The Wicked + The Divine

The Wicked + The Divine is a contemporary fantasy comic book series created by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, and published by Image Comics. The series is largely influenced by pop music and various mythological deities, and includes the themes of life and death in the story. The comic has received positive reviews, and was the winner of Best Comic at the 2014 British Comic Awards. It has also been noted for its diverse portrayal of ethnicity, sexuality and gender social roles.
The narrative follows a young teenage girl, Laura, as she interacts with the Pantheon, a group of twelve people who discover that they are reincarnated deities. This discovery grants them fame and supernatural powers, with the stipulation that they will die within two years as part of a ninety-year cycle known as the Recurrence.
The series was announced on 9 January 2014, and the first issue was released in June 2014. As of March 2019, there have been 42 single issues released, four one-shot specials, one Christmas issue, and one comedy issue. The single issues, excluding the specials, are currently collected across seven trade paperbacks, and three hardcover trades. Prior to the series conclusion, a trade collecting the one-shots, Christmas issue, and comedy issue was released, considered the eighth volume. The series ran for 45 main issues and complete in eight trade-paperback arcs, (plus one for the Specials), bringing the total to nine trade paperbacks. A one-shot crossover, entitled I Hate Fairyland – I Hate Image, was released in October 2017.
Writer Kieron Gillen's original and core inspiration for The Wicked + The Divine was his father's diagnosis with terminal cancer. For this reason, Gillen considers the story to be "about life and death." Further inspiration for Gillen comes from pop music and various pop idols; the Pantheon is based on pop idols, and Gillen has created a playlist of songs to accompany the comic book.
In 2015, it was announced that the television rights had been optioned by Universal TV, but as of June 2024, Gillen confirmed that the rights had returned to the creators and were once again being shopped around. In June 2024, for the tenth anniversary of the series, Gillen and McKelvie launched a Kickstarter to produce a hardcover art book titled The Wicked + The Divine: The Covers Version. This book will contain the original 126 covers in a super-sized format along with extra material from Gillen and McKelvie such as bonus Sahkmet head cover.
The narrative focuses on a group of people with superhuman powers known as "The Pantheon". Each member of The Pantheon was at one point a normal person before being chosen to merge with the spirit of a deity. It is said that each cycle of The Pantheon will not live past two years from the start of the series, and that every 90 years the Pantheon is reincarnated. This cycle is known as the Recurrence. It would also appear that the person who is the next reincarnation of a particular god does not get the opportunity to refuse becoming one.
Every Recurrence, 12 separate gods/goddesses reincarnate into bodies of any gender. Lucifer has had the most reincarnations, appearing five times in the issues and six altogether. Minerva has appeared five times; Baal, The Morrigan, Dionysus, Inanna, Set, and Woden have appeared three times, and Amaterasu, Mimir and The Norns have appeared twice, with every other god/goddess having at least one known reincarnation. The 2010s Recurrence features the mysterious appearance of a 13th goddess, Persephone. However, it was shown during the 1920s Recurrence that Persephone also appeared, her head having been removed prior or during the events of the Recurrence. None of the other gods seemed to recognize her, which indicates either she has been killed immediately by Ananke in the past, or has been hidden by Ananke from the other gods. It has since been revealed that Minerva is not a proper god, automatically created shortly before the next Recurrence begins and working with Ananke the whole time. Thus Persephone is the proper 12th member.
Ananke appears to act along with the Pantheon, serving as their representative to the public, but is also outside of them. Unlike the others she is not a teenager and has aged, but still is able to function. She functions almost as a parent, and reveals that she gave up her divinity during an earlier cycle of The Recurrence to protect future members of The Pantheon. Although she is stern with the deities who are resurrected, she seems to have a genuine maternal connection to them, saying that she will miss them before she kills them, and crying after she does so. It is revealed she, working with Minerva, has been removing the heads of gods in the previous cycles in order to prevent the coming of the Darkness by completing a ritual using the intact heads of four gods. The gods who have had their heads removed previously do not remember having it occur in past Recurrences.
Flashbacks show that Ananke is the aged form of a previous Minerva; using the ritual, Ananke dies and Minerva takes her place (remembering every previous Recurrence in the process and taking the name Ananke). Further brief flashbacks to every Recurrence throughout history show a variety of outcomes for an Ananke awakening a Persephone. In most Ananke or Minerva kills Persephone; in several Persephone escapes or kills Ananke. A Minerva has never been shown dying so therefore the cycle of Minerva performing the ritual and replacing Ananke can continue. In one Recurrence, Minerva attempted to complete the ritual using herself in place of the fourth head; the ritual turned on her sending her into ninety years of Darkness, until the next Minerva appeared swearing to never let that happen again. The 2014 Recurrence with Laura Wilson is the first time a third party has interfered with Ananke/Minerva and Persephone's encounter.
In the final arc, Minerva reveals the truth. Ananke and her sister were part of the first group of twelve with minor talents similar to the descended Laura. Her sister discovered that labeling themselves as "gods" gave them great power, a shortcut. Though "godhood" kills one of their group after two years, Ananke found a way to cheat death by creating the Minerva role and sacrificing four heads of each generation of the twelve. All of it just to prevent the Darkness of her permanent death. She traps each generation in a story, giving them "godhood" with the name of a deity specific to each individual's flaws allowing her to manipulate and sacrifice them; while also preventing them from discovering their true power as regular humans. With no heads sacrificed in the 2010s Recurrence, and both the Ananke and the Minerva having been killed, the cycle is finally free from her corruption and cannot be repeated by anyone else. Laura and her surviving peers go on to commit to a lifetime of work, using their powers without godhood to better the world. Once they all pass away naturally, the future will be a blank slate of possibility for future generations.
2014 Recurrence
The Wicked + the Divine has received generally positive reviews. The review aggregation website Comic Book Roundup reports that the series holds an average score of 8.6 out of 10.
The Wicked + the Divine was the winner of Best Comic at the 2014 British Comic Awards. The series has also been nominated for the 2015 Eisner Awards in three categories: Best New Series, Best Cover Artist, and Best Coloring. In 2018, it was nominated for the Eisner Awards in the Best Continuing Series category.
The entire series has been collected as nine trade paperback (TPB) volumes, and also as four deluxe hardcovers (HC):