X Never Marks the Spot

Series' end. And.

SPOILERS (do not read unless you've read it. I mean it, really, it's better not knowing...)

But I would just like to say, to everyone I got into this series...

( I say again, spoooooilers )

(In non-spoilery news, this issue also included a letter from Tom Hiddleston to Kieron Gillen, waah!:

Dear Kieron,
You and I see Loki the same way. He's one dark, anarchic, bottomless black hole of rage, hatred, pity and pain. An exiled outcast, a lost & lonely agent of chaos, who wouldn't know what to do with familial forgiveness if it walked up to him in the street and slapped him in the face. I've had as much fun playing him as you've clearly had writing him. I know your run of JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY has been so hugely popular. What an enormous honour to share Loki's legacy with you. Here's to bringing Norse back!
--Tom Hiddleston

ETA: A follow-up thought from gnine...

Spoilery spoilers for part 3 of Everything Burns.

( re: Ikol )

Previously, the events leading up to kid!Loki's reincarnation. And now, part 2, kid!Loki in the Thor comics.

For those interested in Journey into Mystery (kid!Loki's primary series), this part is entirely scans and story from Thor and The Mighty Thor comics up until about now (Mighty Thor 12), with no major JiM spoilers - most of these issues take place prior to JiM, after which the series run parallel to one another and only tangentially overlap. Loki is only a side character in the Thor comics, and Thor!kid!Loki tends more towards the crazily/tragically adorable kid-sidekick side of the spectrum, less complex than his semi-anti-hero JiM self. I decidedly prefer JiM - both for Loki and for the stories themselves; the Thor comics are just random - but there is an awful lot of cute here.

More scans than last time; I couldn't help myself.

( Everything Old Is Loki Again )

So I saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World when it was in the theater last year, and thought it generally fantastic (this might make more sense if you know that I consider Shaolin Soccer to be one of the greatest things every put on film. No srsly. Cinema exists to be so awesome.) My brother loved it even more and soon after picked up the comics; I just got around to reading them, and found them a surreal blast, if perhaps not the transcendental comic experience some of the reviews on the back would have you believe. And the movie is by and large a good adaptation; it managed a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have thought it possible to convey in the changed medium.

What the heck was up with the casting, though? Most of it was fine, from what I recall, but Michael Cera as Scott - what, did they think because he was the right age and has about the right hair color, that was enough? You don't even need to read the comics to know this was a bad choice. I mean, nothing against Michael Cera, I'm sure he's a perfectly nice guy, but just looking at the cover of the first volume tells you enough about Scott's character to know how ridiculously unsuited he was for the role. Scott is 90% completely undeserved confidence and 10% awkward squish, and the movie reverses that ratio for no good reason except they wanted a name-ish actor. Canada has to have at least one guy who could've pulled it off...!

...Also Gideon was totally supposed to be hawt, dangit.

But the awesome of Wallace Wells was maintained, so I guess that makes up for everything else. XP