Wicked Intervention: “The Wicked + The Divine” #42

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Once again we return! Welcome back to “Wicked Intervention” your page by page deep dive into “The Wicked + The Divine.” Only a few issues left now, but join me in my deep analysis of every page and image in every issue of ‘Okay.’

Cover: I guess in showcasing the characters who haven’t gotten their own covers yet, a Valkyrie was inevitable. This cover should have set off a bunch of signals for what was going to happen in the issue, but I was still taken unawares. Like a chump.

Recap page: There’s a lot of fallout from the previous issue here. Lucifer’s got a new bod for one. And don’t think I didn’t notice all of you noticing! Nergal has doubled down on the whole moving on thing. He’s no longer called Baphomet. He’s still the Pungeon Master though, so we can all be thankful for that. Inanna: also has a new body! Yeah, I see you all out there. Mimir has a new body AND a spot on the page, even though he doesn’t get a spot in the icon circle. Tara, she said no to a new bod. And now you’re all caught up on the body situation, let’s move on to the murder and mayhem!

Page 1: I’d like to note that Baal is still using his lightning powers even though we all know better- he’s a god of fire. The only time we see him using his fire powers in this issue is in a moment of overwhelming emotion. When he’s in control, he sticks with the lightning, which is granted to him at least in part because of a gizmo built by Mimir. I wonder if he’s ever going to get a chance to do something good with his fire powers. Right now, he seems to be deeply repressing them.

And speaking of, his mom is still alive. It was a little unclear how much destruction he accomplished at the gig, but Laura seems to have put a stop to it. Now Baal’s got missed calls. 17 of them. His mom’s got shit to say.

Page 2: “The Truth Will Set You Free And/Or Kill You” is the kind of casual addition of murder that Kieron lives for. It sounds like something Triple Zero would say.

Page 3: It seemed as though it would take until the final moments of the story for Baal to get together with the rest of the cast, but the book wastes no time in making the reunion happen. At this point in the story there are so many revelations and so many characters that a big part of the action is keeping track of who knows how much about what. Baal for example is not ready to know about the heads though. Like, at all. One could imagine that this situation ended with everyone throwing down though. They’re not, so that’s something.

Page 4: Wow! Fans have known the Creature from 1831 was coming back, and this is a huge page to make that reveal. The roots, tumors, fireflies, and glowing vines look is the kind of thing that would have made Neil Gaiman’s monocle pop out of his eye back in his “Sandman” days. (What? Neil Gaiman totally wore a monocle right?) What really makes this page work though isn’t the main image, which is a classic dramatic full-page reveal. What really brings it together is the ultra close-up on Baal at the bottom of the page. McKelvie has been enjoying his Baal reaction faces a lot in the last few issues, and compared to some of the hugely emotional panels, this one is almost blank. But it has just enough of the anger, confusion, and dawning realization to connect him with the reader. It’s not just enough to show something insane, it’s equally important to remind the reader to care. Baal’s demand for an explanation makes the page more than a reveal; it’s a promise for answers.

Also that firefly is damned unsettling.

Page 5: Here’s where the 1831 and 1923 specials come back in a big way. On the one hand, this is some amazing work from the creative team. Matt Wilson’s background details behind the panel let you know this is flashback territory, but I’ve never seen more gorgeous lights around the panels. And Clayton Cowles kills it with the Creature’s dialogue font, which toes right up to the line of looking like Marvel’s Asgardian speech.

There’s also a lot of questions raised about Ananke’s process. In 1831, Ananke first started industrializing the recurrence. She used the creature to generate the illusion of the darkness creatures, which were real enough to kill people. What other inventions has Ananke been stealing from the gods over the generations to help her along the way? Is this the first time? I can’t believe that she hasn’t been harvesting the gifts of the gods for centuries.

Page 6: McKelvie’s cinematic close ups are a great lesson for anyone trying to spice up a page full of talking heads (even when some of those heads are glowing fluorescent blue centuries old monsters). There’s that close up on Baal’s face in the center of the page, followed immediately by his clenched fist, vibrating with anger. But there’s also the third panel which isolates two-thirds of Baal’s face in empty space. It’s the kind of thing a cinematographer might do to emphasize loneliness. Its visual language that lets us know that Baal is alone with his sins. In the final two panels when we go from Baal’s mouth hanging open in shock to his realization, the similarity between the two images has way more impact than if the whole page recurred like this.

Page 7: I don’t want to get too deep into the prediction game- it’s too easy to be disproven within a couple of weeks. But I’ve always harbored the suspicions that Laura’s destiny was to become an Ananke-like figure. I’m not sure her behavior here explicitly proves that, but the parallels are hard to ignore. Her deft manipulation of the other gods makes you wonder what Laura Wilson would look like after thousands of years of experience. It makes me shudder to be honest.

