Wicked & Divine #1
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by James McKelvie
Published by Image Comics
Wicked & Divine is having its praises sung by critics and creators alike right now. The premise of the book certainly has a strong hook. Every ninety years, the gods are reincarnated and assume mortal bodies. They become pop stars and creators, live for two years, die, and are reborn again ninety years later. Gillen and McKelvie want to tell a story that touches on our relationship with celebrities, flawed protagonists, creativity, and ultimately, mortality.
The book begins with a 17 year-old girl named Laura going to the concert of a pop star named Ametaratsu (the Japanese goddess of the sun, for those of you keeping score at home). The audience at this concert is, for lack of a better term, flipping shit, and the whole thing resembles the Beatles at Shea Stadium combined with a Pentecostal revival. Laura passes out and is awoken by Luci, who’s going for 1976 David Bowie’s aesthetic in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Luci takes Laura backstage to meet Amateratsu and a journalist named Cassandra who believes that all of this is a hoax. I won’t give away the rest of the comic book, except to say that Laura is being drawn in into this circle of deities and Luci is going to need her help.
The fact that the gods are being reincarnated as pop stars and artists is hilariously appropriate to me, because celebrities are the closest analogue we have in the real world. It’s also appropriate in presenting the gods as flawed beings, an idea which at least dates back to the Hellenic world. Celebrities can indulge in sex and drugs and have scandals on a greater scale than most people can imagine, much the same way that Greek gods could reach marvelous heights of debauchery. If the gods really existed, who’s to say that they would want to rule the world? They’d probably want to party and write poetry.
One issue that this book raises is the effect of celebrity, or perhaps the public’s relation with the celebrity. Amateratsu says it herself: “We make life worth living, for an evening at a time.” That can be an especially bleak line if you consider the implication that life isn’t worth living in their presence. Yet there’s evidently some truth to it, even if Cassandra would disagree wholeheartedly. Laura is clearly a true believer and wants to be somebody special, like Amateratsu, and is willing to die young in order to achieve that. Gillen has said that this is both “an encouragement and a warning,” and the nuanced approach to studying celebrity and creativity is interesting. Why do we need celebrities? Why do we need gods? These are the really interesting questions this book can ask and explore.
The glam rock influence on the art is self-evident, and there are numerous acknowledgments of David Bowie’s style at work here. McKelvie is clearly having a lot of fun designing this book, as he can go wild with design and illustrate the most outlandish outfits. It’s hard to believe that a comic book about pop stars with godlike powers could feel so believable, but it’s not a stretch of the imagination to trust that people would behave like this (in some respects, they already do). Wild & Divine has a lot of promise, and the first issue is a strong opening.
