For anyone who felt that Kenneth Branagh’s Thor left Loki far too ambiguous a character, even in spite of Tom Hiddleston’s great performance, Marvel Knights has committed Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers to DVD as an animated comic. Few Thor or Marvel plotlines have given Loki as much depth or raison d’etre as Blood Brothers did, and many consider it the bible that should be used when creating new incarnations of Loki. It’s a fair assessment of the material as it takes him from the sniveling puppet master caricature writers so often see him as and turns him into a fleshed out and tortured soul confronted with the liquidity of his own wants and desires in the face of finally achieving his ultimate goal: the conquering of Asgard. Nothing so exposes subconscious insecurities as getting exactly what you wanted only to find yourself dissatisfied with the outcome, and it’s exactly the situation given to Loki in Blood Brothers that lets authors Robert Rodi and Esad Ribic explore the deepest reaches of Loki’s psyche.
We don’t know how or exactly when it happened, but somehow Loki’s siege upon Asgard finally bore fruit and placed the son of Lauffey on the throne as Odin rests in isolation, Thor hangs bound in the dungeon, and everyone else in Asgard prepares for the reign of Loki. With the overthrow complete, Loki becomes distraught as he realizes that controlling Asgard can’t undo the torment he experienced at the hands of the other Asgardians when they knew he was an outsider living in their midst even as he constantly seeks to reaffirm the justification of his coup d’etat by blaming his position as Thor’s foil as a subversive effort by Odin to prop up the thunder god’s sense of duty by aligning him in fraternal opposition to a frost giant. Now, Loki sits atop his throne, battling those inner demons as the creditors of his revolution come calling; it turns out he didn’t usurp the throne alone, and now he must pay the piper, who in this case is Hela, the Asgardian goddess of death, who wants Thor’s execution as her reward. Can Loki kill Thor with so little ceremony? Just to pay a debt? With that question burning in his mind and conversations with Baldur eating away at his confidence, Loki’s pondering takes him to uncomfortable places he’d prefer not to go.
While Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers should be required viewing (or reading) for anyone attempting to write out a multi-dimensional trickster character, what truly impresses about this animated comic is the fluidity of the motion, the faithful adaptation of Ribic’s art as a moving medium, and the voice acting worthy of any major Shakespearean production. Next to the early animated film efforts of Marvel like The Invincible Iron Man, Blood Brothers makes the older efforts look miserable even though it isn’t full-scale animation. The animation used to create the rich environments and the motion carrying the story from one frame to the next helps Blood Brothers rival most animated features and makes it the smoothest entry in Marvel’s animated comic book line yet. The live-action Thor might be the big winner in terms of sales, but any viewer desiring a better understanding of the villain should pick this up alongside it without thinking twice.
If Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers represents any real indication of where animated comics are headed, it’s easy to understand how this medium might become a mainstay for comic book collectors. Although, it makes you wonder if the animated comic of Thor & Loki would even exist were it not for Ribic and Rodi’s love of the comic book’s original, physical form – and thus, if this trend really catches on, will we start seeing original motion comics that don’t have a paper-copy basis? If that happens, how long before paper-based comics die out altogether? The superb presentation here really comes as a mixed blessing.
DVD Bonus Features
It should embarrass many filmmakes that don’t even see fit to create an audio commentary for their feature-length films that a 72-minute animated comic has a fairly in-depth series of three production videos and an interview with Rodi and Ribic as they discuss their objectives in the exploration of Loki as more than just a trickster and foil to Thor. The trailer for the 4-episode comic rounds out the set.
"Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers" is on sale September 13, 2011 and is not rated. Animation, Comic Book, Drama. Directed by Joel Gibbs, Mark Cowart. Written by Robert Rodi. Starring David Blair, Daniel Thorn, Elizabeth Diennet.
