I don't know why turning into a girl seems to have automatically made Loki about three times as awesome -- it just has.

Also, it really amuses me that Straczynski went to the effort of coming up with a way to genderswap Loki just so that he could write Thor/Loki slash in canon and get away with it (I eagerly await a cover that has Loki making out with Thor on it; I know it will appear eventually, it's just a question of when).