Once again, we return… to Wicked Intervention, your best source for deep dives into “The Wicked + the Divine.” As we near the final arc of the series, we’re going to take a look at all the major characters, what they’ve been up to, and some of the ideas that went into making them (so FULL SPOILERS ahead!!). We’re also going to celebrate some amazing work from one of the best cosplay communities of all time. Then we are going to scrutinize the final few issues in exhaustive obsessive detail as the series comes to a close. It was never going to be OK.
Baal
aka Valentine Campbell, aka Baal Hadad, aka Baal Hammon
The Story So Far: Valentine Campbell was the first of the gods to be awakened by Ananke in this recurrence. Upon his transformation, Ananke immediately warned him of the coming Great Darkness, but for whatever reason Baal didn’t listen. He’s the kind of guy who could more readily believe in his own divinity than some sort of external apocalyptic force of evil. That changed when his family was attacked by shadows and his dad was murdered. Harsh. He started to move his family around, trying to stay one step ahead of the Darkness. Unbeknown to nearly everyone else, he started to secretly sacrifice children in exchange for the power to protect mother and siblings. While this was happening, Baal became a performer. He hooked up with Inanna and despite himself, totally fell in love with him. When Inanna also hooked up with Lucifer, Baal was genuinely heartbroken. Despite his cooler-than-thou exterior, he’s a real softie.
Maybe because he was the first of the new pantheon, maybe because his father had been killed and he was starting to feel patriarchal, but Baal became the sort of de facto leader of the Pantheon. He represented them in public, and when Lucifer went on her path of mayhem, he went full god of thunder and tried to take her down. After Lucifer was killed and during Ragnarock, Baal got closer with Laura Wilson, and the two of them hooked up. Again, he tried to be a tough guy about it, but it was obvious he was developing feelings for her.
That gave him a fascinating inner conflict when Laura became Persephone and struck out against Ananke. Baal ultimately sided with Ananke. He might have stuck with her, but when he saw Ananke attempt to sacrifice Minerva, his protective instincts took over and that was it for him. He didn’t want to let Persephone murder Ananke, but once it was done, it was his idea to claim it was in self defense.
Now more of a leader than ever, Baal had to grow up way fast. He wanted to take the fight to the Great Darkness, but was outvoted by the rest of the Pantheon. When he tried to call Persephone out on this, she dumped his ass. He was obviously heartbroken and obviously did not take this well. He started attending meetings with the government, and doubled down on acting like a father figure to the recently orphaned Minerva. Little did he know, Ananke had completed her dark ritual and was now living in Minerva’s body. Nothing ever goes write for Valentine Campbell.
Which isn’t to say he’s without sin. Persephone discovered a secret chamber in Valhalla, full of the bones of sacrificed children. Baal revealed he was not Baal Hadad, thunder-lord of the skies, but in fact Baal Hammon, lord of fire, vengeance, and child sacrifice.
The God: In ancient semetic languages, “Ba’al” simply means lord. That makes it a fairly common prefix for a whole bunch of ancient deities. It’s sort of the ancient godly equivalent of “mister” you know? Baal Berith was the “Lord of the Covenant” and was probably a figure in Middle Eastern folklore before the Jews rolled him into their beliefs about the One True God (who the Christians and Muslims also worship). Baal Peor was probably a spirit of the land, the god of Mt. Peor. Baal Hadad the Thunderer is one of the oldest and most popular of the Baals, going back to Mesopotamia and even getting popular in Akkadia. And then there’s Baal Hammon.
Continued belowBaal Hammon was considered the king of the gods in Carthage. That means he’s roughly contemporaneous with ancient Rome. Remember Hannibal, the great general who tried to invade Rome with an army of elephant riders? Hannibal was a big fan of Baal Hammon. With all of the cross-cultural paganism happening in the Roman world, stories about Baal Hammon bled into the myths about Saturn (or Kronos if you prefer the Greek). Any way you cut it, Hammon was extremely patriarchal, and the embodiment of leadership. Archeologists have confrimed that the Cartheginians were overall pretty enthusiastic about child sacrifice (though some believe that was nothing more than Roman propaganda. The Romans loved their propaganda). It’s a bummer that comic book Baal inherited the Cartheginian stylings because being a master of leadership and the sun seems like it would have been right up his alley.
The Icon: Baal is Kanye West straight-up. He’s smart and articulate, but also sensitive. He’s arrogant. He’s a calculated provocateur. There’s a lot of resemblence. When Kanye first came onto the rap scene, the most popular thing around was 50 Cent-style gangsta rap. It involved a lot of bragging, especially about sexual exploits and surviving violence (“he’s been shot nine times” was practically 50 Cent’s last name). Here comes Kanye mixing sharp political commentary with jokes about old cartoons, dressing in bold suits that made him look like an NBA announcer circa 1996.
It’s weird to look back on it now, because Kanye has changed so many times. There was the gradual development of the whole Yeezus persona, and the ballooning of his ego in what feels like a rehash of Muhammad Ali. He dissed President Bush in public and we couldn’t stop talking about it. He feuded with Taylor Swift, and we’re still talking about it. He befriended Donald Trump and we all lost our friggin’ minds.
Responsibility is not the first word that comes to mind when you think Kanye, but despite some very public controversies, Kanye seems in control of his image. He’s a guy with a lot of pain and a lot of emotion roiling in side, and he lets it out in very public explosions of activity. If Baal had more than two years to live, his career would doubtlessly have as many ups and downs as Kanye’s.
The Playlist: “I Am a God” by Kanye West. Nothing less would do.
