Loki Sits Enthroned as Hooded Figures Approach — Print & Oil Painting

Nothing in this panorama has a contour. It is built entirely from tone, with the softest edges and the lowest contrast reading anywhere in this group, and the artist has resolved perhaps four objects in the whole width of it. The air is a dusty olive gold that thickens toward the horizon, and everything at any distance simply stops being described.

The throne sits left of centre on a low stepped dais of broken slabs. It is a heavy, slab built seat with a tall back panel carved in runic banding, and the figure on it leans forward with one gauntleted hand resting on a long hafted weapon laid across the composition, its bladed head projecting off the left edge. The helm carries two thin horns that rise and curve outward, and the armour beneath is olive and tarnished gold with a rounded pauldron at the near shoulder.

Three hooded figures are converging on him and none of them are hurrying. One stands close in the left foreground with its back to us, robed in dark violet, a curved blade hanging from the lowered hand. Two more approach from the right in orange red robes, one with an arm extended and a thin staff held out, the other half turned away. The scale between them and the seated figure is very large.

The sky is the only bright thing. A small dense burst of white light hangs at the centre right with fine filaments spreading out of it, a large dim planet occupies the upper right corner, and a broken pale structure like ice or shattered stone rises behind the dais. Orange leads the hue reading with red second, and the brightness stays low throughout.

Bringing other people to the plan is the method. His largest single operation in the modern comics was carried out entirely through a third party: he talked a man with an army into invading Asgard on a pretext, watched it go far further than he had intended, and then turned around, pulled a set of Asgardian power stones back from the criminal he had lent them to, and handed their strength to the heroes defending the place. It killed him. A picture of him seated while other robed figures walk toward him with weapons in their hands is the shape all of his schemes take. Part of our Marvel collection, next to the same small figure hovering inside a vast golden ring and a profile set against a swirling cosmic field.