And thus perishes the Creature. Cool guys don’t look at explosions, even when those explosions are putting a cautionary tale person-shaped-darkness-engine out of its misery.

Page 8: It’s not just me right? New Mimir looks like a next-gen Mitchell Hundred?

I’ve said it once, I’ve said it before, I’ve said it a hundred times: no one in the comics industry draws better phones than Jamie McKelvie. Look at this chunky thing. It seems to be part of Mimir’s new body!(?) It uses T9 and is blockier than my old graphing calculator. But it is somehow so hipster cool.

Page 9: “Midlife Crisis of Infinite Fuckwits” is the kind of low-hanging comic book reference this book lives for

Page 10: Phones again! This time it’s Woden’s which looks more like a standard smartphone but has runes for icons. You kind of feel like Woden forced Mimir to make him a really cool phone, and then Mimir conjured up that monstrosity on the spot.

The pacing on the dialogue here (which Kieron has a lot to do with, but also a lot of credit to Clayton) makes Woden’s featureless face feel extremely reactive. The ellipsis after the word “so,” the way the panels keep zooming back to that text, all of it puts a lot of emotion into Woden’s smooth featureless mask.

Page 11: This is a HUGE moment. So it says a lot that a reveal that was a long time coming feels almost tame in the midst of all the bigger stuff. There’s one double-wide panel of silent reaction, but the confrontation as the two main bad guys finally bear the truth to each other is almost just another plot beat. If you’ve stuck with the series up until this point, this was a moment you’ve been imagining for a long time. And it just sort of happens. But that’s more commentary on how much other stuff is happening.

Page 12: Okay. (Hey, that’s the name of the arc!) A lot of Ananke’s evil plans have been left pretty mysterious throughout the series. The fact that it’s been played so close to the vest made it enticing. It was a secret that had to have a big explanation And finally, here is her big monologue. It happens in 3 panels and is pretty thorough. And also underwhelming. Everything has really just been about Ananke cheating death? How much of the Darkness is a lie? In a story that has had so much to say about fame and mortality, about youth and time, I kind of hope that isn’t all there is to it. Ananke is “death-phobic” it says so right in the recap pages. But that seems so small and petty when put against the eons long backdrop of her machinations. I hope there’s more to learn than just this. In the meantime…

Page 13: Evil planners out planning the other evil planners is always fun. Same with evil lackey begging for mercy with yet more treachery. Classic. I know the way this is going to end. You know how this is going to end too. You better believe Ananke knows how this is going to end. And you’ve got to assume that Woden knows what’s about to happen. Maybe you’d like to think that you’d face this situation with a modicum of dignity, but part of you fears that you’d grovel just like Woden does here. The Creature is a cautionary tale of what could happen if you don’t stand up to the bad guy, but Woden shows what happens when you allow yourself to become the bad guy. He’s always been pretty irredeemable, but I think the book goes to great lengths to make him understandable. Which is the evilest thing of all.

Page 14: Look, we all knew Woden had to die eventually, but this was genuinely shocking. The violence really sells it. It’s like a zombie story. McKelvie forces you to become viscerally aware of the strength of human fingers. That’s magical plastic and metal and plexiglass. There’s no way to break that with your fingertips unless you have no fear of breaking your fingers. But these mind-controlled Valkyries have no fear, and they tear Woden’s freaking face off with their bare hands. Ananke is totally right, every choice he ever made was bad. I wonder if he knew? I bet he didn’t.

Page 15: Yeah, this is pretty disgusting. In the end, David is less than meat. He’s a mess. An inauspicious end to an utter piece of shit.

Page 16: The rare superhero moment in this series. Baal is back to using his lightning powers. He teleports in and thunderpunches some valkyries to save his family. I especially like the middle panel, which turns the action into a perfect horizontal. You could never get a shot like this in a movie. Hallways are too narrow to get that widescreen view, and you could never get all those bodies traveling along such a solid horizontal axis. It’s the kind of thing you can only do in comics.

We also get another ultra close up of Baal’s eyes reacting. I said in the first issue of the arc that this was feeling like a Baal story, and every issue since then has really proven that to be true. A lot of other characters have completed their personal journeys and are here for the final showdown. Not Baal. He’s got a lot yet to do. And this time, it’s personal.

Page 17: Why does Baal always hang out in odd numbered groups of people? Because he just can’t even. Seriously though, this is a moment written in the stars since ‘Commercial Suicide.’ Baal and Inanna love each other. They’ve got to talk about this. There’s a lot more emotional catharsis that needs to happen, but there is no time! This is the moment when Baal’s fire powers assert themselves and they really feel like bad news. It’s almost as if Baal is scared of his own power.

