Welcome to Comics Wiki Adventures, a weekly deep dive into just how unhinged comics can be. I will randomly select a character from comics and read their wiki each week.

I will then take only the choicest bits and serve them to you, over easy. What does that mean? I don’t know.

Anyway, today’s randomly generated character is: 

Loki

Speaking, as I am qualified to do, for all creatives, the thing we hate more than anything is creating. It sucks, and ideas are hard. Make new thing cause brain hurt.

So it is no surprise that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby threw up their hands in the early sixties and declared, in comics form, “I don’t know, let’s just do the Norse gods, I guess.” And thus, Thor was born! Then just a few issues later, so too was Loki. 

Well, not born, more copy-pasted.

Anyway, let’s dive in and see what we can dredge up.

Twee Loki Bobblehead says, “I’m pubwic-domain!”

A Fixture in Marvel Comics for Nearly Eighty Years.

Loki is a shapeshifter known to change into fish, insects, and a female horse. I am sure you are wondering, “Why does the horse get a gender while the rest don’t?” But I promise there is no particular reason. 

…

Ok, fine. He got pregnant in mare form and had a horse son with eight legs, all due to a scam he was running to avoid paying for a wall. The upside is that eight is the best number of legs for a horse, and if you don’t believe me, try riding on a seven-legged spider. There’s no way it will work. Plus, hey…free wall.

Hold on, that wasn’t just in the comics. That’s mythological Loki. They probably did it in the comics too though, honestly. They took pretty much every other Loki story. So let’s leave “real” Loki behind. Is there anything as strange that comes solely from the comics?

Well, there’s his weakness. In Loki’s first appearance, Thor clips him with his hammer while trying to escape on a Pegasus, and he falls into a river. This moistens him (What? It does! He’s moist from that point on, and Thor did it to him), and as a side effect, he can’t use his magic. Seeing as this was the Hudson, one wonders if the true anti-magic might be hepatitis. 

Regardless, it never happens again. So either Thor is saving the move for a rainy day (sorry), or Loki got his shots after that.

Oh, or there’s when Loki went back in time and turned Odin’s dad Bor to snow while Odin just stood by and watched it happen. What was the plan there? It’s impossible to say unless you’ve read the comic, which I will never do. But it did make Odin feel bad about not helping, which Loki ruthlessly exploited by haunting him for years disguised as Bor.

Which he then used to get Odin to adopt Loki in the first place. Which means Loki is a self-propagating time loop. Figuratively he is his own grandpa.

This comes up when you search Unsplash for time travel. Not really Loki related but how could I not share that with you?

Comics: Where Novelty Songs From the Fourties Find Their Truest Expressions.

But of course, there is no one more important to Loki in the comics than Thor. He makes countless attempts to kill his brother in many convoluted ways. There are too many to list in total, but let’s close out with a quick top five:

1. Loki is trapped in Asgard, so he boosts the telepathic powers of a carnival magician. Under Loki’s influence, the guy eventually drops the entire United Nations building on Thor. It doesn’t work, but you must admit it’s a solid attempt.
2. Loki distracts Thor when he’s calling his hammer back, and it smacks him in the head, making him evil. I know this is not how traumatic brain injury or evil works in humans, but do recall these are aliens. Odin later smacks Thor in the head again, and he’s fine. So this one can’t be the top. But it does score well for sheer brilliant simplicity.
3. In this edition of “Who did Loki manipulate”, he convinces Thor’s existing enemy Zarrko the Tomorrow Man to travel back in time to get revenge. This succeeds so well that Thor spends years as Zarrko’s slave in the future. But then he returned at the moment he left, so the whole thing was pointless. I imagine it traumatized Thor pretty badly, though, so that’s at least a partial win. 
4. Turning himself into a snake, Loki hypnotizes Jane Foster. Having Thor’s girlfriend in his control should have opened up lots of possibilities. Instead, he told her to show up at the park later and challenged Thor to a fight. When she showed up, Loki turned a tree into a tiger. 
   1. I mean, what?
   2. If you go to all the trouble to skin change and hypnotize somebody, why not have her call Thor over and ambush him? Or have her poison him. Anything but this.
   3. It worked, and he got Thor’s hammer. So why isn’t this ranked higher?
      
      1. Thor wandered around sad a bit.
      2. Then he got the hammer back.
      3. Shouldn’t these be letters?
5. Loki manipulates the Hulk into wreaking havoc in a move that not only doesn’t succeed in killing Thor but also leads to the formation of the Avengers. Oops. Tricking the Hulk is easy and fun, but the long-term effects of this make it rate low.
   

So That is Loki!

Thanks for reading! If you liked this article, you might also like this previous entry on Plastic Man. Or if for some inexplicable reason, you want to check out something I didn’t write, you can check out this article on Eiyuden Chronicle! No real connection, but I did back it.

Let me know in the comments below what you think is the most public-domain character in comics and what character I should randomly select next!