When it was first announced at Image Expo earlier this year, we (alongside many fans) were excited for Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s latest collaboration, “The Wicked + The Divine.” We spoke with Kieron about the book a bit, but obviously were limited at the time to what little existed of the book to talk about.
Yet now, as the book is about a month away from release, we once again sit down to talk about the book with its first issue complete and eagerly awaiting your pre-order. And let me say up front: if you like anything Gillen and McKelvie have done so far, then you’re about to see them a step higher than they’ve achieved so far.
“The Wicked + The Divine” #1 hits shelves June 18th. The two McKelvie/Wilson can be pre-ordered with Diamond Code APR140486 (Cover A: Laura) and Cover B with Diamond Code FEB148313 (Cover B: Luci). Read on as we chat with Kieron all about it.
So the obvious opening question for this is, looking at the issue and how we meet Laura on her way to a show, it’s very much a Kieron and Jamie comic as we’ve come to know the bat. What I’m curious about, though, is what era Kieron is this? Since it seems, at least partially, to be looking back at a state of mind, yet not ignoring the present either.
Kieron Gillen: Heh. Good question. I suspect I’m going to be trying to work out the precise answer cross this whole series.
There’s so much about time in “The Wicked + The Divine.” “Phonogram” was about being a fan. Ten years later, I do a book about the desire to be a creator, and everything that you sacrifice along the way, done with all the skill those years have taught us. I wrote ‘Rue Britannia’ as a 28 year old, about the horror of being a 30 year old. I’m writing “The Wicked + The Divine” as a 38 year old, about the horror of being dead. It’s a story where I’m dancing on my own grave.
So I’m looking how I got here, the friends I made and lost along the way, and – generally – “Why? Was it fucking worth it?”
But it’s a pop song. It’s the ultimate party at the end of the world, and the “ultimate party” part of the sentence is just as important as “the end of the world.” Also, it comes first.
Laura is 17 year old me, trying to work out how to write. Laura is 25 year old me, trying to work out why she’s writing anyway. Laura is 38 year old me, writing this with a cup of tea. They’re all me. They’re all who I wanted to be, and never stopped wanting to be, even when I was. “The Wicked + the Divine” is me creating a cast of people I’d have killed to be, and then throwing them onto the fire. It’s me saying goodbye to all those me-s.
On that same ground, as the book opens with what is described as a rather ograsmic show, how much of the book do you find autobiographical? Or, given that other book you and Jamie have done together that has autobiographical elements, is that something you’re endearing to stray away from?
KG: Everything I write is autobiographical, in some way or another. If I can’t tap my own emotions, it’s just dead on the page. I’m that kind of writer.
That scene came to me when listening to Florence + The Machine on a flight back from America. Early morning. Emotionally strained, for life and jetalagged reasons. I get past some of her more banal lyrics, and just sort of… go. The opening image is there. The girl on stage. The girl in the crowd. The link between the two.
Also “I like to keep my issues drawn” is good advice to Jamie.
But really? I’ve been feeling that way about art ever since I was lying on my bed, body shuddering to Hendrix’s Purple Haze.
Similarly, it sort of begs to be asked, but everything about this book seems like you (and Jamie) approaching comics in a different, more modern way. Given the point in your career this is coming out during (our creator-owned renaissance, if you will) and the long-term plans for it, are you looking at your creator-owned work in a different, perhaps bigger fashion than before?
Continued belowKG: I think we are. We’re no longer the plucky indie kids. We’re mature creators with a body of work, and choosing to make a definitive statement of who we are and what we do. The whole endeavour has a certain degree of swagger. We’re not being coy in any way. I think it’ll be the best thing we’ve ever done. I think it’s got a level of control that we simply haven’t managed to achieve before. I mean, we’re almost competent here, y’know? That’s progress.
I look at the current comics world, and my peers – once indie heartthrobs, now very much the establishment – doing their own if I can do anything I will do this statements, and I can’t help but think I’m letting the side down if I don’t.
