Journey into Mystery: Whose victory?

[salinea]

Another meta on tumblr I'm reblogging, about the ending of Journey into Mystery from a meta perspective:

So, I’m re reading this and that and trying to order my thoughts about what I think of the meta reading of JiM’s ending, and with Gillen’s own thoughts about it; and, well… I kind of hate it.

I didn’t hate JiM’s ending. It was shocking and powerful, and deeply tragic in a bone chilling way. Those visceral panels of Kid Loki claiming victory as he fucking swallow that magpie give me fucking goosebumps. I love that sense of utterly pyrrhic, bitterest victory. That kid Loki’s only reason to claim it here is that Old Loki lost, that he’s showing by his own actions as he destroys kid Loki that he can’t change, whereas kid Loki did, and was, for a while. And that now even if he did change, it would still be kid Loki’s victory, kid Loki’s effect. There’s a defiance, a stubbornness not to bow even as one gets twisted and wasted, and a fierce, desperate joy in being that sings to my very soul.

So it isn’t even that I didn’t like it, not even for Old Loki’s sake - whom I love and whom I could almost hate for it, for betraying himself when I could never hate him for betraying anyone else.

But when I read Kieron Gillen saying:

I’ve said before that, societally speaking, I’m part of a culture that enjoys telling stories about self-determination. If Journey Into Mystery was a film, some small part of you would presume that the reincarnated form of the wicked god would find a way to change his ways. But this is western mainstream company-owned comics, and when the wicked god is the antagonist in the third biggest film of all times, there’s a different sort of pressure. Not that anyone ever told me I had to. You just knew. We all knew. Generally speaking, bar the blessed innocents, people presumed he’ll fail. And the absolute dread of that looming on the horizon is one of the things which gave it power.

Of the book’s tricks, that it convinced people that Loki really could change probably is the foremost.

But he couldn’t.

I knew that if I ended the story with Kid Loki proved that he could change forever, it’d be beautiful. We’d cheer for that. I wish I could have left him running free over those green hills with Leah. But at some point down the line, someone would perform a heel turn. It could be a decade. It would more likely be weeks. At that point, the story’s point is inverted. 

Suddenly our hymn to triumphing against expectations because a cynical “Of course Kid Loki couldn’t change”. He was always going to turn evil. We’d have told a story that some people are just bad ‘uns.

I’d be damned if I was going to be any part of that story.

I hate it. And, mind, it is true. We all were expecting Kid Loki’s failure. We all were dreading it.

One of the main trick of the series actually rests on the meta-ness still. Because we knew that Young Avengers was coming with Kid Loki as part of the cast, for a while, we were optimistic about Journey into Mystery’s ending and actually looking forward not having the status quo reset as usual. At least not yet. And a little yet is all that comics fans have come to hope for.

And yes, I can see how accepting to go with that logic is the most cynical of story, and one which I would hate reading. (I hated reading it with X-Men, when the topic is even more complicated and ambiguous).

But basically by saying that Marvel comics, much like Old Loki, cannot change, could never change, because the writers or the editors or the audience or the movie producers won’t let it change - it is just as cynical. It’s an outlook about the shape of the industry, and about the capacity of stories - of good stories - to affect it, that is deeply pessimistic and fatalist.

Probably not wrongly cynical, but it is still a refusal to hope, a refusal to try, because it would be doomed to fail. It’s still bowing to fate, just setting the terms on one’s own.

If, Kieron Gillen had had faith in the story, in its power, then regardless of the eventual outcome; it would have stood for itself. For a while, yes, but for a while is all that any of us can ever hope for.

Instead he killed it, to use it for something else.

Old Loki lost, Kid Loki won, and Kieron Gillen lost too.

"There is happiness for those who accept their fate. There is glory for those who defy their fate."

Comments

[solesakuma]

I've been thinking a lot about what Gillen said and about the problem with continuity. The thing is, there are long running comics that dealt with that better - either going with the reset button of Asterix or actually having a loooong character arc - like Nippur de Lagash, which lasted 30 years, could've lasted more and yet... yet Nippur changed and grew -. Doctor Who has managed to deal with it as well - by keeping some elements even MORE stagnant than mainstream US comics (the Doctor is probably the least dynamic character in the history of everything and the companions are the ones saddled with pesky character development) and changing everything else.

But Marvel is in this... weird space in which nothing ever changes yet they're always saying it will. It's status quo with all the trappings of CHANGE!!! and in a way, they might do better - artistically - if they refrained from BIG STORYLINES for a while. Not every storyline can be EPIC. Death isn't cheap in comics because they come back or because they kill off the characters few people will miss - it's cheap because even Grey's Anatomy is less TONIGHT SOMEBODY DIES than them. It could be retirement and nothing would change and maybe it'd create some new, interesting stories if they stopped making everything EPIC.

[salinea]

I don't think comics being long running is why there's a problem (although it is a problem to some extent, in the sense that it means you have to deal with the passage in time in one way or another). I think it's a complicated effect of at the same time them being long running, them being a shared universe, them being the source of multiple adaptation which are much more popular than the source of the stories themselves; and of the ageing and shrinking market demographics. All of this combine to create a situation where the most popular state for characters to be in is unchanging and yet for change to happen and have lasting consequences. It's all very paradoxical and is why we have all the BIG STORYLINES that will CHANGE EVERYTHING until the status quo is reset in the few.... months or years depending.

