Vote Loki #1 Review
Welcome dear readers to a new and interesting title from Christopher Hastings, the writer of Gwenpool, Vote Loki, a series that asks the simple question: What if Loki ran for president. A fairly straight forward and yet simultaneously absurd idea that offers a lot of potential storytelling possibilities. We open with a girl named Nisa Contreras witnessing her neighborhood get utterly destroyed as the Avengers once again do battle with the forces of evil. Years later, Nisa has become a reporter for the daily bugle and is seen exposing the wrong doings of a presidential candidate, and in doing so, turning people off from voting for the candidate, or indeed, voting in general. At a presidential debate later on, a team of Hydra terrorists attempt to assassinate the candidate but they’re stopped by, of all people, Loki, known super villain, brother to Thor, Asgardian god of mischief and guy who once had sex with horse (yes that really happened). Since he’s surrounded by press, Loki makes some statements for the camera, denouncing the candidates and how they pretend they’re not liars and criminals. Loki says that if he were president, he’d be upfront with the American people about the fact that he’s a liar, a criminal and a power hungry maniac.
Finding Loki’s honesty to be a breath of fresh air, it’s not long before the American people start taking Loki’s joking words seriously and begin calling for him to declare his candidacy for president. Loki makes appearances on TMZ, Saturday Night Live and even a talk show hosted by J. Jonah Jameson. During the latter, in an obvious satire of the Obama campaign, Loki’s American citizenship is called into question. Loki explains that the Gods of Asgard go through many births and rebirths and that Loki’s present incarnation happened to have been born in Maryland. However, during the Jameson show, Nisa calls in to inform Loki that he was the one who destroyed her neighborhood. In response, Loki teleports into her apartment and talks to her one on one. He says he is genuine in his intentions to run for president but is hoping that an interview from Nisa will help him connect with the American people. At first, Nisa has no interest, but Loki’s apparent sincerity and apparent indifference to whether or not her article is favorable or not ultimately convinces her.
The next day, Nisa visits Loki at her new campaign headquarters. Oh, yeah, Loki’s decided to run as a woman in order to win over the female demographic. She’s a God, she can do that. Nisa is actually a little offended by the idea. If the first woman president is also the first super-villain president as well, it won’t exactly reflect well on the female community. I see her point, I really do, but I promise you, after Ronald Regan, Loki would hardly be the first super-villain president, and given the way the 2016 ballot is shaping up, I doubt she’d be the last either.
Later, in Nisa’s apartment, she’s on the phone with her editor, having just turned in an extremely unfavorable article on Loki. The editor is about to run it, but he gets another call. We never learn who’s on the other line, but given that after he hangs up he seems to be in a sort of trance, we probably guess.
Nisa wakes up to find that her article was changed to one endorsing Loki’s campaign and Loki, once again appearing male, makes his official announcement on television. Nisa had been duped. It didn’t matter what she wrote, as Loki planned to change Nisa’s article anyway. All Loki wanted was to make it look like a skeptic and former victim of Loki’s had been won over. Pissed off beyond belief, Nisa storms out of her apartment only to find an angry Thor on her doorstep.
What Works: There are a few things that make me laugh in this comic and I appreciate the idea that’s been presented. I can’t help but be reminded of the episode of Pinky and the Brain in which Brain ran for president. I’ll go into that comparison in further detail later.
What Doesn’t: I’ll level with you guys, politics is an important thing to pay attention to, but it doesn’t always make for compelling storytelling. I like Loki as a character and I can appreciate the obvious satire of the current election campaign, but the premise itself, while interesting as a concept, isn’t as exciting as one may think. Going back to the Pink and the Brain comparison, in that episode, much of the humor was derived from the fact that Brain’s intentions were clearly malevolent and he made no attempt to hide that fact. Yet, against all odds, the American people were still won over by Brain. There are shades of that here with Loki, an obvious super villain trying to win over the American public because he believes he can do a better job than the other corrupt and dishonest candidates. However, Loki lies several times in this comic. While he’s honest about being a liar, it is the opinion of this writer that it could have been funnier if Loki proudly proclaimed malevolent intentions and ended up winning over the people anyway. Also, the artwork was less than impressive. The colors didn’t really pop and the characters never looked quite right to me. Overall: 2.5/5
I hesitate to say this comic is bad, because it really isn’t. It’s just not my cup of tea. One of Christopher Hastings’ strengths, as we’ve seen with Gwenpool, appears to be taking a silly looking premise and turning it into something incredible and engaging, and to an extent, that’s true of this book. I can really see someone enjoying this book, but for me, I just couldn’t get into it.