he still lied to us.

And any writer who has to explain what happened in their own story because they failed to make the audience understand what they were reading is a very shitty writer. Gillen's too good for that.

and I don't think what we have now is parasitic story Ikol only... otherwise, why would he have said "change for me, not for you", as though it was old!Loki speaking?

Just because Ikol thinks he's older Loki or is acting like older Loki doesn't mean he actually is. Ikol is what Kid Loki imagines his older self to be. Wanting to change, but still an evil untrustworthy bastard who's stuck in his way.

I do regret that I won't be able to read Young Avengers. I just can't read about Loki right now. Loki killed Kid Loki and is wearing his face, kind of like a Buffyverse vampire. Kid Loki was the big draw (character-wise, at least) for me when it came to the new YA, and he doesn't exist anymore. While I'm sure a lot of people can't wait to find out what Loki is up to by bringing together a new group of young heroes, I am not, at least not for a good long while. Whether or not this new (old?) Loki is already evil or will be ambiguous for a while until Marvel has him go full-on villain again (because that's how Marvel rolls), I'd rather not see him pretend to be the character I cared about.

I'm yet to see anyone who thinks this is a good setup for YA. I've seen plenty of people who have been completely put off YA because of this, and not just JiM readers.

I question it from a marketing perspective.

I do anticipate that we'll get a few issues of Loki being mysteriously morally ambiguous before it's confirmed what his true intentions are.

**LorrieK** · 11-09-2012, 11:12 PM

Originally Posted by wolfbird

I'm yet to see anyone who thinks this is a good setup for YA. I've seen plenty of people who have been completely put off YA because of this, and not just JiM readers.

I question it from a marketing perspective.

I do anticipate that we'll get a few issues of Loki being mysteriously morally ambiguous before it's confirmed what his true intentions are.

I was so excited about YA, and then I read JIM #645.

JIM #645 felt like an ending. An incredibly depressing tear-jerker of an ending, but an ending. But it's not the end, because it's a Marvel comic and Loki and the other characters belong to Marvel. The larger story continues. And that's become a problem for me. I knew Loki was always going to be a villain again at some point (whether it was months or years down the line), because there is no real change allowed, just the illusion of change. I knew this before I read word one of Gillen's JIM. But it hit me harder than I thought it would, and I was left with no reason to want to read about Loki since the version of the character I loved is "dead" (if Gillen didn't want me to see the situation as that bleak, he should have written it differently, and his statements since certainly haven't eased my mind).

Bizarrely (as I loved Gillen's JIM and will never regret reading it, despite the ending), I think this might actually be the tipping point for me regarding finally giving up mainstream superhero comics altogether. After reading the last page of JIM, I realized that I hadn't felt that depressed by an end of a comic since I finished the last trade of Ex Machina. It quite suddenly hit me that if a comic is going to crush me emotionally (and I'm going to be crushed again, because I care about things too much), I'd much rather it be creator-owned so that change doesn't have to be merely illusionary and the end of the story is truly the end.

**vicvega** · 11-12-2012, 04:19 PM

I recently spent a week reading Kieron Gillen's entire run from start to finish and I must say I felt saddened by the ending but I also felt a sort of happiness that this had come to an end before it might get stale. This was a big experience for me and one of the few Marvel comics I consistently enjoyed. I can't wait to read Young Avengers.

**gwangung** · 11-12-2012, 05:03 PM

Originally Posted by vicvega

I recently spent a week reading Kieron Gillen's entire run from start to finish and I must say I felt saddened by the ending but I also felt a sort of happiness that this had come to an end before it might get stale. This was a big experience for me and one of the few Marvel comics I consistently enjoyed. I can't wait to read Young Avengers.

Heh.

From my end of things, JIM 645 was a sad story.

But it was a TRIUMPH for Kid Loki, because he learned and proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he could change and be good. And it was a tragedy for Loki.....