Worshipping The Wicked + The Divine #7

Or a look at some cool lettering effects in WicDiv #7
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

The Wicked + The Divine, along with telling a fun story filled with high concepts, cultural criticism, and sexy, sexy gods, is also a comic that demonstrates how the various components of a comic fit together to tell really dynamic stories. It's a comic that uses everything, from story to character design to acting and colour, and even production wonkery to optimize the final comic as much as possible. In a lot of ways, The Wicked + The Divine is this casual paragon of the kind of comics that can be made by a skilled collaborative team. 

WicDiv #7 is another interesting comic that I think really showcases another element of the comics craft.

There will be *SPOILERS* for The Wicked + The Divine #7

First of all, there is a setting map infographic in WicDiv #7. As the record shows, I LOVE infographics and setting maps. When a comic has this level of planning involved in the setting it adds a level of verisimilitude to comics that I really appreciate. (And it let's me try to figure out where every scene in the comic falls on the map... because I am a total nerd!)

The component of comics that I think WicDiv #7 really showcases, though, is lettering. Comics are words set to pictures, and lettering is the interface that delivers the words to readers. Which, of course, makes lettering an absolutely essential component of comics. That said, I feel like good lettering is often an overlooked part of the comic: in most circumstances the goal of lettering is to clearly convey narration or dialogue in a way that flows nicely and distracts from the artwork as little as possible. It's the art being indispensably invisible. 

But lettering can be so much more, and given the attention grabbing nature of caption boxes, can interact with the rest of the artwork and change the way we experience the story.

Like, take the above sequence. Laura is in a crowd, she is accosted by a seemingly anonymous person, who she eventually recognizes is Cassandra. The sequence makes a great use of reduced detail to showcase the isolation of being in a crowd and the surging, dehumanizing amalgam of people in a crowd. It's great. I especially love the extra panel it takes Laura to recognize Cassandra. As someone who is very bad at faces, this choice speaks to the mental stutter I experience seeing even longtime friends before my brain will interpret vague features into a familiar face. It's kind of a transcendent moment of comics for me. And I think part of what makes this work so well is the placement of the dialogue boxes: the way Cassandra's dialogue in the bottom row bridges the second, unrecognized panel to the third, recognized panel helps with the flow and helps nail that mental stutter of recognition perfectly. It's nearly invisible, but it is a great choice. 

Of course, the effects of lettering don't have to be subtle. Sometimes things like caption placement can be deliberately obvious and, in so doing, provide whole other storytelling effects. In the first panel above the way that the narration caption actually completely obscures the art perfectly captures the experience of being overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions and living in your head for the moment needed to process the torrent. All of the thoughts in this caption are literally overwhelming Laura's face and also acting a s a physical barrier between her, the reader, and the world of the rest of the comic. It's a beautiful metaphor for being very upset and very introverted. 

I also think the caption placement in the following panel, while not as exotic, is also really well done and interesting. The fact we see the "I have to go." before seeing that Laura is already turned away and leaving really emphasizes how Laura has already checked out. She might still be leaving, but with her action preceding her words, she is already gone. 

And... yeah, I had a very unpleasant human be unpleasant to me in what was not a "you can fuck right off" context, and the experience was literally these two panels. These panels just absolutely capture that experience of being infuriated, having too much to say, knowing you can't say any of it even if you wanted to, and just deciding to walk. the. fuck. away. for your own good. It's another really resonant comics moment for me. 

I think, though, the most interesting lettering moment of The Wicked + The Divine #7 is on this page. The story of the page is that Baphomet is leading Laura to a secret party deep, deep underground. The idea of the page is to sell a sense of downward travel, but also of a labyrinthine, twisting route that leaves Laura literally and thematically lost at the end of. And I think the lettering contributes to making this effect work. The art of the page shows Baphomet leading Laura on a winding route down the page, back and forth and down, down down. The route of these two characters is an unbroken stream that moves against the default reading direction and serves to give the page a very long, winding feeling. The lettering also moves back and forth across the page and down, down, down in an unbroken chain that violates page conventions and creates a similar sense of distance and windiness. The thing is, I found that the two streams, art and text, didn't quite sync up which made it hard for me to experience both in a single unbroken pass through the page. This caused me to do a lot of doubling back and switching between the two paths which made the page feel even more convoluted and maze like. For me the lettering and art play off each other to actually complicate the page and add to the emotional effect of the comic. Which is pretty dang cool stuff.

