World Enough and Time

I wrote this a couple of days ago.. and never posted it.

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A day of good news.

First, the news that France and New Zealand have legalized gay marriage. I'm tempted to say, "What took them so long?" but hey, that really is good news. Waking up to a new age of equality and justice.

Second, I saw the trailer for Thor: the Dark World and kind of got all excited over it. Especially the last few seconds featuring Loki.



I'm a little sorry to see Jane Foster back, but I suppose it was inevitable.

Third, I saw the preview of tomorrow's Young Avengers #4, in which Noh-Varr is awesome, Kate Bishop turns up, Loki makes sarky comments, and we get a few more Parents from Hell. I can hardly wait!

Fourth, I learned that the movie rights for Daredevil have reverted to Marvel. Is there hope in the future of a good Daredevil movie? Dare I hope? Now, I know, a few good movies under their belt doesn't mean all their movies in future are going to be great - I didn't much like Iron Man 2 - but they've had a few magnificent movies, and The Avengers trumps all. Other movie-makers just don't get it right.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 21: Current obsession

Hmm. How many obsessions can a fan have at once?

As usual, I have many Marvel obsessions... Many favourite comics and favourite characters because there are so many good ones out there. Daredevil and Magneto have been favourites for decades.

But now... just now... I'll say Loki. Thanks to Pasqual Ferry's lovely art and the revival of the character as a boy; thanks to good writing by Matt Fraction Kieron Gillen; thanks to the magnificent portrayal of Loki by Tom Hiddleston....

Yeah. My current obsession is Loki, Marvel's god of mischief.



[Fan art by ~kisago on deviantart]

I had a look at Wikipedia on Loki as a mythological figure, and was amused by the scholarly descriptions:

...Folke Ström... in 1956 concluded that Loki is a hypostasis of the god Odin. In 1959, Jan de Vries theorized that Loki is a typical example of a trickster figure. In 1961, by way of excluding all non-Scandinavian mythological parallels in her analysis, Anna Birgitta Rooth concluded that Loki was originally a spider. Anne Holtsmark, writing in 1962, concluded that no conclusion could be made about Loki.

Regarding scholarship on Loki, scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre comments (1964) that "more ink has been spilled on Loki than on any other figure in Norse myth. This, in itself, is enough to show how little scholars agree, and how far we are from understanding him."

...Stefanie von Schnurbein (2000) comments that "Loki, the outsider in the Northern Germanic pantheon, confounds not only his fellow deities and chronicler Snorri Sturluson [referring to the Prose Edda] but has occasioned as much quarrel among his interpreters. Hardly a monography, article, or encyclopedic entry does not begin with the reference to Loki as a staggeringly complex, confusing, and ambivalent figure who has been the catalyst of countless unresolved scholarly controversies and has elicited more problems than solutions".

Fertile ground for Marvel and for movies, I'd say.

30 Days of Marvel: Day 14: Favorite Marvel movie actor

There are so many good ones... But I think my choice has to be: Tom Hiddleston as Loki in Thor and The Avengers.