Every ninety years, twelve gods incarnate as humans. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are dead.
I was already familiar with Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s work through Phonogram: Rue Britannia and their Young Avengers run. Even if I didn’t, with a tag line like that, how could I pass it up.
In June 2014, I didn’t fully realize how much of a roller coaster The Wicked + The Divine would be.
Now 10(?!) years later, Gillen and McKelvie are celebrating WicDiv’s 10th anniversary with a hardcover art book collecting every cover ever made for The Wicked + The Divine. 51 issues during its 5 year run. Over 126 covers created between McKelvie, the series’ main artist, and colourist Matt Wilson as well as artists brought on throughout the series for some spectacular variant covers. In addition to an introduction written by Gillen and insight to McKelvie’s thoughts behind each arc of the covers, Sahkmet will finally get her head cover to finally round out the Pantheon head shot lineup. (Who didn’t get one due to plot reasons.)
The Kickstarter was fully funded day one, about 10 hours after I saw the announcement. After backing the project myself, I went looking for my favorite covers. Even though I think about WicDiv from time to time, it’s been a while since I’ve read it and seen the respective covers as result. At least the ones I don’t own to display around the apartment. During said search I also got distracted reading a few of Gillen’s Writer Notes. Between the notes, sprawling playlist, end of arc events and so on, it’s fun thinking about everything revolving around WicDiv, both in and out of the story. It’s easy to fall back into.
I might be due for a full reread. And as I leave you with the before mentioned covers, if you’ve read this far, I want to ask: who’s your favorite god from the Pantheon?
.chel
Edited 6/24/24
In my scroll down WicDiv memory lane, I dug up this singular photo from 2017, around Halloween. In the same vein as Laura going to see Amaterasu’s performance, I went to work as a Persephone fangirl.
Reading Rites 