Lettering, it's an important part of comics and in The Wicked + The Divine it's yet another tool to make some innovative comics work.

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:
WicDiv #1 and popart head-splosions
WicDiv #2 and the use of black-space
WicDiv #3 and character design
WicDiv #4 and body language 
WicDiv#5 and facial acting
WicDiv #6 and possessions as character

Worshipping The Wicked + The Divine #6

Or a look at possessions and characterization in WicDiv #6
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

The Wicked + The Divine is like a tour de force of finding innovative and effective ways to tell us about its characters. I've talked about how impressive and smart the character design is and I am also really intrigued by the way the god characters use allusion to myth and real life pop stars to imply character. But the thing that WicDiv #6 really cements for me is how clever the comic is in using setting and possessions as machines to further inform the audience about the characters in The Wicked + The Divine.

There will be *SPOILERS* for UP TO WicDiv #6 below.

In The Wicked + The Divine #6 we get an annotated glimpse in Laura's bedroom. We see her collection of god posters on the wall and get a sense through these decorations of how important these pop star deities are to her. But we get even more than that. We get an additional sense of how god obsessed Laura is by the fact she is drawing god fanart (P) (haha Sakhmet looks like Rihanna joke) and the fact Laura took the time to carefully rescue a beat up piece of Inanna memorabilia (K). We see that Laura is infatuated with Baal (N). We understand that maybe Laura isn't too concerned with following rules by her stolen Amaterasu poster (C). Through her small photo of friends, getting far less space than her pop idols, we see how disconnected Laura is from her previous life (G). And we see through the vacant spot on the wall how torn up Laura still is over Luci's death (B). We get a great picture into Laura's headspace just by viewing her room and belongings. It's great comics.

(The fact (L), the annotation for the hidden the magic cigarette and box is itself hidden is really clever. The fact that there is "No L" in an issue of comics that dropped in December is the kind of awful/amazing pun that I doubt is accidental. Well played Team WicDiv, well played on both accounts.)

I think it gets at a central truth about people that I don't see used very often in comics: you can learn a lot about someone by looking at their prominent decorations. Like, my living room, despite being fairly uncluttered and tidy (due to my clutter-averse spouse), still has an entire wall of bookshelves covered in my library of novels and comics. Bookshelves that have an accidentally giant canvas of a photo we took in Munich, Germany that has scaffolding all over one of the bell towers of the Faruenkirche, a sign of when we visited. There is my bachelor's degree diploma and the splatter painting from a coworkers' 27th art birthday party and a plant that started its life as garnish in a bouquet that my mother-in-law saved and gave to us. There is a handsaw that my grandfather confiscated from my dad when he destroyed a coffee table with it and later passed onto me near the tiny antique framed print of Lawren Harris' "Above Lake Superior" which belonged to my great grandmother (and which is maybe the most Canadianna thing I own). There is the cobblestone from the bricked over streetcar line that used to run by my apartment that I "acquired" when they lifted it to replace a water main. And there are a dozen other objects, souvenirs, gifts, keepsakes, and photos that tell a hundred stories about my wife and me on these bookshelves alone. I think you can learn a lot about my wife, me, and this little life we've built just by surveying an annotated photo of this wall. And I think The Wicked + The Divine #6 uses this phenomena really effectively.

And not just WicDiv #6, Team WicDiv have been doing this approach throughout the series.

