Page 45 Review by Stephen
Aren't the covers growing darker?
Quality, diversity and effortless inclusivity...
Yet this comes with the death toll quotient that characterises a Nick Cave CD.
It's impossible to review a fifth volume of any series such as this in any depth whatsoever without spoiling it for others whom we still want on board, because THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is unafraid to destroy the status quo - repeatedly, dramatically and without any seeming hope of clawing it back - almost as soon as it's set up. It is, therefore, in a constant state of flux and its protagonists in a constant state of quandary, whether they admit it or not.
Kieron Gillen is, I own, a very fine writer but he is incapable of even spelling the words 'safe' or 'predictable'. I put a pen and paper in front of him when drinking down The Dragon the other year and, I promised you, he fluffed it.
Would you want it any other way?
Fortunately Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson and Sergio Serrano are each so adept in their own fields that all I had to do was Tweet the other week "Aren't the covers growing darker?" (attaching a photograph of this one) for several of the so-far initiated to express an intense curiosity, thence swear a new-found allegiance.
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is already our biggest selling series of graphic novels outside of SAGA, PORCELAIN, LAZARUS and anything created by the Unholy Trinity of Brubaker, Phillips and Breitweiser (KILL OR BE KILLED etc.) but I am a rapacious retailer plus an exuberant comics-lover, and I can always find room for one more.
In lieu of a new review, then, I beg you to cast your jaded, jaundiced but soon to be rejuvenated eyes over our previous accounts of THE WICKED + THE DIVINE and their glowing interior art (which I do actually talk about) while offering you my admittedly regurgitated high pitch:
Pop stars on their pedestals. You know how the likes of Bowie and Kylie are referred to as rock gods or pop goddesses? It transpires that some of them are.
"You are of the Pantheon.
"You will be loved.
"You will be hated.
"You will be brilliant.
"Within two years you will be dead."
Every 90 years a Pantheon of a dozen gods is born anew, activated by ancient Ananke who finds them in young individuals previously oblivious to their potential or fate. She helps them all shine for their brief, incandescent years.
It's a brilliant conceit, executed immaculately: of course in this age the roles assumed by these gods would be as those most worshipped today - pop stars - and Gillen takes the opportunity to examine journalism, fame, fandom, envy, aspiration, exasperation, competitive back-biting, fear, mortality and even manipulation, for some are putting ideas into the other people's heads.
They have been played.
You have been played.
One by one, some of these gods' lights have already gone out.
As Eddie Campbell once wrote in BACCHUS, "Immortality isn't forever".
But when it comes to the covers, I'll wager it's far more than that.
SLH
P.S. "Drinking down The Dragon" is not a euphemism. This isn't SAGA. Jeepers.
