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. 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.
Lucifer
aka Luci, aka Eleanor Rigby
The Story So Far: “The Wicked + the Divine” started with a murder mystery. After a couple of gunmen opened fire on Lucifer and Amaterasu, Luci used her god powers to blow them up. This freaked people out, and Luci was carted off to jail. At her trial, Luci lost her temper, and the judge’s head (dramatically) exploded. Enter Laura Wilson: Superfan, who believed Luci innocent of the judge’s murder, and vowed to discover the real perpetrator.
Laura and Luci became close while Luci was behind bars, and Luci promised Laura the one thing she wanted more than anything else: a taste of divine powers. But when elderly god-handler Ananke told Luci that maybe she’d be better off in jail, Luci lost it. She went on a superpowered temper tantrum and escaped her cell, lighting fires and generally being everyone’s worst nightmare of a superpowered teenager. That was brought to an end when Ananke dissolved Luci’s head.
…But that wasn’t the end for Luci! While she was definitely decapitated, her head was saved by Ananke for some sort of dark ritual. Luci’s head is very much alive, and is chatty as ever.
The God: Lucifer is the Devil. Well, it ain’t as simple as that. “The Morning Star” or “The Lightbringer” was a pagan god, who originated in ancient Canaan (along with Baal, more on him soon!). Lucifer stuck around and evolved, becoming more popular around the time of ancient Rome and sometimes called Phosphorus, hence all the fire stuff. When the early Christians started borrowing names of pagan gods to give to demons, Lucifer was the name given to the number one bad guy, the adversary himself: Satan.
Our modern ideas of Lucifer have a lot less to do with mythology and a lot more to do with literature. Lucifer was a central character in Dante Alighieri’s Inferno and John Milton’s Paradise Lost. His characterization in those books is what left the lasting impression: he’s bright and luminous, but also kind of an asshole, but seems like a lot of fun if you could get to know him. That’s probably why he was such a prominent character in Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman,” and later the “Lucifer” ongoing comic series.
The Icon: Luci is heavily based on David Bowie, which is awesome. Bowie himself had a lot of different looks and personas, and Luci’s whole aesthetic is lifted nearly wholesale from Bowie’s “Thin White Duke” character. Interestingly, Bowie took on some pro-fascist sentiments while he was playing the character, which he later blamed on drug use. There probably were drugs involved, but Bowie was taking on a role that wouldn’t have a name for a few more decades: he was trolling us. That tendency towards provocation is Luci in a nutshell.
Bowie also was famous for his “androgynous, but in a sexy way” looks. Luci is extremely sexually active, and she wants everyone to know it. Her whole look is far from feminine, and mirrors Bowie’s decades of experimentation. Bowie notably announced different sexual orientations throughout his life going from gay to bisexual to “closet heterosexual” to “sexual intrigue with the intent to shock” to “bisexual fantasy.” Though she didn’t have a lot of time to explore that many identities, the trickster in Luci would have loved to have lived all that ambiguity.
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The Playlist: “Sympathy For the Devil” by the Rolling Stones. Of course.
Amaterasu
aka Ammy, aka Emily Greenaway, aka Hazel Oak Ash Thorn Greenaway
The Story So Far: “The Wicked + the Divine” begins with an Amaterasu concert. After that, Ammy is a constant presence in the book (until she’s not). Though she rarely moves the story on her own, she’s a constant and powerful presence, swept up in the fighting of all the other gods. Ammy’s naivete makes her a great candidate to abruptly switch sides in any conflict.
What you can rely on Amaterasu to do is to miss the larger point in nearly any situation. Despite her namesake, she’s not the brightest bulb in the pantheon, and her combination of privilege, amiable stupidity, and Otaku fandom can get sort of icky. That’s why she can thoughtlessly detonate a nuclear explosion in the sky over Hiroshima in the middle of argument. No self awareness. Not the kind of person you’d hope would get god-like powers.
When Ananke’s crimes were revealed, she initially sided with Ananke, and then panicked and went looking for a grown-up. She felt lost when Persephone murdered Ananke, hoping that someone would tell her what to do. What she ended up doing was partying hard with the rest of the Pantheon and generally being kind of a gross asshole. She started a cult called ShinTwo, and tried to will herself to be sexually attracted the Sakhmet in the most disrespectful way imaginable. Not only did she fail to reciprocate sexual favors, she blabbed the truth that about Ananke, which the Pantheon had been hiding from Sakhmet. Ammy escaped Sakhmet’s rage, but the mortals at their orgy weren’t so lucky.
Ammy finally found Sakhmet at the British museum, a famous center of Imperialism and cheerfully stolen cultural treasures. In other words, the physical embodiment of Ammy’s entire outlook. It was there that Sakhmet ripped her head off, and in her last moments Ammy lit the museum on fire. She died with a sad trombone noise.
The God: The goddess Amaterasu is the most sacred of all Japanese deities. She’s the goddess of the sun and the sister/rival of Susano’o, the god of seas and storms. Their fights are the basis for some of the most popular Shinto myths, including the one where Amaterasu hid from her brother in a cave and cast the world into darkness. To coax her out, Ama-no-Uzume hung a mirror on a tree, and then did a hilarious strip-tease at the mouth of the cave. The other gods couldn’t stop laughing, so Amaterasu came to see what the hubbub was about, caught a look at her reflection, and was so hypnotized by her own beauty she forgot that she was scared and came out of the cave.
That encapsulates a lot of the similarities between the goddess and the comic character. Both are bright and beautiful, but both are also incredibly vain. They are both eager to please, sometimes to a fault, and neither of them like parties that they haven’t been invited to.
Amaterasu is also portrayed as a magical wolf from the video game Okami, which comic book Ammy loves (and has a keychain of). This girl should never have been given superpowers.
The Icon: Visually, Amaterasu is based on a number of weird divas, including Stevie Nicks, Kate Bush, and especially Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine. All of them have bombastic, operatic styles that can fill a stadium with their sound. They also like to wear flowy, frilly dresses that swoosh around when they move. Their vibe can be best summarized as “friendly witches.”
Attitudinally, Ammy is a dead ringer of Florence Welch. When speaking in public, Welch is warm, simple, friendly, and just a little bit incoherent. When asked about her look, Welch described it as “Ophelia mixed with scary gothic bat lady, but in real life, I’m kind of prim.” I think I vaguely follow all of those words, but that is not how a normal person talks. It is however, exactly what Amaterasu sounds like.
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The Playlist: “Shake It Out” by Florence + the Machine. What else?