Like, take this mural of Baal. While it is certainly a great riff on the intersection of religious worship and pop idolatry and a smart commentary on the ostentatiousness of certain pop-rappers, it is also really informative about Baal. This mural really showcases how confident Baal is and that he regards himself as a divine figure. It also displays that it is important to Baal that others see his status and acknowledge it. You don't have a mural of yourself painted if you weren't interested in showing off; it is the very definition of conspicuous consumption. It's also another example of a possession that provides key character information about its owner.

Another example of this is Woden. The summit of the gods in the first arch of WicDiv takes place in Valhalla, Woden's palace/fortress/sanctum/place, and from this we get a picture of Woden almost entirely defined by his belongings. We understand that he is a powerful and central figure to the pantheon as they meet in his magical, Daft-Tron location of his creation. We also learn that he has a cadre of women soldier/performers, the Valkyrie, who wear costumes that fit into his Daft-Tron motif. Significantly we see him clutch one of these women in a very possessive way, which seems to imply that he views the Valkyrie as another possession, another thing he has crafted. This suggests that maybe Woden is the kind of person who views others as things, which is a really nasty thing if its true. At the very least see that Woden lives in a world of things he owns, a world of his making where he is surrounded with beautiful women that he has some sort of seemingly problematic and unequal relationship with. Which I think tells us some unflattering things about Woden. (I mean, assuming that this impression is based on reliable information.)

What The Wicked + The Divine makes abundantly clear is that EVERYTHING in a comic can be used to teach us about the characters and story occurring within the panels. Which is the kind of great comics I'm proud to add to my own character defining possessions.

Previously:
WicDiv #1 and popart head-splosions
WicDiv #2 and the use of black-space
WicDiv #3 and character design
WicDiv #4 and body language 
WicDiv#5 and facial acting

Worshipping The Wicked + The Divine #5

Or a look at the fade-out in WicDiv #5
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

The Wicked + The Divine sure ended on a roller coaster, eh? It has all the action, drama, and Earth shaking events that a properly good climax ought, and opens all kind of storytelling doors going forward. I really, really enjoyed this comic.

WicDiv #5 does a lot of things remarkably well. The use of comic paradigm rule bending as short hand for magic is fantastic, the simple and effective ways colour and iconography allows rapid recognition of characters is clinical, and the composition of action is heart-pounding and visceral and amazing. And that panel with the bloody grin is like some kind of theoretical ideal of comics. (Why do I love comics? THIS!) Basically this comic does everything it needs to portray a complete orgasm of action and bring the first arch of WicDiv to a satisfying conclusion.

Which is why it might be perverse that the part of the comic that I am absolutely fixated on is the post climax fadeout at the very end of the comic. 

So, without further ado, *SPOILERS* will be beyond this point.

So I think one of the most remarkable aspects of The Wicked + The Divine is just how excellent the facial acting of the drawn characters are. The amount of emotion that Jamie McKelvie brings to his figures is astonishing. This post was originally just going to be tight shots of Laura from all over the comic to show how, even without words or body language, we are able to experience the entire emotional arch of the comic from her facial expressions alone. But, a lot of the issue is her shouting and looking horrified, and I feel like such extreme emotions are things that a lot of comics artists can draw pretty well. I mean, few as well as McKelvie, but it's still normal comics wheelhouse. 

Which is why I want to focus on this quiet sequence here: the subtlety and richness of expression over these six panels is remarkable. With only the slightest tweaks we see Laura go through bored/sad to openly sad to thoughtful/sad to sad/wistful (or verklmept if you like) to wistful/wry to a kind of neutral/concentrative look while she is focusing on snapping. I think a lot of artists can rock an epic shouting person, but McKelvie is one of the only artists that I can think of that can so masterfully build such nuanced emotion into a downtempo scene with facial expressions alone. Like, I would argue the dialogue in this page is entirely redundant too: the saddness, to thoughtful, to wistful, to action on her face sells "I am thinking of Luci and she would do this thing" of the page even without us being told. It's perfection.

