ASGARDIANS

The mischief-making trickster gets at least a partial makeover in this set of exploits from the reigning maven of Greek, and now Norse, mythology in graphic format.

Sometimes resembling in the art a sullen teenager and other times a dead ringer for DC Comics’ Joker, Loki is cast as an untrustworthy outsider admitted to the company of the Aesir by Odin’s will but never trusted or respected. Still, he generally comes out looking better than the sneering Thor and other unscrupulous, light-skinned Asgardians who repeatedly pressure him to expedite various schemes and then unjustly blame him when they go wrong. He reluctantly helps his fellow gods cheat a hired builder, is tricked into helping to leash the giant wolf Fenrir (who’s actually his own offspring), and provides epic entertainment at a wedding feast with a bawdy tug of war in which he ties one end of the rope to his unnamed and unseen but hilariously unmistakable privates. But soon enough, Loki’s instrumental role in the god Baldr’s tragic death signals a definitive turn to the dark side. Though O’Connor slyly skips mention of that tug of war in his copious endnotes, he does expound with typical sagacity on motifs and mythological figures elsewhere in the stories, as well as noting sources, textual variants, and continuing themes that will carry over into his fourth and final planned volume in the series.

A semi-sympathetic portrait of a god too clever for his own good.