Loki Tries To keep His Head In ‘Norse Mythology’ #2

‘Loki is forced to atone for his latest prank by pitting two groups of dwarfs against each other in a contest that will either bring the gods greater treasures than they could dream of, or cost him his head . . . or both.’

In the first chapter, Loki played a prank on Sif, Thor’s wife. Thor’s pretty torqued about his wife being struck bald, and demands that Loki fix it. In Norse Mythology #2, Loki’s big plan to keep his brother from breaking every bone in his body comes together. It involves tricking two sets of master craftsman dwarves into competing against each other to remedy the situation. It’d be a perfect deal, except the dwarves are craftier than he expected, and his head is on the line.

Remember that episode of Breaking Bad with the fly? That’s pretty much how this chapter went. There’s a hell of a lot of space devoted to a fly bugging the crap out of a dwarf. Granted, the fly is Loki in disguise, and it does play into the resolution, but it’s a fly, buzzing around biting a dwarf a bunch of times. This is the blowoff of the big story that cut off at the end of the last book. Seems awfully anticlimactic. 

I know I should really be into this. I absolutely love Neil Gaiman’s American Gods and The Anansi Boys, where he brings these characters, with all their baggage and histories, into the modern world. Turns out, I’m not so keen on the actual origin myths. This really dragged for me.

This chapter features art by Jerry Ordway, whose work in the last installment would have been my favorite if it hadn’t also included a short illustrated by Mike Mignola. It works well enough for the script, but again, the first ten pages are just the one dwarf fighting the fly. 

Picking up this series last month, I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into. The first book at least had the three stories in it, and the variety was enough to make me grab this second chapter. I don’t think I’ll be getting the third.

Norse Mythology #1, Dark Horse Comics, 04 November 2020. Story/words by Neil Gaiman, script/layouts by P. Craig Russell, letters by Galen Showman. Art for The Treasures of the Gods by Jerry Ordway, color by Lovern Kinzierski.