And yet it's not actually true that there is no change in comics. Some changes really, really do not stick; but situations are evolving, sometimes in radical ways. Sometimes when I try to explain a specific title I have to say a lot of things about the setting at the time because the context was anything but unchanging. Some characters do shift on the morality axis in lasting ways. However they are long cycles that do reset things to a certain "basic place"; not entirely thought: Take X-Men, we are at the end of a cycle which brought a lot of differences:
Xavier was sidelined, Cyclops became much more hardlined in order for the mutants to survive. He ended up leading most mutants in general and offering amnesty to a lot of classical villains. Emma Frost has been a "good guy" for more than 10 to 15 years now. Magneto hasn't been an ennemy of the X-Men for almost 10 years. The X-Men set up in San Fracisco and built an independant nation there.
That's pretty different!
Now the cycle is resetting after that, but it's not a return to status quo either. The X-Men area back with a school in Westminster but asides from that Xavier is dead, Wolverine is apparently leading the X-Men, Cyclops and Emma are imprisoned and other X-Men are to be fugitives (not unheard of before but ^^) & so on.
Of course it's X-Men, it's always been one of the most continuity heavy franchise at Marvel. In contrast the Thor/Asgardian side of Marvel sees much more writers ignoring what had gone before, sometimes even what had gone pretty recently before.

So yeah, my point was: it depends, actually. The Marvel universe can be very elastic to change, with short or long timing; but sometimes it eats it up and accepts it. Even in Thor's franchise, Skurge stood at Gjallerbru and died, written in the mid 80's, and he's still dead because the scene was so awesome and epic that nobody wanted to unmake it by bringing him back.

The difficulty with Loki is that he's basically Thor's main villain. That's what makes lasting change with him so difficult to stick.
Impossible?

Magneto used to be the X-Men's main villain and Claremont tried to change that. The most influential X-Men writer, easily, and he couldn't make it stick. Even while he was still writing for it, they made him a villain again. But Claremont's change did stick to a certain amount, the character was seen in different ways, much more like an anti-villain at least; or even a tragic hero at times. Which made the stories in which they still had him be a big bad quite painful in a way; but you see him bouncing all over the place as a character as a result.
And right now in X-Men comics he's in a very grey, very ambiguous place, neither villain nor hero properly which is actually very interesting; and he's been there for a while actually!! How long? I don't know.
But I'm glad that Claremont tried to change it, even if it failed mostly, even if it resulted in some storylines that makes me want to rip my hair off. I wouldn't love the character so much otherwise. I'm glad they didn't have Joseph stick around as the "good Magneto" while having the "bad Magneto" around in the '90s either.

Gillen basically says: I can't make it stick so I won't try.

That's what annoys me. It's defeatist. Might as well give up writing for mainstream comics if that is so.

[solesakuma]

Disclaimer: I haven't quite slept in three days. I might make no sense.

Oh, yes. I was going to go on and on about Iron Man's comics and what has stuck and what hasn't - and the somewhat competing multiple status quos. I mean, Tony's alcoholism has stuck. But then you have stuff like Tony/Pepper and the multiple failed attempts to make them work. Or the fact that writers seem to think that 'TONY STARK IS POOR AND REBUILDING HIS COMPANY' is a fresh story when it's happened a few times already.

I think I meant more of the SWEEPING CHANGES TO THE WHOLE 'VERSE than the particular storylines.

(And I must admit that, for me, at least, the fact that certain things won't change and that bad writing choices can be taken back is appealing.)

Marvel comics have a better chance of being realistic in one particular way - real life has no character arcs and people keep struggling with the same things over and over again.

[salinea]

haha yeah I don't know Iron Man much but I see it is similar XD

i think sweeping changes to the whole verse can't ever totally stick. The verse has to be a reflection of the real world with various superhero tropes. Though they can make for fun eras.

I agree with you that bad writing retcon is appealing :D


Marvel comics have a better chance of being realistic in one particular way - real life has no character arcs and people keep struggling with the same things over and over again.
Haha true. And almost as frustrating as in real life XD

[solesakuma]

I mean, can you imagine dealing with some of the silly stuff that has happened over the years? XD

[genusshrike]

I kind of wish Gillen hadn't made that post. At least, not yet.

It doesn't bother me so much as a cynical thing – I've been reading so much fatalistic Norse-inspired fiction, lately, and it's all 'no-one can defy their fate; the most they can do is meet it well' (where 'well' means 'with great suffering and spite' but yeah) – I just wish I'd had longer to get together my own thoughts on what the story was about, before having the author's thoughts lain over that.

Or I suppose I could've just not read his comments. But if I lived in a world where I couldn't click on things, I wouldn't have read JIM yet because I would have waited patiently for my print copy /haha

Mostly I am thinking that Loki had now make a damned good shot at genuine change. If it gets undone, so be it – but I do want Gillen to make a proper go of it.