One of our favorite series at Marvel in the past few years was “Journey into Mystery.” We’ve gushed about the book many times before, describing it as “one of the best comics to come out of Marvel in at least a decade.” And recently, as the story of Loki continued out of the book and into “Young Avengers,” we chatted with Kieron Gillen about Loki and the long adventure that they’ve had together.
During that interview, though, Kieron spoke adamantly and passionately about Al Ewing, the writer who would be taking over the story of Loki in the new ongoing, “Loki, Agent of Asgard.” Written by Ewing and illustrated by Lee Garbett, it finds Loki as an agent of the All Mother, carrying out tasks that they set for him and continuing his journey of self-discovery as a borderline villain trying to sort of be a hero. Emphasis on sort of.
So, in honor of our love of Loki and the reinvention the character has seen in the past few years, we spoke with Al Ewing about his new series. Read on as we discuss Loki, his battle of good against evil, Loki as an antagonist to the writer, and we even make time for Tom Hiddleston and Tumblr because of course we do.
And, as a note, spoilers for the final twist of the first issue are discussed. Be wary.
In my recent interview with Kieron, when talking about you taking over the Loki ship Kieron described you as an “incredibly developed action and philosophy and pop writer,” saying that “America has just woken up to (you).” So to start us off on a high note, since this interview is all about how excited (the royal) we are to read new comics by you, how do you feel about that comment?
Al Ewing: Very flattered, obviously, especially as it’s coming from one of my favourite writers in the business and someone I admire immensely on both a professional and a personal level. If Kieron thinks I’m up to scratch then I must be doing something right. Hopefully I can keep it up.
Since you and I have never talked before, I’d like to ask my favorite question: why comics?
AE: It’s the medium I’m most comfortable in, and by far the easiest to work in. I’m in love with the nuts and bolts and history of the artform. I love how easy it is to experiment and play with the form – in my own comics I always used to play with the staple in the middle, make that part of the scene. One of the disadvantages of working with a team is that it’s harder to work things like that out, but because all these separate brains are working on the same problem you do end up gaining more than you lose. So I like it for that reason, too, being absorbed into the gestalt and making something that’s better and more interesting than you could have made on your own.
What do you think it is in particular that you learned throughout all your 2000 AD work before arriving on the American comics scene at Marvel?
AE: Brevity, most likely. Cramming a lot into a small space. Working for 2000AD, you’ve got to cram an episode’s worth of incident – including cliffhangers and getting out of last week’s cliffhanger, and reminding the audience where they are – into five pages, six if you’re lucky. And something has to happen every week to drive the plot forward – you learn right away to cram your stories with incident. That’s a very useful discipline to master.
I know that everyone takes different roads into comics, but how have you found the transition of work, particularly in terms of process? Is there anything inherently different in terms of how you write or prepare?
AE: I’ve started working Marvel Style! It’s addictive – I’m almost forgotten how to work full script, which seems very slow and inorganic now. Doing the plot of the issue and having it come back to you in drawn form gives you much more control over the finished product – it’s almost like you’re adding an extra brain to that gestalt I mentioned earlier, the brain of your own future self. If I’m honest, I’ve always seen the plot as a loose guideline anyway – I’ll take a look at it at the scripting stage, to see what I was going to do, but if I’ve had a better idea in the meantime and it works with the finished art, I’ll just go with that instead.
Continued belowHow did you initially get in at Marvel? I can remember you writing some one-shots and then, boom, two ongoings!
AE: Well, from what I understand, it was after Lauren Sankovitch read Zombo, the ongoing strip I do for 2000AD with Henry Flint. On the strength of that, she emailed me about doing a couple of fill-in issues of Avengers Assemble to tie into the big Ultron crossover that was happening at the time. That was the first time I tried out Marvel Style, and I was working with Butch Guice, so it was the best introduction to the concept I could possibly have. He’d just take everything I suggested and do it 1000 times better than I ever could have thought of. That opening page, with the vistas of San Francisco? All him. As far as I remember I just wanted a splash of the city.
Anyway, people seemed to like those, and I guess people enjoyed what I’d been doing elsewhere, and here we are.
So given the character’s current high recognition factor, how are you feeling about taking over the Loki ship, as it were?
AE: I’m enjoying it! It’s swings and roundabouts to an extent – on the one hand, I love how passionate people get about the character and how excited people are. I did a signing a couple of days after the book dropped and it was incredible seeing all the love for Loki up close. The downside of that is that I’m bound to end up disappointing people who’ve got a particular OTP or headcanon, because I’ve got my own things I want to do. And eventually, I’m going to have to do some things that are going to cause anyone who loves Loki real pain. Some actions have consequences, and some consequences are brutal and tragic.
What did you find initially were the challenges of getting into the Loki mindset?
AE: Actually, it wasn’t that much of a challenge, to be honest. Loki’s voice, at least my particular voice for Loki, came very easily to me. I think the hardest thing is that he’s a very smart character who knows where all the pieces are going to fall, but he still needs to be fallible. That can be a hard balance to get right.
Was there anything you set up for yourself as a challenge in terms of what you wanted to do or make sure you cover with the character?
AE: A few things. They might be a bit spoiler-ish to go into here, though. One of them I can talk about is that I didn’t want to write ‘the Movie Loki’. Much as I adore Tom Hiddleston and his pitch-perfect performance of the character – there’s a reason Loki was the breakout hit of those films, and it wasn’t because people like gold hats – I’d rather allude to that voice than pastiche it. Marvel Universe Loki has to be his own thing. (Although we do have a running joke in Loki that he looks a lot like a famous celebrity. It’s Harry Styles.)