I also want to take a look at this sequence:

This sequence here is also really interesting to me. For one, this series of panels nails the climatic-not-really-a-resolution practice of the fade out in film media. It takes that ending note, in this case surprise, thoughtfulness, and dismay and drags it out so that the audience can stew in the emotional mixture longer. It also has the added effect of making the story feel like it is alive after the ending: the story hasn't abruptly ended, but rather we are backing away from a world that continues to exist and spin. It's apparently a thing in music that when a song fades out people more often continue tapping or humming along than with songs that have a hard ending (this episode of the Slate's The Gist has an interview on this topic.) And you totally get this wonderful effect of the story being bigger than the issue with this storytelling choice.

Of course, this sequence is also pretty interesting from the perspective of how comics are made. Like how great is the use of the glowing red tip of the cigarette and reflected light in the eyes on this page? It instantly is a great reference to Lucifer, who Team WicDiv have done a great job associating with fire and fierce, red eyes but also manages to give the entire sequence a menacing, demonic air. There is a monster with glowing eyes in this page. Also the use of white text in an all black panel at the end manages to give that phrase so much more weight: it takes what the "oh god" of Laura's internal narration and slams into the much more authoritative, direct authorial statement. Laura is telling it isn't over, but so is the book itself in a very heavy, unignorable way. This page makes great use of colouring and lettering to unambiguously and indirectly convey that there is a storm coming our way.

It's pretty great comics.

Post by Michael Bround

Previously:
WicDiv #1 and popart head-splosions
WicDiv #2 and the use of black-space
WicDiv #3 and character design
WicDiv #4 and body language 

Worshipping The Wicked + The Divine #4

Or a look at body language and character design in WicDiv #4
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

The Wicked + The Divine continues to be a comic I really enjoy. And while there are a slew of very dramatic or very meta elements that are amazing in the comic, I am maybe most impressed with just how technically great WicDiv is. There are just so many small elements in this comic that are executed perfectly to convey the maximum amount of information or emotion in every panel. This comic is beautifully crafted.

I'm going to highlight some more character design elements and how body language is used in WicDiv #4.

*SPOILERS* beyond this point.

Before I dive into the more technical elements in the comic, I kind of want to point out just how delightfully, and maybe insufferably, clever WicDiv is turning out to be. The idea of having Lucifer languish in prison to suit the purposes of the other gods as a parallel to the story of Satan in hell is endlessly smart. The absurd mural of Baal is a perfect monument directly tying religious devotion to the kind of deeply narcissistic behaviour of certain male popstars who probably helped inspire Baal. And the fan-worshippy behaviour of Laura is so on the nose, so true to the fandom-experience of trying to write criticism about creators and a medium I love, that well, it's EERY.

But I think maybe the most instructive aspect of WicDiv remains the creative teams mastery of using character design, costuming, and body language to rapidly teach us about a collection of new characters. And I'd like to continue unpacking that.

One of the main ways we communicate with each other is body language. As apes, or mammals even, we are wired to be keen observers of postures and gestures when trying to understand the people around us. Since comics are a visual medium, body language is one of the tools creators can use to communicate with us and especially to inform us about characters. WicDiv #4 has a great tour de force example of using body language to help us meet a bunch of new, or relatively new characters.

One of the main scenes in WicDiv #4 has Laura having an audience with a summit of the gods to plead Lucifers case. The summit shows the majority of the gods we've already met and introduces a pair of new gods. By having the various gods arrayed in thrones around the throne room, the scene invites us compare and contrast the body language of the various gods. Which in turn gives us a boatload of information about each of the gods.

Take Baal. Baal sits in his throne with relaxed, hands in lap, legs spread open. It's a posture of ease: Baal is comfortable here, unworried about the proceedings. It is also a posture that is pretty rude. This kind of wide stance is associated with male privilege, with not being worried about how much space you take up on the subway or whether your genitals are obviously visible in your displayed crotch. Baal's posture reflects that he clearly does not give a fuck what you think about him. In combination, this posture reflects Baal's power; Baal is powerful enough not to have to care about how he presents himself. And that kind of dismissive power is kind of sexy.

