Issue #3 of “The Wicked + The Divine” in a pop song — “Off, off, off with ya head. Dance, dance, dance ’till you’re dead.” Like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs sing, McKelvie, Gillen, and Wilson’s third installment of “The Wicked + The Divine” moves at a head-spinning pace, offering up no time to explain its Gods’ motives as they take the lead, leaving us, like Laura, to obediently follow.
Written by Kieron Gillen
Art by Jamie McKelvie & Matt WilsonOn a quest to de-frame Lucifer of murder and gain her own powers, Laura breaks into an underground train station to find the Morrigan (a potential suspect) but when Laura arrives she finds nothing but camera phones and a frantic crowd snapping shots of the God Baphomet holding the bloodied, decapitated head of the Morrigan. Can Laura battle a God with as much gall as 80’s hair metal? Can she save Satan working with the skeptical Cassandra?
McKelvie, Gillen, and Wilson continue to tackle the ever-expanding mythos with wit and boldness. Opening up the issue with two vengeful Gods attacking each other in an underground tunnel with their fans, including Laura watching in horror, is a move as brazen as Baphomet’s belt. As Laura discovers a new God — Baphomet (who looks like a young Christian Slater) — using the Morrigan’s head as a bowling ball, trapped underground with goth-punk fans, we are left as desperate as Laura is for rules and explanations. McKelvie and Wilson tackle this setup by utilizing the scenery around the characters to focus not on necessarily why the fight broke out, but how it is affecting their fans. As the tunnel erupts into flaming spirals, an electrifying green murder of crows, we readers can see how much we are left in the dark of gods.
Gillen’s writing in issue #3 is a well-controlled tease that pushes our patience almost over the edge. Gods with multiple stage personas, a never ending list of everyone that Satan ever slept with, police raids, interrogations — these are all just the start of this issues roaring action. However, it’s the hell-bent voice of Laura in this issue that keeps the action to an appropriate level of pleasure and unrest. Gillen’s initial choice to lead the world through Laura’s eyes is one that still comforts us as we too become allowed to feel bewildered, confused, conflicted. We learn things from Laura’s dialogue with Lucifer and Cassandra in this issue that pushes us to the brink of almost knowing all that we can’t, and at times gives us a glint of meaning we do own, before we are lost into the obscurity that being normal in South Brixton, London provides and living in a land of narcissistic god-pop-stars. Its tone is pitch-perfect, consistent, explicit, and challenging. Laura, as I hoped, does step more into the spotlight (which allows us readers to enter into the action too), but her moves are left in the dust compared to the godly characters around her, screaming a 1-2-3-4 count until all of existence explodes in time.
McKelvie’s character work exposes where Gillen conceals. McKelvie tears open a moment where Gillen stops to breathe. It’s in this ultimate balance that the unrest felt in this issue isn’t permanent; it forces us to cling onto our leading teen Laura. In this issue where the stakes are high and the flames are even higher, McKelvie’s ability to discern the slightest emotive shift via scowl is godly. As Laura screams, her snarl is enough to crank up all the possibly-self-destructive-things-teens-do songs; we thrill to hear her scream. We cling to Laura with all our curious mortality desperate for answers.
Wilson’s color is cinematic, and confident. Like the Sherlock of color, he illuminates at moments of unrest and uncertainty. Keeping his bright-colored palette and glam-rock neon tones that’d make Blondie smile, Wilson brings as much warmth and clarity with his palette as he flings us into darkness when needed. Breaking through panels at moments when destruction is on the tip of the gods tongues, his careful placement of back panels (especially in the crow scene where we see broken images of people in disarray) generates a vicarious feeling of a thrill. Wilson paints with exactly the kind of bravado that WicDiv needs to tell its tale to an audience who lives on the ground.
The Wicked + The Divine is brash. It punches without saying why because it knows it can show it. The heads will roll. Gillen, McKelvie, and Wilson tell us that we can’t possibly begin to expect to automatically understand how it all works and how we fit in here. And we won’t. Not yet. But Laura might learn what it takes, even if takes her soul.
Final Verdict: 9.2 — a tease of a tale that’s not for the faint of heart; a pleasing puzzle entrenched in mystery and awe-inspiring wit (mostly cunnilingus references)
