Wicked Intervention: “The Wicked + The Divine” #11

Welcome back to another edition of Wicked Intervention, Multiversity Comic’s monthly annotations for Image’s “The Wicked + The Divine”. This column is late due to my life going downhill. All questions and complaints can be forwarded to my Formspring. Now that the apologies are out of the way, let’s talk WicDiv #11. Spoilers ahead!

More like “Spoilers, A HEAD”, right? Oh this column is going to go terribly.

Last time on WicDiv: Baphomet attacked Urdr at Ragnarock but failed and ran away with The Morrigan. Laura confronted Urdr and accepted that Cassandra was the twelfth god, not her. A dad who brought his kid to Ragnarock was incredibly concerned as to why this concert had so much fighting. You’d never see this at a Led Zeppelin concert. Now that was real music.

Pages 1-3

Ish Eleven picks up with Laura trolling about Brockley. After talking with Urdr, Laura’s accepted that she won’t be a god but she still refuses to give up on finding out what happened to Lucifer. Say what you will Laura (and I have) but her determination is definitely an admirable quality. When told “no”, she finds a way to keep going: if she can’t be a god herself, she’ll help out the ones who already are here. That’s certainly not hurting the popular theory about how she’s going to end up taking Ananke’s role. Oh, and speak of the devil…

Page 4

“Do you know where the nearest ATM is? I am so lost.”

Strong parallels here between Ananke’s meeting with Laura and her meeting with Luci. Both occur in the human’s respective backyards when they go out for a smoke and both end with the human becoming a god. Spoilers for a month old comic in a column specifically about spoiling said comic.

Page 5

I know the comic keeps saying “It’s Going To Be Okay” but does anyone feel like that’s not the case? Just a wild theory I’m throwing out there.

Page 6

This is the polar opposite of that church scene in Kingsman: The Secret Service.

Baby Baphomet here is struggling with the devil on his shoulder, furthering the idea he truly does not want to go through with this whole murder operation. Like I mention last issue, it’s possible that Ananke planted this idea in his head in order to stir some conflict within the Pantheon. And I don’t want to jump the gun on later events, but I’m like 400% sure I’m right. Why would you tell someone they could go kill a person for an extended lifespan without hoping they would do that exact thing? Especially when that someone has so little self-control like Baphomet? We’re going to get a full on “Siege” homage when that floating Baphomet head turns out to be Ananke, Loki-as-Green-Goblin style.

Page 7

Baphomet has to come up with a different attack strategy than the Assassin’s Creed II leaping strike. If it didn’t work on the Pope, it won’t work on Inanna.

Also, one of Inanna’s constellations seems to have gone off and alerted him to Baphomet’s presence. I haven’t been able to find out what that constellation represents because “constellation that looks like two swords or a bird” doesn’t offer a whole lot of results on Google.

Page 8-10

Baphomet stuck Inanna to the cross because subtlety is just not his thing. It’s not anyone’s thing in WicDiv, really.

Page 11

Mic fucking dropped.

One of the major running themes in “WicDiv” (and you bet your butt I’m going to talk about the other one later) is self-assurance. A lot of characters are trying to find themselves, be it Laura through godhood or Baphomet through immortality. Laura found herself by accepting she wouldn’t be a god and deciding she would do what she could. Inanna, meanwhile, discovered who he really was after becoming a god. Like in life, everyone goes through different avenues of discovery. I discovered I wanted to be an actor in middle school, but a lot of my friends only figured this out in college. Some people know they’re gay from birth, and others might figure that out when they’re 40. Some people are comfortable with their assigned gender and others discover that’s not who they are. One of the most vital journeys in life is finding out who you really are and determining how best to live that life.

Baphomet doesn’t have that. He might be a Lord of the Underground or whatever, but he’s still a scared kid. I don’t know if there’s a specific thing he can’t accept, but he’s clearly not comfortable with anything going on and figures that lashing out and taking away someone else’s life is the best way to reassure himself. And as Inanna drops on him here, hurting another person’s life won’t give you your own.

Page 12

But Baphomet was always pretty stubborn.

