The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 3, Commercial Suicide
The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 4, Rising Action
The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 5, Imperial Phase Part 1
The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 6, Imperial Phase Part 2
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Collection published: 2016 Contents published: 2015 Acquired: June 2020 Read: July 2022 |
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Collection published: 2016 Contents published: 2016 Acquired: June 2020 Read: July 2022 |
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Collection published: 2017 Contents published: 2016-17 Acquired: June 2020 Read: August 2022 |
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Collection published: 2018 Contents published: 2017 Acquired: June 2020 Read: August 2022 |
I read these four Wicked + The Divine collections in rapid succession in between cycles of my JSA marathon (after JSA by Geoff Johns, before JSA Presents Green Lantern), so I'll be reviewing them all in one go.
The first collection, Commercial Suicide, feels like a side-step at first, in that we seemingly move away from the ongoing story of Wicked + The Divine to see what other gods are up to, in issues drawn by a variety of guest artists. This turns out to be kind of a trick, because a couple of these issues are set in the present day, and develop the evil plan of Ananke. I think if you were more into these characters, you would get more out of them than I did, though I did appreciate the beautiful art of Tula Lotay in the very depressing Tara focus issue.
After this, events kick back into gear... and you know, do I care? Ananke has to be stopped—and then once she's stopped, what do gods do with no one to restrain them? That's what's chronicled in Rising Action and the two-part Imperial Phase. Kieron Gillen clearly puts a lot of work into these comics, and there's some clever misdirects and detailed hint-laying and complicated long-term gambits, but fundamentally, I find it hard to care about these characters. I am decently interested in Laura and Cassandra, but there are so many other gods who I often forget about or do remember but don't care about.
Gillen and McKelvie are always trying to do interesting things. There's an issue entirely made up of things McKelvie drew for previous issues of Wicdiv. There's an issue which is the form of interviews in a magazine about the gods—and Gillen even got real magazine writers to interview him in character, and then they wrote up the interviews themselves. Which is all very neat, and I'm sure devoted Wicdiv readers got a lot out of it... but I found myself skimming.
Even my interest in those characters feels more intellectual than emotional; Laura is a fangirl who became what she idolized, and I like the process of her decay... but I don't really feel it. I can't help but feeling that this story about the "darkness" and secret, ancient pacts doesn't really have anything to do with what the series's hook was: what if popstars were literal gods? I guess I want to read a comic about the power of idolization, using godhood as a literal and metaphorical take on it. Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie don't have to make this comic if they don't want to of course; that's clearly not what they're doing here now that I'm six volumes into it, but it's what I thought I was getting at first, and I think I would have been more into that than whatever we're getting instead. Like yes it's shocking who Woden really was... but I also didn't really care, and I kind of rolled my eyes because he was barely even a character anyway. He could have been a great way to engage themes—how does academia perceive this phenomenon versus fandom?—but once you get to the reveal, you realize the character was only there to be in the reveal, he doesn't have any significance on his own, and that's why his early appearances were so fleeting.
So it's all a shame because it feels like a waste of the clear talent of everyone involved. But anyway I have all the volumes and I got them for free and there's only three to go and they read pretty easy and Jamie McKelvie's art is always nice to look out, so I will keep on going until the end.
I read an issue of The Wicked + The Divine every day (except when I have hard-copy comics to read). Next up in sequence: Mothering Invention
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