Basically, we want this to be our Ziggy Stardust. We want to become the creators we always wanted to be.
So lets get into the meat of the book! One thing I think is pretty noticeable is that the characters, all of them, feel/act/speak very different from characters you’ve worked on previously, both at Marvel and your creator-owned work. It’s your voice, but even with characters one might assume are similar (Loki and Luci, for example), there’s still a uniqueness here. What steps did you take with “The Wicked + the Divine” in order to help distance these new characters from those we know you from?
KG: Thank you. As someone whose dialogue leans stylised, I’m aware that I’m always going to be in danger of succumbing to a one-voice-itis. A big part of my job is just deleting actually funny jokes that aren’t appropriate to this character.
Really, I go from the inside out. I’m attracted to certain sorts of people – both as heroes and villains – but they’re all different people, so come across on the page in their own way. I know Luci and where she’s from and her hopes and fears, and that makes her a much different person from Loki. To be honest, I think Luci is closer to Emily Aster from “Phonogram” than Loki… but there’s still a huge gap between the two.
That we’ve got the PG-13 bracelets off helps a lot too. Luci says things that could make Emma Frost blush.
The first issue introduces us to a few of the gods of the book, past and present, all of whom come from different walks of life. Clearly you’re no stranger to research for your comics, so what kind of research — if any — did you do to pick gods, and how did you work out who they’d have to be for the series? (Or perhaps — which came first, the god or the pop star?)
There’s been considerable research, but not in the way of “Uber” and “THREE.” They are hard historical texts. Here, I’m much more interested in cultural history and interpretation. Fundamentally, I’m interested in Ideas. I don’t even want to mention which books I’m leaning on at this point, as I want people to enter the world as cleanly as they can – but they’ll end up expressly referenced in the story itself, so don’t worry.
A lot of it was wanting to mix it up in terms of its sources. I wanted to have some gods with a certain degree of – for want of a better phrase – Star Power, but ideally those which weren’t over-exposed elsewhere. I mean, I wasn’t going to use LOKI or THOR or something, as that’ll inevitably take the gods to be commentary on the Marvel Universe rather than anything in an of itself. I was especially careful with pantheons that are still worshipped in an extensive way today. There were some of my favourites I just wanted to get in too.
I’m also being a little coy about what Gods are in it. The “which god is going to emerge next?” is totally a big part of us.
The Gods is also only half the question. As you say, the other half of the equation is the pop-star archetypes. In a real way, some of the gods came first and with some the pop star came first. We had a list with two columns, and eventually matches up the right God to the right Pop-Star Archetype. It was like a dating game.
Continued belowSometimes they came at the same time. Lucifer would be the best example of that. Someone with like Amaterasu, the pop star came first. Someone like Baal, the god.
One thing I notice immediately about “WicDiv” is in its storytelling. You compare the book to “Phonogram” in the back essay, but “PG” always read more open; you can see the heart pinned on the sleeve. “WicDiv” is much more discreet — the story is more at the front level, but there’s a lot you can’t pick up on with just a surface read. Knowing your writing habits and how you’ve grown as a writer, do you find it easier to be more restrained now than previously? Is that balance difficult to strike?
KG: I also more compare it to a hypothetical “Ultimate Phonogram”. “Phonogram,” with all its heart on sleeve virginal-promiscuous intimacy, is an indie record through and through. It sits in its bedroom and is all kinds of sad. “The Wicked + the Divine is a pop song.” It’s the sort of over-charged genre work I love as a reader, aspiring to beat the pop songs that got me into comics in the first place. “Preacher” was a Pop Song, y’know?
Control matters intensely. We have learned a lot over the years, and – especially in the first issue – this is incredibly precise. It’s meant to be questioned, it’s meant to have essays written about, but I think you can read it as a pop thrill in a way which you couldn’t for much of what we do. Ideally, I want to marry the best of all our previous work in “The Wicked + the Divine.” We could never have done this ten years ago. If we could, the last ten years would have been a waste.
