Original Sin: Thor & Loki — The Tenth Realm

When your miniseries has been built around a specific revelation, it’s probably not a good idea to have said revelation spoiled in the hype for its release.  Also, if you’re like me, saw Jason Aaron’s name listed as a co-writer (co-plotter, actually) and thought “Hey, this might be of some significance to his run on ‘Thor,’” then you’re going to be disappointed that there’s no obvious payoff yet.  This appears to be of more importance to co-plotter and scripter Al Ewing’s “Loki” series, and it actually makes me somewhat interested in checking it out.  Ewing’s characterization of the God of Mischief hews pretty closely to what Kieron Gillen established in “Journey Into Mystery” and “Young Avengers.”  He’s also given the character a compelling status quo:  At some point in the future Asgard will enter into a golden age, contingent on Loki becoming just like his old self.  You know, the one he had to let die and then murder the mind of his younger self in order to escape the chains of fate.  Yeah, Gillen’s run with the character was weird, but completely awesome!  Anyway, Old Loki is back from this future to screw with his younger self.

Wait, I was meant to be talking about this “Original Sin” tie-in, wasn’t I?  The length of that digression should give you a pretty good idea as to how good a job it did at keeping my attention over the course of its five issues.  Long story short:  It turns out that there’s a secret Tenth Realm that was divorced from the others when its ruler killed Freya and Odin’s daughter, Thor and Loki’s sister.  After being hit with the Orb’s “Eye Bomb of Secrets” Thor realizes this and recruits his brother to break into this realm and find out what happened to their sister.  The story that follows is decently constructed, features some nice art from Lee Garbett and Simone Bianchi, and was completely undermined by the fact that the revelation of Thor and Loki’s sister was revealed even before the start of this miniseries (the cover also kinda gives it away too).  Not helping matters at all is the fact this “sister” happens to be a character I have yet to find a compelling reason to care about.  Deeply skippable for anyone without an interest in the characters involved, “The Tenth Relm’s” main selling point is that it may finally get me to check out Ewing’s run on “Loki.”