The Wicked + The Divine, Vols. 7–9 by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, et al.

The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 7, Mothering Invention
The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 8, Old Is the New New
The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 9, "Okay"

Collection published: 2018
Contents published: 2018
Acquired: June 2020
Read: October 2022

Collection published: 2019
Contents published: 2016-18
Acquired: June 2020
Read: November 2022

Collection published: 2019
Contents published: 2018-19
Acquired and previously read: June 2020
Reread: November 2022

Writers: Kieron Gillen, Lizz Lunney, Chip Zdarsky, Chrissy Williams, Romesh Ranganathan, Hamish Steele, Kitty Curran & Larissa Zageris, Kate Leth

Artists: Jamie McKelvie, André Araújo, Ryan Kelly, Stephanie Hans, Aud Koch, Kris Anka & Jen Bartel, Rachel Stott, Chynna Clugston Flores, Emma Vieceli, Carla Speed McNeil, Erica Henderson, Lizz Lunney, Chip Zdarsky, Clayton Cowles, Julia Madrigal, Hamish Steele, Kitty Curran & Larissa Zageris, Margaux Saltel

Colourists: Matthew Wilson, Tamra Bonvillain, Erica Henderson, Dee Cunniffe

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Flatters: Dee Cunniffe, Ludwig Olimba, Brandon Daniels, Fernando Argüello, Juan Castro, Becka Kinzie

I read the last three volumes of The Wicked + The Divine pretty much in a row. The first two were new to me; the final was a reread, since I read it on its own and was baffled when voting in the 2020 Hugo Awards. (The publisher very kindly provided all nine volumes at the time, but I did not have the time to actually read them all.)

The first, Mothering Invention, brings the series closer to its complicated endgame, explaining much of the series's backstory and incorporating a variety of plot twists. Quite frankly, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are often too clever for their own good. One issues, for example, is entirely made of up six-panel pages, where each panel is ninety years after the previous, showing Ananke killing some member of the Pantheon, from 3862 B.C. to 2014 A. D. Is anyone really reading this issue panel by panel? Seems doubtful. In another, there are ten pages of all-black nine-panel grids, showing how a character is dead for all ninety years between Pantheons! Okay, I guess they are playing with the conventions of what comics can do... but shouldn't it also be interesting to actually read? As always, my ability to invest in the plot is dampened by the fact that I feel like I ought to care about the characters more than I actually do.

The second, Old Is the New New, collects a series of one-shots and side stories: stories about historical Pantheons, ones about the current Pantheon set before (or early in) the series, and noncanonical gags. There are lots of talented guest artists and writers here, but boy do I wish I cared about this series more.

When I originally read the last, "Okay", on its own, I wrote:

It's not this book's fault per se, but there was really no way I could enjoy reading the last six issues of a 45-issue comic book series on their own. I tried at first to work out who all the characters were from the chart in the front, but there were too many of them in too many guises and it wasn't really helping me enjoy it. Maybe someday I will have time to read them all, but not now!

Perhaps it is the book's fault, because now I've read the preceding 39 issues and I guess I understood it but I didn't care that I understood it. And now I hated the epilogue, which was unnecessarily indulgent even by the standards of these things.

I've complained about it in earlier reviews, but I can't help but feel there's a much more interesting version of The Wicked + The Divine out there somewhere, one that works with the actual premise of pop stars as deities that this one largely used as scene setting for uninteresting characters in an overly convoluted plot.

The Wicked + The Divine, Vols. 3–6 by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, et al.

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

Collection published: 2016
Contents published: 2015
Acquired: June 2020
Read: July 2022

Collection published: 2016
Contents published: 2016
Acquired: June 2020
Read: July 2022

Collection published: 2017
Contents published: 2016-17
Acquired: June 2020
Read: August 2022

Collection published: 2018
Contents published: 2017
Acquired: June 2020
Read: August 2022

Writer: Kieron Gillen

Interviews: Leigh Alexander, Dorian Lynskey, Laurie Penny, Mary HK Choi, Ezekiel Kweku

Artist: Jamie McKelvie

Guest Artists: Kate Brown, Tula Lotay, Stephanie Hans, Leila Del Luca, Kevin Wada

Colourist: Matthew Wilson

Guest Colourist: Mat Lopes

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Flatter: Dee Cunniffe

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

The Wicked + The Divine, Vols. 1–2 by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1, The Faust Act
The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 2, Fandemonium

Collection originally published: 2014
Contents published: 2014
Acquired: June 2020
Read: May 2022

Collection published: 2015
Contents published: 2014-15
Acquired: June 2020
Read: May 2022

Writer: Kieron Gillen

Artist: Jamie McKelvie

Colourist: Matthew Wilson

Letterer: Clayton Cowles

Flatter: Dee Cunniffe
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