The Good
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE is fascinating. Just plain fascinating. It's smart, it's opinionated, it's inhabiting a world just outside the reaches of our own, and after one issue, it already feels incredibly rich with history. The team behind PHONOGRAM takes another pass at pop music-infused comics, but this time places divinity square in the hands of the artists.
There's an easy comparison to American Gods, but THE WICKED + THE DIVINE feels like it's occupying a different space; one that's more glittery and ephemeral -- like pop music. I'm excited for peeks at past Recurrences, and am curious how differently the gods will manifest in other times (the glimpse of the '20s was excellent but brief, and left so many questions!).
I had to re-read this issue and check that it wasn't oversized; I feel like I learned so much about this world in just the first twenty-odd pages that it couldn't have all fit. This is exposition and world-building done right. We get the basic gist of how the Recurrence works, see the gods doing their magic, catch glimpses of the world they interact with and the public opinion of the gods, and set up for a violent, scandal-laced conflict.
The Bad
Nothing to see here. I'm swooning over this book.
The Verdict
THE WICKED + THE DIVINE drops us into a glamorous and exciting world populated with gods and everything that goes with them -- their fans, their skeptics, their supporters, and their enemies. It's an immersive world with plenty of hooks, and the story is incredibly smart. Pull list material, for sure.