Page 13

Ananke feels pretty confident about that judge’s murder being solved, considering she’s the won who sparked Baphomet’s rampage.

Laura is currently every high school senior being told by their parents that it’s fate they didn’t get into their dream college.

Page 14

Like Baphomet, Laura’s totally stubborn. And yet, she hasn’t exerted her frustration onto other people. She might hate herself for continually wanting to be a god, but her drive is super admirable.

Also,

Pages 15-16

I hope I get to re-use that video in every column going forward.

Also, Ananke’s spell here sounds pretty weird. There’s a bunch of reference to the mythology of Persephone that I’ll get to in a minute but what’s “one part of a two-part mystery?” Is this transformation only the beginning of some plot by Ananke? Considering she blows off Laura’s head in a couple pages, maybe this is an indication that this isn’t the end for Laura?

Page 17

Persephone is a Greek figure who was kidnapped by her uncle Hades and forced to marry him. After all the gods said “dude cut that out”, Hades agreed to hand back Persephone to her mother Demeter, goddess of the harvest. However, Hades fed Persephone pomegranate seeds from the Underworld which bound her to the Underworld. As a result, Persephone was forced to split her time between the surface world and the Underworld. The time when she was away caused Demeter to cry and turn the Earth barren, thus creating Winter (that’s where Ananke’s “Mother’s tears” line comes from).

To recap: Persephone is an almost-god who went through a ton of unfair hardships and nearly got what she wanted before it was ripped away from her through a cruel twist.

Quick, guess what happens to Laura in four pages.

Page 19

I feel like it’s always been possible for there to be more than twelve gods but it just wasn’t allowed. For whatever reason, the tribe that became the Pantheon insisted there only be twelve. That’s the rule to keep the Pantheon going as efficiently as it could. As we’ll see soon, Ananke doesn’t seem to be so interested in that. Potentially, anyone could become a goddess under Ananke’s guidance, provided she chose you for whatever reason. For Persephone, it’s not a good reason. In fact, she might have even turned Cassandra into Urdr for the express purpose of giving Baphomet a target he already wanted to kill and spurring some jealousy within Laura. There’s no precise system by which the twelve are chosen that’s been lined out, so Ananke might be a just a bit unreliable when it comes to the rules.

Either way none of this matters because Laura’s finally become a god, right?

Pages 20-22

Ananke didn’t mean to do that. She just thought Laura’s song was catchy.

Page 23

So then there’s the other big theme in WicDiv: Responsibility.

Just as “Phonogram” was about the relationship between content and consumer, WicDiv is about the relationship between content and producer. Specifically, the responsibility a producer has to take for their output. We’ve seen this in varying ways over the past eleven issues. For some of the gods, taking responsibility for their actions and fandoms has been difficult. Others, like Inanna, gladly owe up to the responsibility of who they are. But the meaning goes deeper than that, it goes to the relationship between parent and child I keep harping on about.

The parents of the Pantheon have been shown as either oblivious or willfully exploitive (Luci’s folks, Minerva’s respectfully). Laura’s parents, meanwhile, have been nothing less than the best and have done everything they can to make Laura into the incredible woman she is. Was. Ananke has had a parental relationship with the Pantheon for centuries and, for whatever reason, has decided she cannot go any further. She might have decided she cannot keep mothering the Pantheon or she might have decided this group has simply lost all control. Either way, Ananke’s taking responsibility for the fire she started by smothering it.

If Ananke believes the Pantheon’s gone out of control on its own, it explains why she would take out Laura: she’s the biggest human supporter of the Pantheon and would definitely provide some opposition. And now she’s decided to put everyone down the same way she did Luci. But, if Ananke had decided that she didn’t want to continue the Pantheon, that explains who killed the Judge. Framing Luci set up the downward spiral of events that led to the Pantheon’s self-destruction and Ananke’s subsequent freedom from it all. Telling Baphomet about the Prometheus Gambit enabled him to go on his own rampage, saving her some dirty work.

Page 24-25

In case you weren’t sure, this page exists to confirm that Ananke is SO EVIL. I hope she bought some comfortable shoes because she just made a huge heel turn.

Page 26

I was right!