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Thor’s brother Loki once assembled his own team of Young Avengers, who turned out to be both more and less than what anyone imagined.
The Marvel Universe has been home to a number of fantastic heroes, as well as countless iterations of them strewn across infinite timelines and dimensions that have proven to be somewhat less than the stalwart originals. The Young Avengers experienced this firsthand when they had to face a team of twisted doppelgangers brought together through the machinations of the God of Mischief, Loki.
Young Avengers #10 (by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, and Mike Norton) saw the team in the midst of a particularly unsettling set of circumstances. A vastly powerful, interdimensional parasite known as Mother had been drawn to the heroes, forcing them from their homes in a bid to stave off her threat. This coincided with the temporary separation of Billy Kaplan and Teddy Altman, also known as Wiccan and Hulkling. After being trapped in Mother’s dimension, Teddy became doubtful of his relationship with Billy. Upon returning, taking a break seemed like a good idea for the couple, but their separation only led to further disaster.
While in the alternate dimension, Hulkling met Leah, the former confidant and romantic interest of the trickster god Loki. Leah revealed that she and Teddy weren’t the only ones with challenging romantic ties to members of the Young Avengers, and she introduced him to an entire support group made of the scorned exes of the Young Avengers. Teddy couldn’t find any common ground with the group and decided to leave, then discovered that Leah had led him right to Mother. Even worse, the young heroes he had been speaking to weren’t what they appeared to be.
When the other Young Avengers traveled to Mother’s dimension, they were also confronted by the group of exes, who now sided with Mother against their heroic counterparts, calling out the various flaws of the members of the team. Both outnumbered and outgunned, the Young Avengers were left with no real way of fighting back until Kid Loki, a member of the mainstream team, realized that everything that was happening was ultimately his fault.
Upon realizing that Leah was actually a part of him, Loki confessed that he was the one behind Mother’s arrival on Earth in the first place. Striking a deal with the entity that didn’t go as planned and placing his teammates in mortal danger left Loki with so much guilt that it manifested as Leah. Just as Loki had warned that reality warping beings such as Wiccan could be as dangerous daydreaming as they were on the battlefield, the trickster god’s subconscious had created a tangible threat in the form of Leah and the angry doppelgangers. In the end it would be coming to terms with that and unburdening himself from the lie of it all that caused Leah and the rest to dissipate entirely.
This highlighted just how powerful Loki really is. While characters such as the Scarlet Witch are notoriously known for their reality warping abilities getting out of hand, the God of Mischief was never viewed in the same light prior to the events of Young Avengers. Loki had always shown an incredible propensity for destruction, as well as an incredible amount of power, but never had his underlying emotional state brought itself to life. Thankfully, Loki was able to do away with the phantoms he created, even if he couldn’t fix the more personal problems that came along with them.
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