You get all of this from his posture.

And you can do this for all of the characters.

You can see how Minerva, small and perched on the edge-of-her-seat is watchful and attentive. The way she leans forward makes her look intense and focused which implies that she is smart and observant. (Her large round spectacles emphasize this further). Amaterasu has a defeated, hunched posture that when combined with her swaddling robes makes her look young, nervous, and powerless. As if she were a child averting her gaze from a scolding adult. Sakhmet sprawls languidly in her chair, clearly bored or uninterested in the proceedings, as if the trappings of earthly power are outside her interest. It is also a pose that reflects her innate sexuality and her feline aspects: even be-throned in a summit of the gods Sakhmet manages to look sexy. Ananke is seated above the other gods, regal and poised, reflecting discipline, power, and control. She looks powerful and queenly. And all of this is conveyed through body language.

Woden is an interesting exception to the rule. And I think there is meaning in this too. Unlike the other gods who are seated in thrones, he is standing, clutching one of his valkyries in a possessive manner. Woden is a craftsmen god (something reflected by the Daft Punk inspired helm and electronica music allusion), and his body language seems to reflect his pride in his accomplishments. He stands in a way that reflects ownership of his valkyrie, (ick btw) as if she were a craft of his that he is especially proud of. Also, by standing apart from the gods in a throne room of his making, his body language seems to be implying pride and ownership of the room. It is as if he is claiming credit for the diorama of the assembled gods in thrones as a thing he created. Also the fact that he is standing and apart from the other gods implies a rhetorical distance between him and the other deities, or at least a distance from the business of the disposition of Lucifer. It'll be interesting to learn more about him going forward.

After reading WicDiv #3 I wrote a thing trying to unpack the character design of The Morrigan. It looked at how the characters three aspects had three radically different designs that rapidly conveyed information about each sub-character and made each of them feel unique. While the characters of The Wicked + The Divine wear clothes instead of outright costumes, the gods of the comic have fashion that very much blurs the line between fashion and stage costuming, and as such, their designs maybe share common DNA with more traditional superhero designs.

But you don't have to have to deal with elaborately costumed characters to have what they are wearing be informative and I feel like the outfit of Laura in WicDiv #4 is a great case in point.

Laura is wearing an outfit that is clearly clothing: she is wearing a white t-shirt under a pear of purple overalls. This is something that an ordinary person would wear. In fact, I think I remember hearing somewhere that overalls are coming back into fashion for women? I mean, I could be wrong, but I have definitely seen some very fashionable young women rocking overalls recently... Regardless, this is reasonable clothing for a realistic person.

Beyond being ordinary clothes, this outfit provides gobs of character information. Now, some of this might just be me having weird opinions about overalls, but I've always sort of associated them with children. My going-on-two toddler nephew has several great overall based outfits, for instance. On adult women, I find that overalls, due to their bagginess and ability to de-emphasize the physical characteristics associated with female sexual maturity, tend to make women look younger than they are. And for me at least, this clothing choice makes Laura look extra-young and extra-naive in the relevant scenes in WicDiv #4. It creates the impression that she is a child at a dinner party of adults when she has her audience with the gods; that Laura is deeply out of her depth when confronted with the maturity and depth of the divine characters.

Or at least I think so.

Previously:
WicDiv #1 and popart head-splosions
WicDiv #2 and the use of black-space
WicDiv #3 and character design

Worshipping The Wicked + The Divine #3

Or a look at character design in The Wicked + The Divine #3
by Kieron Gilen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

Good character design is one of those ineffable comics elements which has a profound effect on storytelling that maybe gets lost a little bit. If all you read is superhero comics character design might be invisible to you: Spider-Man looks like Spider-Man because he has looked like Spider-Man since before I, and maybe you, were born. The character design of long running characters has been subsumed by brand identity. But the way characters look is really important, and when they are designed well, it can provide us with a huge amount of information about that characters and make us feel certain ways about them.