Urdr
aka Cassandra Igrashi, aka Cass
One of the three Norns, along with Verdandi and Skuld
The Story So Far: Cassandra Igrashi was a journalist who was skeptical about the gods. It’s not that she doubted their existence- she holds a Masters in Comparative Mythology and wrote her thesis on the Pantheon and the Recurrence. But she held doubts about the “divinity” of the gods, and even after becoming one herself (gasp!), she continued to doubt their status as arbiters of morality. As she continued to say, “there are no messiahs.”
Cassandra was around from the beginning of the story. She was there at Amaterasu’s New Years show, and she was in the room when the gunmen opened fire. She covered Lucifer’s trial and witnessed the murder of the judge. When Laura Wilson started to investigate Lucifer’s innocence, Cassandra started an investigation of her own, and the two of them pooled resources to get at the truth. When Lucifer escaped, Cassandra recorded the entire thing and became wealthy and famous from the footage.
Ananke invited Cassandra to conduct an interview, and told a version of her life story as the OG fangirl of the gods and now an immortal keeper of the recurrence. Cassandra’s BS detector was going off but Ananke suddenly interrupted herself to announce that oh yeah, Cassandra was totally the twelfth and final member of the Pantheon. Cassandra became Urdr of the Norns and the two members of her camera crew became Verdandi and Skuld.
Continued belowWith new powers of divination, the Norns pretty much kept doing the same thing, only more magically. They kept on investigating the original shooting. They also gave a performance at Ragnarock. Some time later, after the apparent death of Laura Wilson, Urdr met the mysterious thirteenth god Persephone who, (surprise!) turned out to be Laura Wilson. Persephone tried to get Urdr to join in her vengeance against Ananke, but vengeance and violence was never Cassandra’s scene. When the fighting started, Urdr was the voice of reason and de-escalated the violence in time for the gods to unite for the rescue of Minerva. She encouraged Persephone to spare Ananke but once the murder was done, she supported Baal’s plan to call it self defense.
While the rest of the gods threw themselves into the debauchery of a post-Ananke world, Urdr doubled down on being the responsible adult of the gang. She started to research the Great Darkness looking for a way to stop it, she tried to understand just what the hell Ananke was up to, and she started spying on Woden (who has obviously never been up to any good). That wasn’t enough to stop him from hijacking her mind at a Dionysus concert, but Dio jumped into action. He had fallen in love with Cassandra over the last few months, but knew Cassandra was involved in a queer BDSM relationship with the other Norns, so he left his love unrequited. Dio managed to free Urdr, but the Valkyries beat him to the point of brain-death.
Back in Valhalla, Urdr and Persephone found a secret room. This turned out to belong to Woden, who wasn’t Jon Blake (as Cassandra had previously assumed) but his father David. Jon had also become a god, Mimir, and then a decapitated head. Woden locked Persephone and Urdr in with Mimir, and had very very evil plans for them, but they were rescued by the other two Norns, whom Urdr had summoned through their mystical connection. While in captivity, Laura and Cassandra (who were back to calling each other by their human names) realized that throughout this entire ordeal, they had become really really important to each other, but had trouble using the f-word: friends.
The God: Mythology is packed with three-part female deities. The Norns have providence over fate and can see the past (Urdr), the present (Verdandi), and the future (Skuld). They live like creepers under Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Though the three Norns are the most famous, a “Norn” is just a type of giantess with power over the fates of mortals. In fact, there are some who doubt the existence of “three main Norns” at all, and just think there are a whole mess of Norns who all can do pretty much whatevs. The three sisters of past, present, and future thing is definitely a feature of the three Moirai in Greek mythology. As with a lot of pagan tradition, there is a lot of borrowing and bleed through over the centuries and once Christianity gets involved, all of the old myths get slightly titled.
Oh notably, you know who the mom of the three fates of Greek mythology is? Ananke (Inception noise).
We’d also be remiss if we didn’t talk about Cassandra. In mythology, Cassandra was given the power of prophecy by Apollo, and became a wildly popular character in Greek myth. So much so in fact, that her very name has become synonymous with prediction, truth, and nobody ever believing you. It’s interesting to note that Cassandra Igrashi is a trans woman, and as such probably chose that name herself. Is that because of her commitment to tell the truth or because she’s certain that no one will ever believe her? Cassandra is pretty cynical.
The Icon: Where Baphomet and Morrigan represent a more romantic goth image, the Norns represent the nihilists. Cassandra explicitly says this on occasion, and the all black robes look more like Swedish black death metal than fuck sexy goths. And hey, self-described Viking death metal band Amon Amarth has an album called “Fate of the Norns.”
Continued belowBut the Norns are less like pop stars than any of the other gods. They are music critics. More than that, they’re the kind of music critics who have gotten way too close to their subjects by the very nature of being part of the Pantheon. It’s notable that Kieron Gillen started out his career as a (video games) critic, and has always been a big booster of comics criticism as an important part of the industry. Cassandra is abrasive, cynical, nihilistic, and largely unpleasant to be around- but she’s mostly right. As a comics critic, I’ll try to take that as a compliment.
The Playlist: Cassandra Igrashi’s favorite song on the playlist might be “I Don’t Love Anyone” by Belle & Sebastian, but she doesn’t strike me as much of a music lover. I imagine that a Norns show would be 45 minutes of static, followed by a really morose cover of “The Hand That Feeds” by Nine Inch Nails. But honestly? Urdr’s song are the act of rolling your eyes at the commercials that play between the music tracks if you haven’t paid for Spotify Premium.