Ten years. Christ, that scares me. It should scare me.
A lot of the issue seems to have a very intimate relationship with the design of the pages; we have grids for quieter scenes, and when things bust out of grids it’s often for noteworthy reasons. Humorously enough, I can’t help but recall your “YA” work with Jamie, jokingly titled ‘Style > Substance,’ and seeing this as a continued extension of how you and Jamie work together. Given the relationship here, how do you find “WicDiv” fits with your continued collaboration? An issue in to the process, what’s new or changed?
KG: At least to start with, it’s less frenzied. “Young Avengers'” falling over itself energy came from a lot of places, not least my own frustration. That was both a strength and a weakness, but also unavoidable. That’s where I was then, and that’s what I had to do. Jamie, of course, is always terribly enabling to my awful instincts.
The maturity is the thing I’d stress, at least in the first issue. Jamie and I have done a lot of work. “Young Avengers” explicitly pushed things formally hard. To be frank, we’ll be pushing things formally far harder than “YA” ever did at certain points down the line, but we didn’t feel the need to do it at the start. We knew what the first issue had to do. We talked about it. We worked out the best way to do it. We did it.
Our Editor, Chrissy Williams, is a poet. She wrote a poem called “This One Particular Page.” You can find it here.
It was inspired by reading Douglas Dunn’s Elegies. It’s about the first poem written after his wife’s death. She’s not particularly touched by it in its final form. The Scholar she’s with shows her the original source text, with the poem in its original form. And there, on the paper, she sees all the craft there. The editing of that first moment, rephrased, controlled, funnelled. To quote…
‘This is crossed out. There
is a circle drawn round that…’
Rawness is struck through,
replaced by structure, form.Grief is formally rephrased
by a different time. I see
what I did not want to see
and choke on the final stanza.
That’s a little like what WicDiv feels like. It’s a book inspired by my Father’s death, and is about everything, ever. But none of us working on it are those fresh-faced kids any more. We are applying every piece of craft we have to the page to channel these difficult screams of emotions onto the page, towards our aesthetic aims of being the best pop comic in the medium. You can’t regrow your virginity, and you shouldn’t try to.
Continued below
Having gotten a sneak peek at the issue, I can’t help but notice how the book begins — “And once again, we return to this” — is maybe the most “Invisibles”-esque thing I’ve seen from a generation of Morrison-influenced writers (as well as a seemingly meta nod to you and Jamie and Matt and Clayton together again). We’ve talked about influence before, but I’m curious: after all the new tricks pulled in “YA,” while it’s perhaps early to say, in what ways are you hoping to do the same with “Wicked + the Divine?” How far would you like to push the medium as a creator in a book about creating art?
KG: Fraction’s immediate response to reading the first issue was that it reminded him of the move between the first volume of “the Invisibles” and the second, with “Phonogram” being the equivalent of the first. I can see that. Similar concerns as always, but more sex, violence and glamour. There are worse fates in the world.
There’s certainly a lot of 90s Vertigo in there. I’ve had a few people reference “Preacher” with it, which surprised me – it may be from the storytelling of it, I suspect. Before people had actually read any, “Sandman” turned up a bunch, for obvious reasons.
“The Invisibles” changed my life. All the things I reference – from pop music to pop comics to actual real grown up stuff – in “The Wicked + the Divine” changed my life. I’m not going to hide that. I’m going to show you where all that art changing my life got me.
Lastly, the book focuses on gods as pop stars, but do you think there are any current pop stars out there who seem to radiate diety-esque qualities to you?
KG: If there weren’t, I doubt I’d be writing this book. The present is an amazing place to live, which is lucky, as it’s the only option we have.
And now, without further ado, Kieron Gillen’s Guide to Pre-Ordering Comics:
Helpful Multiversity Tip: Bring these Diamond Order Codes with you!
- Diamond Code APR140486 (Cover A: Laura)
- Diamond Code FEB148313 (Cover B: Luci)
