The latest Marvel Cinematic Universe series on Disney+ stars the dastardly half-brother of the Mighty Thor. Tom Hiddleston has definitely put his mark on the character, but Loki has a very long and storied history in the comics as well. He was the villain who prompted the formation of the Avengers, has had his long fingernails in the creation of numerous other nefarious menaces, and swapped bodies more than a handful of times.
Here are the essential Marvel comics you need to catch up on before LokiLoki premieres on June 9. Read them all via the Marvel Unlimited app.
Trapped By Loki
We should start at the very beginning. In Journey Into Mystery issue 85, just two issues after Thor made his debut, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby presented the first appearance of his half-brother and arch-foe. Loki starts out imprisoned in a tree by Odin until an accidental tear from Heimdall sets him free to wreak havoc on Earth. We get a lot of great character moments right off the bat—Loki transforms civilians into photo negatives to get Thor’s attention, and then hypnotizes him with flashing lights instead of fighting him directly. At the end of the day, good triumphs over evil and Thor literally throws Loki all the way back to Asgard.
Fantastic Four #350-#354
Walt Simonson’s early 90s run on Fantastic Four was a madcap journey through some of the team’s greatest foes and situations, and his take on time travel was a wild one. When Dr. Doom challenges Reed Richards to one last battle in between the seconds, they rocket through the history of the universe until coming to the attention of the Time Variance Authority, a massive bureaucracy that ensures the stability of the multiverse. This group may seem familiar, as they’re the people conscripting Loki on his mission in the series.
Tales Of Asgard
The back-up stories in the span of Journey Into Mystery issues #115 – #129 let Jack Kirby really go off on his own high fantasy riffing. These stories take place in the olden times, before Thor came to Midgard, and show the uneasy relationship between the two sons of Odin as they journey forth on a grand adventure. Unfortunately for the flaxen-haired god of thunder, Loki is always scheming behind the scenes to bring ruin and calamity. These are totally unique tales, very different from anything else happening in the Marvel Universe at the time, with a sort of Prince Valiant flair courtesy of Vince Colletta’s fine-lined inks.
Journey Into Mystery: Fear Itself
While shapeshifting has always been one of Loki’s core abilities, his reincarnation into a younger body in 2011 was a whole new story. After dying a heroic death saving Asgard from the Void, the trickster god was given the opportunity to re-invent himself anew. The new Loki still wants to disrupt the grand order of things, but he’s motivated less by jealousy and revenge and more by a desire to see the old ways fall. With Thor as a big brother figure, this series was one of the key moments in making the character more complex and nuanced.
Vote Loki
Although many of his misdeeds focus on Asgard, the 2016 Vote Loki miniseries showed him setting his sights on a different kingdom: the White House. Running for president seems like a strange choice for the God of Lies, but it gave him the opportunity to skewer the image-obsessed culture we live in and pivot to a more contemporary incarnation. We’d expect to see a lot of this particular take on the character in the Disney+ series.
X-Men: The Asgardian Wars
One of Chris Claremont’s best traits was his willingness to reach outside of the sandbox for the X-Men and confront them with threats from other Marvel franchises. In this miniseries, the mutants pair with Alpha Flight to investigate a mysterious mountain that is granting miracles to any who visit it. Of course, since this is a Loki joint, those wonders come at a terrible cost, and our heroes must face off with each other over whether to accept his gift. It’s a solidly plotted story that helped expand Loki beyond a pure evil trickster and into something more nuanced.
Loki: Agent of Asgard
Al Ewing has become one of Marvel’s most dependable writers, and this early effort from 2014 showed how great he is at finding new angles on storylines. Kid Loki has become a young man, with this reinvention letting him grapple with his legacy of lies while trying to become better, or at least different. Tasked by the All-Mother to retrieve Asgardian relics, this story introduced Verity Willis, a mortal with the ability to see through any lie, as a perfect foil to Loki.
Loki’s Dream
Published in a 1994 one-shot called Tales to Astonish, this Peter David-penned tale is a standalone story that takes Hank Pym and the Wasp to Oslo, where they encounter a Norwegian serial killer who becomes empowered by Loki to serve as his vessel on Earth. The power overwhelms the man’s identity and he becomes obsessed with bringing about Ragnarok, and only our heroes and the Hulk can stop him. While the true Loki is mostly a behind-the-scenes player in this story, it’s the rare tale that really taps into the character’s Scandi roots.
Marvel Fanfare #34 – #37
Illustrated by the inimitable Charles Vess, this might be the most visually lush Loki story on the list. The tale is ostensibly one of the Warriors Three—Fandral the Dashing, Hogun the Grim, and Volstagg the Voluminous, Asgard’s finest heroes in Thor’s absence. Summoned to aid a bridegroom turned into a goat by wicked magic, the Three are dispatched on individual shaggy dog adventures courtesy of Loki, who is behind everything (as always). It’s a gorgeously drawn story that’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Young Avengers
Loki has never been much of a team player, but this series from Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie was probably the high point of the “Kid Loki” era. The plot of the book’s first arc puts our young god on the opposite side of the fence as normal. When a reality warp by Billy Kaplan brings a malevolent entity that takes over parents, Loki is the only one who knows what’s at stake and works to stop it. But are his motives really what they seem? Great interplay with the book’s other leads shows why this made the character a fan favorite for the 2010s, 50 years after he was first introduced.