It’s probably the least popular question to ask, but in terms of what came before with the character, are you looking to build on that or move away from it? Or perhaps some kind of mix between the two?
AE: A mix between the two is probably the best way of putting it. So much was done with the character over the last five years or so that it’d be absolutely crazy to ignore that – there are threads, especially from Kieron’s work on Journey Into Mystery and Young Avengers, that have to be acknowledged and beg to be played with. On the other hand, I can’t stand on the shoulders of giants my whole life – part of this series is going to be about moving forward and taking Loki where I want him to be, which isn’t necessarily where anyone else would.
One of the interesting things I’ve seen you say about the series is that Loki will be bisexual and flip between genders, and that’s something you plan on exploring. Given that the current generation of readers is very aware about representation in comics, what led to the decision to work with this side of the character?
Continued belowAE: To put it in a soundbite – Loki is never just one thing.
He’s a trickster and a changer of shapes. He’s been old, young, male, female, evil, good – he’s seen life from all angles. That makes him a very mercurial, fluid personality, and that’s something we want to take a look at.
Now that the first issue is out and we can mention the twist of the first issue a bit, can you talk a bit about why it is that you wanted to bring back the Old Loki archetype?
AL: I can talk around it. I won’t tell you the whole truth. I guess part of it is giving people what they want – there are people who want that version of Loki back. I was joking in the pitch that if we got cancelled in the first six issues, the next Loki you saw probably would be Old Loki. So he’s quite a significant threat, really. And Loki does have a history of coming off worst against himself…
This very literal take on the conflict of identity certainly opens up some interesting angles and “trust” seems to already be a big theme. While the book may on the surface be an adventure series starring Loki on various missions, is it perhaps fair to say that there’s also a good amount of political intrigue/thriller that you want to work with here as well?
AL: There are plans within plans and schemes within schemes. Everyone has an ulterior motive. But we’re going to be moving quite fast by the time we get our legs underneath us, and some of those plans won’t survive contact with the larger reality of the Marvel Universe. It’s going to get messy, I’m afraid.
“Who you are” vs “who you want to be” is a question that has been following Loki since his rebirth, so are you hoping to add a definitive take on this, or is it more of a push to continue to push the character in new places?
AL: It’s both. Pushing the character forward is obviously something I’m very interesting in – I hope it’s not a spoiler to say I have no interest in ever going backwards on anything I write. I’m a child of the Wally West generation – when I was a kid, superhero comics were all about these gigantic 30,40-year soap operas drastically exploding and reinventing themselves. It was great! So if every superhero writer just wants to go back to how things were when they were kids, that’s my generation’s version – going back to the future. That said – we’re going to get to a stage, I think within the first year, when we can slow down and enjoy what we’ve got for a while. A period of relative stability. After I’ve smashed every single toy in a fit of nihilism, obviously.
I get the general impression here that Loki is the kind of character to even stay two steps ahead of whoever is writing his story, but have you found that to be the case? At least given how complex his games can be.
AL: Yes! There’ve been times when I’ve written stuff thinking “this will be very straightforward” and then I’ve gone back and looked at it and thought “well, NOW it’s obvious that what’s REALLY going on is…” I won’t tell you which bits, but there’s definitely an element of Loki being ahead of me. Which Loki, I won’t spoil.
And obviously, in a shared universe, you get things happening that affect you – if Thor’s transformed into a hamster for six months, that’ll affect any ideas I might have been germinating regarding Thor not being a hamster. But generally I can use these things to my advantage – I’d give you an example, but again, it’s a spoiler. Sorry.
One thing about the Loki book that I noticed is it very much continues the celebration of pop culture that Young Avengers did, with cheeky references to Wicked or slash fiction. Do you feel that, even though this is an age old character, that the modern aspects have become just as important to his identity?
Continued belowAL: I think so. It’s become part of his personality that he’s very in sync with the modern world in a way most Asgardians aren’t – partly that’s Kid Loki being a kid, and kids always being a little more au fait with technology and techno-culture than old fogeys. When I was growing up, the running joke was that nobody over sixteen knew how to program a video recorder. There were all sorts of class and social elements involved in that as well, from the British desire to self-deprecate to a particularly eighties-middle-class distrust of the new wave of video-based entertainment and technology in general – a strain of techno-conservatism that the Asgardians probably share. They’ve got their own magic Kirbytech, anyway. The Odin-Pong.
Based on your answers here, I’m actually kind of curious: who — or even what — is Loki to you? Loki’s come to mean different things (Hiddleston Loki, Classic Loki, JiM/YA Loki), but hearing your thoughts on him so far and what you’d like to do with the character interests me. Do you find him relatable, or is more of the anti-Al?
AL: He’s very relatable. In fact, I could probably be accused of Mary Sue-ing it. That’s the weird thing about people who say I’m writing it for Tumblr or whatever – I’m writing it entirely for me, it’s just that what I want syncs up with what a whole bunch of other Loki fans want. Not all of them, mind, and only up to a point – and that point is when I’m going to betray you all and do terrible, unforgivable things for the sake of the larger plan.
No hard feelings. It’s my nature.
“Loki: Agent of Asgard” #1 is in stores now. It’s great.
