Loki’s Disney+ series turned him into one of the MCU’s most beloved characters, but the comics version of the God of Mischief has been getting away with things far stranger than anything the show has attempted. Here’s the real history behind six of his strangest, best-documented storylines.
He let himself die, and came back as a child with a clean slate
After the 2010 Siege of Asgard crossover event, Loki was dead — but thanks to an earlier deal he’d struck with Hela, Asgard’s goddess of death, he was never destined to actually stay among the dead. Writer Kieron Gillen, taking over the Journey Into Mystery series in 2011, resurrected him not as an adult mirror of Thor, but as a genuine child, with no memory of his former life, first encountered by Thor living in Paris under the name “Serrure.” That’s a real, deliberate reinvention: rather than simply undoing his death, Marvel gave the character an actual clean slate, and the resulting run — collected today as Loki: Journey Into Mystery — is widely regarded as one of the character’s best, built entirely around the question of whether a version of Loki with no memory of his own villainy could actually become Asgard’s hero.
He tricked Doctor Strange into giving up the Sorcerer Supreme title — through a fake tournament
In 2016’s Doctor Strange #381, by Donny Cates and Gabriel Hernandez Walta, Loki convinced Strange that a real magical tournament was underway to determine who deserved the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme — an elaborate illusion from start to finish. Strange, believing he’d lost fairly, surrendered his mystical possessions and the title itself. When finally confronted, Loki admitted outright there had never been a tournament at all — arguing that the fact the deception worked in the first place proved Strange wasn’t fit to hold the title. The real fallout was significant: Strange was left with nothing but a modest veterinary practice and his elderly talking dog, until the two eventually worked together against a shared threat, and Strange punched Loki and reclaimed the role once the truth came out.
He ran for President of the United States — and it’s genuinely one of Marvel’s sharpest satires
Vote Loki, a four-issue 2016 miniseries by Christopher Hastings, cast Loki as a real presidential candidate whose entire campaign platform was built on one honest promise: he’ll lie to you, but he’ll be upfront about lying. Released during the actual 2016 US election, the series functions as pointed political satire aimed at the broader “malaise in politics” driving that year’s real election cycle, rather than a direct attack on any one candidate. It’s a genuinely strange, self-aware entry in Loki’s history — and it’s directly connected to why Marvel Studios later included a “President Loki” variant in the 2021 Disney+ series, a real, deliberate nod to this exact comic.
He impersonated Scarlet Witch to manipulate the Avengers into a fight he wanted
During the Mighty Avengers run around 2009-2010, Loki took on Scarlet Witch’s astral form and used it to recruit a team of Avengers into confronting Chthon, the Elder God who serves as the actual source of Wanda’s chaos magic. The Avengers, genuinely believing they were following Wanda’s own instructions, walked directly into Loki’s real, longer-term scheme — one that conveniently served his ongoing plans against Norman Osborn even while Loki was still nominally working alongside Osborn as part of the Cabal. The deception unraveled when Wanda’s son, Billy Kaplan (Wiccan), cast a spell to summon his mother — pulling in the real Loki instead, who reportedly swore, before vanishing, that Wiccan and the Young Avengers would die screaming.
He became the God of Stories, specifically to outmaneuver his own destiny
In Al Ewing’s Loki: Agent of Asgard, Loki reinvented himself once more — this time explicitly to defeat an older, villainous future version of himself and prevent that “Old Loki” from remaining the author of his story. The real thematic weight behind the “God of Stories” title is worth taking seriously: as a character defined by lying, Loki reframes a lie as simply another kind of story, giving himself a genuine third option beyond his usual binary of hero or villain — the ability to actually author his own narrative rather than have destiny or prophecy write it for him.
He hijacked the body meant for Sif’s rebirth
After Ragnarok, in J. Michael Straczynski’s Thor run, Loki was reborn — but in the female body originally intended for Sif’s own return, becoming the character now known as Lady Loki. Sif, meanwhile, was left reborn inside the dying body of an elderly woman named Mrs. Chambers, and Loki reportedly taunted her afterward by showing her a reflection of her real, true self while disguised as a nurse. It’s one of the more genuinely cruel, personal acts of manipulation in Loki’s history — not abstract cosmic scheming, but a direct, targeted cruelty against someone who’d trusted him.
What actually ties all six of these together
None of these storylines are really about magic, despite Loki technically being a sorcerer in most of them — every one of the six turns on manipulation, storytelling, or identity itself as the actual weapon. Whether he’s rewriting his own death, faking a tournament, running a campaign built on honest dishonesty, wearing someone else’s face, authoring his own myth, or literally stealing someone else’s body, the real, consistent thread across decades of Loki comics is a character who’s figured out that the rules of any given story are more flexible than anyone else in it realizes — and that being willing to actually break them is a far more reliable power than any spell.
