The Wicked + The Divine: Book One

just not feeling this one

These four stars are purely and specifically for the artist, Jamie McKelvie. The art in this MASSIVE TOME of a graphic novelcomix is sublime, gorgeous, wonderful. It's just so damn beautiful. It's so damn beautiful in a very straightforward, easygoing, just plain beautiful way. There is very little in the way of hanky panky gimmicky art stuff; excepting one exceptional panel that's hard to describe in words and a bit more abstract/designy, everything was just Pure Magical Gold Dust of Gwageous. Anyway, the art in this - SO DIVINE.

Okay, I didn't realize I was going to make that joke, but - okay, fine - the WICKED thing about this tome (which runs ~400 pages) is how thin the story actually is, how stilted the dialogue, and how cheap the drama. The basic thrust is that every X years, twelve gods reincarnate into the bodies of young, sexy people (in London?). The young sexy god people become celebrities - as in, they literally have rock concerts, where there are screaming fans, etc. They also have cons of the Comic Con variety. And they have some flaky super powers.

The “sad thing”, the thing that's meant to drive this narrative, is that they also die within two years. All the gods featured are ancient, pre-Abrahamic types: Baal, Innana, some Sumerian god I forget the name of. Oh yes! And Lucifer. But all the gods are not really of the omnipresent, omniscient variety; more of the magic tricks and pop songs variety. Our hero is a young London girl who WORSHIPS at the altar of these gods (figuratively, actually); she's the Extreme Fangirl. There's some gore and violence, when the gods fight a bit, but - honestly - what was the point?!!

Anyway, so I guess it's meant to be a meditation on celebrities AS gods in our modern times. And it did give me pause about The Bieber Dilemma, which I will not go into now, but suffice to say I have DEEP SYMPATHY for Bieber, and Shia LaBeouf, and Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears, and all these people that became really toxically famous super young and then had giant, public flame-outs and were ridiculed. I have no time for the “en vogue”-ness of “hating” Justin Bieber; it's just stupid. People who think it (especially people who think they are somehow being intellectual when they “hate” Justin Bieber) are actually just being lazy and stupid. /rant ANYWAY. So celebrities = gods of modern era? I guess there'd be some parallels between the transcendental ecstasy of a good concert and the transcendental ecstasy of a Maslow-style “peak experience”.

Yo but I'm adding aaaalll this intellectual window dressing when, honestly, the story just felt shallow, and like a rehash of Neil Gaiman's American Gods (which I also did not care for) and whatever. Who talks like this? I know London people, they don't talk like this. And all that unearned drama, ay ay ay.

But the ART! Man. Jamie McKelvie, bravo bravo bravo.