10 Comics You Must Read Before Avengers: Infinity War

4. Journey Into Mystery By Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen is one of the best writers around, so it's no surprise to hear that his stint on Journey Into Mystery - where Loki was made the centre of attention - has served as a big inspiration for Tom Hiddleston's portrayal of the character.

A contender for one of the saddest comics stories out there, Gillen's finale to the book manages to hit all the right notes while reiterating the tragedy of Loki's place in myth and legend. It's truly heartbreaking stuff, and while the fate of the MCU's Loki is yet to be discerned, it's looking evermore likely that he'll depart by way of Thanos come next year. Latching onto the Tesseract didn't do anyone any favours, particularly not he and, having already had one bungled invasion to his name, it's likely that the Mad Titan won't be all too enthused about linking up with the self-annoited God of Mischief.

The tragedy of Loki's impending demise will no doubt be made worse by Hiddleston's performance, but it's not anything we haven't already seen in the comics. Gillen's series dealt with the departure of a Loki particularly well, contrasting the youthful optimism of the god's younger-self with the self-destructive duplicitousness of his older counterpart.

The punchline, delivered in full by Gillen and artist Stephanie Hans, is as genius as it is sobering, providing a rubber stamp to one of the medium's most interesting villains and conjuring one of the most powerful panels in the medium in doing so. No Loki fan should go without it.