Team WicDiv are wizards at character design. The subtle way they create visual motifs for their characters that are believable and iconic is really well done. Like, take Lucifer, with her androgenous styling, sweet white suit, and black devil-horn forelock. She looks sexy and subversive, business-like and stylish, and just the right amount of dangerous. She also look's like no one else in the comic. Character design is really well done across the board.

However, WicDiv #3 has a perfect example of great, effective character design that I think is worth taking a longer look at.

There will be *SPOILERS* for The Wicked + The Divine #3 in this post.

WicDiv #3 is largely an introduction to The Morrigan who apparently exists as three different aspects. Along with the regal, well known Morrigan persona, The Morrigan also transforms into furious, feral Badb, and placid, detached Gentle Annie. While the way these characters emote, speak, and act certainly inform their identity, a gigantic amount of information about them can be gleaned entirely by how they look, how they are designed.

First, from their design it is obvious the aspects of The Morrigan are linked. All three versions of the character sport her striking green eyes and have cheek piercings which, while still very human, are a somewhat idiosyncratic choice of piercing. All the aspects of The Morrigan also sport a goth-punk aesthetic, clothes that have a certain gowney structure, and involve motifs of ravens, feathers, and armour. And of course all three aspects sport a sleeve of raven tattoos on their right arm and some sort of black face makeup (or at least I think it's makeup?). You can look at all of these aspects and see that they are variations on a central theme.

Yet the key differences between the aspects are also really obvious from their design.

The Morrigan looks regal and poised. Her hair is stylishly cut and styled, shiney and black with cool blue highlight tones. Her black face makeup goes horizontally across her face like a mask or a veil and has a shape that reinforces a neutral facial expression (eyebrows level, mouth pressed into a line). Her clothing is a structured black gown with a high collar that looks like something royalty might wear. The entire effect is that The Morrigan looks controlled, powerful, and queenly. 

Badb on the other hand looks wild and unrestrained. Her hair is a gigantic tangle of red fiery locks, wild, unrestrained, and big. Her eye makeup looks like a mask of a different sort, with sharp lines that emphasize an angry expression (scowling eyebrows and cheeks drawn back in a snarl). Her face also has additional piercings: a pair of snake bite lip piercings give her fangs and a nostril piercing emphasizes her nose and gives her a bullish, wild aspect. Her fingernails are sharp black claws. Babd's clothing, while still gown-like is heavily influenced by armour. Her dress is highnecked, her bodice looks like a cuirass, and her left arm is sleeved in apparent scale-mail with a pauldron of feathers. Collectively Badb looks dangerous and powerful and angry. She is a wild warrior woman to the constrained royal of Morrigan. 

Gentle Annie feels entirely different with a design that is otherwordly and peaceful. Her head is largely bald, with a pair of tufts white-grey hair. This is a look that is deliberately strange: few young adult women deliberately shave their heads, and those that do seldom leave behind slightly asymmetrical locks of hair. This is also a hair style that is evocative of a variety of wildly different groups: there is something childlike about it, and something elderly, something sickly, and something reminiscent of monks and wellness.  Groups of people with interesting perspectives and, for a variety of reasons, peaceful demeanours. Groups that are also deeply paradoxical (one cannot simultaneously be old and young). Then there is her assymetircal face makeup. Instead of being across her face and eyes, the black is a vertical stripe on only one side of her face. This is a strange choice that is contrary to fashion and is also outside the paradigm of the other Morrigan aspects: Gentle Annie operates in ways that are outside of the other Morrigans. She also has wildly asymmetrical ear piercings with one naked ear and one ear with multiple studs and hoops: asymmetry is weird and contrary to the rules of biological attractiveness. Gentle Annie is also dressed in a much humbler outfit than her other aspects with less structure and showing more skin. She is dressed more like a goth monk or hippy than a queen or warrior woman. The net effect of the design of Gentle Annie is someone who operates outside of conventional thought and wisdom and who has a spiritual nature. Basically she looks weird but peaceful and kind.

