Loki
Marvel heroes ready to rumble in grudge match T-shirts
Marvel history is filled with grudges, the kind that aren’t settled with harsh words and tough love over warm tea. Nope, they’re settled with fists — or sometimes claws, hammers or psychic blasts. WeLoveFine celebrates three of these ongoing rivalries with some new shirts featuring playbills for the brawl-to-end-all: Professor X vs. Magneto, Thor vs. Loki and Wolverine vs. Sabretooth.
I have it on good authority that they’re hoping to do more of them, so who would you like to see next? Spider-Man vs. Doctor Octopus? Captain America vs. The Red Skull? Howard the Duck vs. Dr. Bong? Share your ideas in the comments section.
Butcher Billy inserts some four-color magic back into superhero movies
We’ve featured the Brazilian artist Butcher Billy a couple of times in Art Barrage; he’s an illustrator whose work demonstrates a keen eye for modern culture and a wicked sense of humor. His latest portfolio of work, posted at the creative network Behance, is “The Superhero Media Crossover Project,” a collection of images inserting comic art into stills taken from their movie adaptations. It’s very effective, and strangely moving, for this fan of classic comic art, anyway. These images demonstrate what, to me, is missing in just about every comics-to-film adaptation — a little pop-art brightness and fizz (Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. The World being the only one in recent times to get a pass on this matter — am I really the only one who wants to see sound effects rather than just hearing them?). In Billy’s own words:
Loki is a big fan of Kieron Gillen’s Loki
Oh, sure, he may have enslaved Hawkeye and Dr. Selvig, wreaked havoc on Cleveland Stuttgart, Germany, and Cleveland New York City, and killed Agent Phil Coulson in Marvel’s The Avengers, but deep down Loki is a pretty swell guy. Er, god.
For proof you need look no further than this week’s Journey Into Mystery #645, which marks the departure of writer Kieron Gillen, whose take of “Kid Loki” has made the pint-size god of mischief beloved by Tumblr users the world over. Gillen’s final “Journey Into Stationery” letter page starts with a laudatory message from a certain Tom Hiddleston, who knows a thing or two about Loki:
Those high-school years were just as awkward for supervillains
Comic books have long cast a spotlight on the school lives, and all the associated trials and tribulations, of superheroes, from Spider-Man and the X-Men to Blue Beetle and Amethyst. But what about the supervillains? Judging from the series of yearbook portraits by Francesca J. Hause, they haven’t had it any easier than the heroes.
It turns out Green Gobin was a stoner (no surprise there), Bane was no stranger to wedgies, and Loki was an orthodontic headgear-wearing D&D player. Venom seemed to do OK, though. Check out those, plus a fashion-victim Two-Face, below.
Comic Couture | Marvel villains, Batcuffs and more
WeLoveFine.com recently held a contest where they asked artists to design shirts with a Marvel villains theme, and they’ve now posted the winners. The above shirt was the judge’s pick, chosen by Loki himself, Tom Hiddleston, and designed by Mariel Thompson. You can see the other winners at their site.
Comic Couture | A Game of Loki, frozen Cap and more
Artistic mash-ups are all the rage these days; if you like My Little Pony and you like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, then you’ll love Death as a My Little Pony. A lot of these mash-ups find their way to T-shirts, like the above Game of Heroes, available on the RIPT T-shirt site for the next 12 hours. If you like Game of Thrones and you liked Avengers, then in theory I guess this is the perfect shirt for you. In theory.
You, too, can smell like the Hulk with The Avengers-themed cologne
As the licensing machine revs up for the May 4 premiere of The Avengers, fragrance company JADS International — the company behind such brands as Sulu Pour Homme, Slave Leia Perfume and Shirtless Kirk Cologne — has rolled out scents inspired by Captain America, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, Nick Fury and even Loki. Sorry, Hawkeye, you’re out of luck.
The Avengers Cologne Set boasts “four unique fragrances”: PATRIOT, Mark VII, SMASH! and Worthy; you can probably piece together which name goes with which hero. Loki, meanwhile, gets Mischief Cologne (“Made to Rule”), and Fury has Initiative Cologne (“Activate the Initiative”).
Check out the details below, or on the JADS website.
Marvel’s Loki inspires name for newly discovered horned dinosaur
Medusaceratops lokii and Marvel's Loki
A newly identified horned dinosaur owes its name to a combination of Greek mythology and Marvel comics.
Michael Ryan, a scientist at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, tells The Plain Dealer he wanted something memorable for the pickup truck-sized plant-eater that roamed the plains of Montana 78 million years ago.
To capture the strangeness of the creature, with its sharp beak, curved horns and enormous collar, Ryan settled on Medusaceratops lokii — drawing from the monster of Greek myth and the Norse god mischief. However, Ryan wasn’t inspired by the classical figure, but rather the Jack Kirby-designed Marvel supervillain.
“We had a lot of confusion with this,” Ryan tells the newspaper. “And if you look at the way they draw Loki in the original comic, he has this big helmet with these two giant hooks that come out of the top. So it’s coincidental that it all lines up. I thought it made a great name.”