Lady Loki first appeared in Thor volume 3, issue 5 (January 2008), written by J. Michael Straczynski with art by Olivier Coipel, in the aftermath of the Ragnarok that had closed the previous Thor series. When the Asgardians began to return, their spirits for a time housed in mortal bodies and then restored, Loki seized the reconstituted form meant for Lady Sif and cast Sif’s spirit into the dying mortal Rose Chambers. The trickster came back to Thor not in the familiar male shape but as a tall woman with Sif’s raven-black hair, green eyes, and a gold horned circlet, dressed in emerald chainmail open at the chest, a short loincloth, and a heavy fur cape. Thor, then raising a new Asgard above Broxton, Oklahoma, knew his sibling at once, and the meeting was already poisoned by the fact that Loki had helped bring Ragnarok down on the golden city.

In that stolen shape Loki swore never to lie again, then turned the vow into a keener weapon than deceit. She told Balder the truth that he was Odin’s son, splitting the line of succession and purchasing a trust she could spend later. She moved through restored Asgard as counselor, rival, and uneasy ally, her honesty no less manipulative than the old lies. During the Siege of Asgard in 2010 her schemes helped draw Norman Osborn’s forces onto the city; in that fall Loki died intervening for Thor against the Void, a last reversal that did not undo the harm. Sif was at last returned to her own body, so the feminine form stopped being her prison, but the Lady Loki image remained part of the myth.

Later stories brought the feminine aspect back as a shape Loki chose rather than stole. In Al Ewing’s Loki: Agent of Asgard (2014), Loki serves the All-Mothers of Asgardia, walks the line between hero and villain, and faces King Loki, a future self bent on locking every tale into the old cycle of betrayal. Through all of it the character remains the god of mischief: a sorcerer of illusions and shapeshifting, stronger and longer-lived than mortals, armed with cunning more than any hammer. The lasting design is the one from that first return — center-parted black hair to the mid-back, pale Northern European features, a gold circlet with two smooth horns at the temples, an emerald chainmail bodysuit cut to the navel with gold edging, a short green loincloth, and a dark fur cape across both shoulders.