The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1, The Faust Act
The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 2, Fandemonium
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Collection originally published: 2014 Contents published: 2014 Acquired: June 2020 Read: May 2022 |
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Collection published: 2015 Contents published: 2014-15 Acquired: June 2020 Read: May 2022 |
Guest Colourist: Nathan Fairbairn
Back in 2020, the final volume of The Wicked + The Divine, a nine-volume comic series by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, was a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. Generously, all nine volumes were included in the Hugo voter's packet but I only had the time to read the one actually under consideration, and I completely bounced off it: not the comic's own fault, but it was incomprehensible to someone who hadn't read the previous eight volumes. So I left it off my ballot, and I resolved I'd come back to it someday, when I had finished working my way through what I was reading at the time, Titan's Doctor Who comics. Well, I've finally done that, and thus The Wicked + The Divine has taken its place as the comic I read on my tablet when I'm between installments of other projects; I was able to read volumes 1 and 2 back in May, between DC 2000 and JSA by Geoff Johns, Book Two.
The idea of the comic is that the pantheon of gods is real, and groups of them are periodically reincarnated every ninety years, but die within two. In the 2010s, the gods are pop stars, giving magically charged performances across Britain that result in enormous crowds of admirers. The first couple volumes follow an ordinary human girl named Laura, aged seventeen, who is a hardcore fan of the Pantheon. Laura ends up involved with the gods, and when the god Lucifer is accused of murder, she tries to prove Lucifer's innocence, alongside cynical journalist Cassandra, and discovers there's a dark conspiracy afoot, and a dark side to both pop idols and fandom.
Like a lot of Kieron Gillen that I've read, I admire it more than enjoy it. I liked Laura, but I struggled to keep track of the large cast of god characters; I really liked the art by Jamie McKelvie, but still didn't feel emotionally connected to anyone. There's a lot of technical proficiency here, but not a lot of heart. And yet, clearly, other people love it. I wonder if it's because they care about music in the way that I don't; the literalization of the pop-idol-as-god metaphor is clearly where a lot of this story's power derives from, and I've just never felt that way about a musician. And the style of fandom it evokes is often a more modern one, I think, the kind that thrives on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram, whereas I am a guy who still mostly participates in fandom via what used to be called BBSes!
Still, I am interested enough to keep reading. Jamie McKelvie really brings these characters to life. I look forward to the day I finally get around to reading something like Young Avengers by him, which I think will have a much lower level of buy-in for me, given I like superheroes a lot more than pop stars. There are good twists and neat layouts here, and maybe (as often happens with ongoing comics) the cumulative effect of reading this will end up grabbing me over time.
I read an issue of The Wicked + The Divine every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: Commercial Suicide
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