Page 18: The moment of the big choice, the one we’ve all kind of known was coming since the series was announced. All these people wanted divinity on one level or another. Lucifer wanted to escape the drudgery of her suburban teen life. Mimir wanted to make his family happy. Nergal was a goth nerd terrified of being alone and powerless. Laura worshiped at the alter of fame and power until she was worshiped in turn. Inanna had a lot of feelings but didn’t know how to express them to other people. Baal wanted to be strong enough to protect and provide for the people he loved most. The Norns wanted the power to bring the truth to light, even if that truth made other powerful people uncomfortable. They all got that power. They lived the famous life.

How willing are they to give it up?

Page 19: I had forgotten about Woden’s contingency plan, so every beat of this sequence is masterful. First Mimir sees the footage on his calculator phone in the background of a busy panel. He asks the group about it. He turns the device so we can all see it. Grainy and pixelated, it’s still pretty shocking. Cassandra goes on one of her patented rants. “Trust Woden to take all the fun out of him dying.” She yells. Before the panel is over, Inanna realizes that this was a crappy thing to have said because he’s a good boy. Mimir looks so shocked that he doesn’t even have the emotional bandwidth to be hurt. And it is shockingly tacky if you don’t know Cass. “I’m so fucking sorry,” she apologizes, which is good of her I guess. And then everyone realizes that this means there’s no turning away from the endgame.

This is so emotional and consequential to everyone here. Laura is dealing with her guilt over being a murderer. Everyone else is realizing what it means that they are an accessory. And it means that Woden is dead, for real. Cass is stoked. She had a complicated relationship with Woden. A bad one. And Mimir is heartbroken; his relationship was even more complicated. Good plot work, great character work.

Page 20: This is another page where everything happens so fast, you’re forced to turn to the next. But it’s cool because if you take a breath and process it (as I am forced to by doing these annotations) everything is very clear. It’s good pacing, because it does some foreshadowing (albeit for the next couple of pages) and moves the plot forward, but it more importantly uses the emotional beats of the character reactions to drive the action. The content on these pages is pretty dense, but the storytelling is masterful. It’s almost impossible to slow down and take a breath to take this page in because you are just swept away with the momentum.

Page 21: “Hell is other people.” Where have I heard that before? Sartre. It was Jean-Paul Sartre. In addition to No Exit, where that quote is from, he wrote a book called Nausea. It was an argument that the meaning of existence was perfectly understandable, but so awful that confronting it would reduce any rational person to a gibbering vomiting mess. I’m really feeling that at this moment.

Page 22: You see the hospital bed. You know what this is about. It really does a lot to make you think about one of the best friendships in the series, and brings to mind another one of the specials, this time the Christmas one. These two guys could have just been nice normal friends, and look where we are now. Cameron and Umar would have gone to shows together, played games. Without all the god stuff, Cameron and Marian probably would have broken up, but Umar would have been a shoulder for Cameron to cry on. They would have moved on, stayed friends, challenged each other to grow and improve. Growing is hard, they probably wouldn’t have become their best selves, but they would have been better for having known each other. None of that is explicitly on the page, but I think it’s really clear that’s what’s being considered.

Page 23: We spent the last issue staring at those incredible 9-panel grids of Cameron/Baphomet/Nergal. It’s fitting that he ends on one, taking inspiration from his amazing fuck-up girlfriend and doing something heroic (or at least self sacrificing) as his final action. What could be cooler than that? Of everyone in the cast, Cameron had the most understandable fear of death. The death of his parents really messed him up. It was a big part of his death wish to become a member of the Pantheon. It’s why he tried the Prometheus Gambit early in the series. So now seeing him willingly give up his life for a friend, it’s amazing. I thought I’d be bawling, but instead I’m quietly satisfied. I’m sure the raw sadness will come later, but Cameron/Baphomet/Nergal got to star in a hit comic book, he’s gonna live forever.

Also, that last panel is proof that everyone, up to and especially Clayton Cowles, have created a wonderfully readable visual language for the series. The blank space at the end of that grid, the familiar but much missed Dio font.

Page 24: Of course Dio. Of course we weren’t done with you yet. Whew, here we go.

Page 25: “As is heaven.” Now Dio is the one glowing and in color. If you are touched by friendship and sacrifice, you get to be lit up? Does that mean you get to live? You get lit?

Nergal may have given his life, Woden may have died like a chump, but the Pantheon’s troubles are far from over. We’re really close to the end now.