By Alex Batts — Welcome back to another installment in The Wicked + The Divine Re-read Project. This week we continue our journey with the pop-culture gods and embark on a brand-new arc! There are a couple of noticeable changes with this issue so let’s jump right into it!

The Wicked + The Divine #12

Here’s the official solicitation text from July 1st, 2015:

The aftershocks from the Fandemonium apocalypse are tearing the gods apart. Join us for a new arc of guest artists working alongside Team WicDiv, starting with KATE BROWN (Young Avengers).

There’s an immediate lack of meta-humor in this solicit, but it does address one of the big changes for this arc of the series, we’re getting a rotating list of guest artists! This change fundamentally shakes things up for the book in a really interesting way.

The Cover: And would you look at that… another change! Instead of a normal portrait, we get an, uh, body portrait? I think that’d be the proper term? Regardless of terminology the cover, still drawn by McKelvie and Wilson, shows off the recently deceased Inanna from the nose down to a little below his waist, putting the focus on his outfit. The cover also features a circle of negative coloring in the center. This style of covers will become the norm for a bit moving forward, and they highlight each of the character's unique styles.

Wardrobe does a lot to inform character, and that’s as true here as it is in any other medium. Inanna has an obvious flair for high fashion and cool calming colors. We can also see his hand semi-turning to dust with the use of his power. Overall it’s a striking image.

The First Page: Okay, before I get to the actual first page, there’s another change to the series. We get a recap page! This page runs down the basic and most important story beats thus far, and also shows a table of all the gods (Laura included, RIP) and Ananke, as well as short descriptions besides their names and pictures. This page has some of that classic Wic+Div meta-humor and also helps keep everyone lined up in your head if need be.

Now for the actual first page, we open with an older interview of Laura. This is an immediate gut punch given the last thing we saw with her. It’s her pre-godly transformation but post-Cassandra's godly makeover, dated August 2nd, just a few days before the majority of this issue takes place. Laura tells the interviewer that she’s not interested in becoming a god and wouldn’t want that (liar). One of the most interesting things about the page is showing off how Laura was coping with her accepted fate but still obviously longed for more. The first page is also, naturally, a great introduction to the guest artist, Kate Brown, but I’ll get more into that in the aptly named art section.

On-Page Action: This issue is fairly easy to break down in terms of plot-points. Cassandra’s former camera crew (including Beth being the ringleader) is searching for any usable footage regarding Inanna’s death that they can sell. This also leads to them going to Inanna’s residency, the site of his murder, and having a run-in with Baal. Baal is there mourning Inanna, and Beth gets the idea to direct message him (if you’ll remember, Beth was the one that told Baal about Laura and Cassandra’s location waaaaay back in issue #3).

Beth claims that she can get Baal to Morrigan, who Baal assumes is sheltering Baphomet (who all the gods assume killed Inanna), but in exchange, she wants an exclusive interview with Baal, and she gets it. The interview is the most intimate emotion we’ve seen from Baal so far. Up until now, he’s been stone-cold cool or macho-man badass in action, but in this interview, he genuinely opens up. You can feel how much he cared for Inanna and how much his death is impacting him. It’s brilliant character work and having it take place via an interview is both personal and impersonal. Baal is speaking directly to the camera (us) which feels personal, but the borders of the camera lens and the time signature in the corner of each panel create a sense of unreality and break the idea that he’s here with us telling us how he feels.

After the interview, Beth takes Baal to the same train station that Laura used to call the Morrigan out of hiding, and Beth uses the same trick Laura had. Sure enough, Morrigan shows up and Baal initiates a godly throwdown. The godly battles are always intense and, though they may be extremely emotionally charged, are honestly extremely cathartic to watch. All the while Beth’s crew remains off to the side, filming the altercation.

Baal is berating and shouting at Morrigan. Blaming her for sheltering Baphomet at Ragnarock, which eventually led to Baphomet killing Inanna (and Baal assumes Laura and her family if he only knew). Morrigan claims that she hasn’t seen Baphomet since that night in Ragnarock and is not sheltering him. Baal is without question winning this fight until Woden shows up. Woden, ironically, plays a mature role and gets Baal to stop. He reinstates that they shouldn’t make things worse, just capture them (Baphomet and Morrigan) and bring them back to Valhalla. Baal complies and the trio leaves the subway station, just in time for us to see Baal emerge from the tunnel. “You or me? No choice. No choice at all.” Baphomet says to himself.

Deeper Meaning: This issue deals with themes of loss and what it does to those around us. Baal is noticeably distraught by the loss of Inanna. His grief turns to rage and he would’ve sown untold havoc had he been left unchecked. It goes to show what grief can do to someone, and how powerful that can be in the hands of someone with so much innate power.

The issue also puts a bit of a highlight on the practice of advertising and selling the death of people. Beth comments that “A documentary can never show too many crowds freaking out about people they’ve never met”. It shows how much people idolize, worship, and lust for information about those they do not know. And it shows the demand that is created for unseen footage of the recently deceased or footage of their loved ones reacting to the loss. People long to see it in the media, and thus the media provides it. It’s a cynical and emotionally damaging cycle that is present in real life as much as it is here.

The Art: As already stated this issue is the first in a handful with a guest artist taking the reins, this week it’s Kate Brown. Brown’s work is stylistically quite different from that of McKelvie and Wilson, but it still fits the book exceptionally well. Perhaps the most important aspect of this series from an artistic perspective is the need to convey emotion through the character's faces. There is so much insight gained in every panel, a picture’s worth a thousand words and all that, and Brown nails it.

Brown’s style is more, cartoon-like (for lack of a better descriptor) in nature, but that by no means detracts from it in any way. It’s still a gorgeous looking book from cover to cover, just with a different stylistic direction than before. I’d have to imagine that logistically the guest artists were brought on to give McKelvie a break while still keeping the release schedule, but narratively a switch in art style also takes you out of your previously established comfort zone when reading the series. If the ending to the previous arc wasn’t enough of a hint, we’re visually in uncharted territory now too.

There are two particular pages I want to highlight they take place during the fight between Morrigan and Baal. They show up as individual single pages digitally, but the way they’re laid out has the panel structure mirroring each other with a camera lens in the middle. It’s a bit tough to explain but the images will be attached. The godly battle and use of power still carry weight across the pages and the movement and impact are all solid. The change of pace in art for this issue certainly worked wonders.

The Wicked + The Divine #12
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Jamie McKelvie
Colorist: Matthew Wilson
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Publisher: Image Comics
The end of Fandemonium. The end of Ragnarock. The end of the arc. The start of something else. Everything’s going to be okay.

Click here to read past installments of the Wic + Div Re-Read.

Alex Batts is from Texas. A lifelong comic book enthusiast and movie lover, if he’s not talking about comics, he’s probably not talking. You can find him on Twitter by following @BatmanFiles