This is all information you get just from how the characters look. Which makes this great bit of character design a great tool for informing and emotionally effecting readers. 

Such good comics.

Previously:
WicDiv #1 and popart head-splosions
WicDiv #2 and the use of black-space

Worshiping The Wicked + The Divine #2

Or black, black, and more black in The Wicked + The Divine #2
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

Space in a comic is precious. It costs time and money to print a page of comics, and the market being what it is, there is a practical limit to how long a monthly comic can be. Therefore every single inch of a comic is, or at least should be treated as, finite prime real estate to pack in as much story as possible. In an ideal comic, every scrap of space is utilized to optimally convey narrative or action or mood or emotion. And, as a reasonable extension, the more space used on a given story aspect  the more important that thing is, or ought to be.

The Wicked + The Divine devotes a surprising amount of comics real estate to empty black space.

I was going to do something clever and work out the approximate percent of the comic that is just black space, but I've leant my copies of WicDiv to a comics-casual friend. So, yeah, I can't actually do that by deadline. But trust me, it's a lot of black space. Edit: Apparently the issue is actually longer than normal to accommodate this added black space without removing other room for story since Team WicDiv are cool like that. This is what happens when you try to be cute without the issue on hand. Still, I think it's interesting that they felt the need to go so far as to add pages to accommodate the black space.

Which is actually a really effective and interesting storytelling choice.

There will be *SPOILERS* for The Wicked + The Divine #2 in this post.

WicDiv #2 has a few moving parts, but one of the major chunks of story has Laura visiting an underground concert held by The Morrigan. The Morrigan, it would appear, is goth as fuck and holds her shows off the beaten track and down, down in an abandoned (?) section of the London Underground. And the generous use of black in WicDiv #2 is a tool to generate the atmosphere and emotion of The Morrigan's concert.

From a purely story logistics perspective the use of black really emphasizes just how far underground, how subterranean The Morrigan's concert is. Like this page (above) we see Laura approaching the concerts entrance on top of a chain of white dialogue floating in a black void that traces down to the bottom of the page. This tells us that Laura starts on the surface and the story progresses down below the surface of the Earth. So far down that the dialogue climbing into the inky black doesn't yet reach the bottom and continues for additional pages of black. Down and down and down and down. Down that is evocative of a heroes journey to the Underworld down.

This use of black is also really effective at drawing out the anticipation of the moment and building up The Morrigan's concert. By placing so much black space and comic real estate between the entrance to the event and the actual site of the event WicDiv #2 emphasizes how important this conert is by showing the lengths The Morrigan's faithful are willing to go to see her. It becomes at once reminiscent of a night time religious rite, carried out in secret in the darkness, and emblematic of the nature of waiting for a show or event: that special dragged out anticipation for a thing that is about to happen. And by combining these two experiences through the use of blankness and space, WicDiv #2 continues to shows us the common DNA between religious worship and being in an audience at a performance. 

(Also, how great is the use of a cell phone flashlight to highlight Laura on the escalator (stairs?). Such an organic simple choice that instantly makes Laura obvious and jump out on the page.)

But beyond establishing setting, beyond building anticipation, the most effective aspect of the liberal use of black in WicDiv #2 is atmosphere. The Morrigan is goth as fuck, a goddess of the underworld and there is nothing as goth as black. Or rather, there is nothing so goth as DARKNESS. Because there is just something about darkness that our idiot mammal brains interpret as danger and mystery and important. And the magic of the liberal black in WicDiv #2 is that it, in a static, two-dimensional picture, captures expansive darkness. It creates the sense of darkness without discernible boundaries: the depth of a well we can't see the bottom of, or the black weight of cavern ceiling pressing down and the accompanying emotion of enigmatic dread. Which is totally goth as fuck.

My argument is this sense of atmosphere directly rises out of the amount of space devoted to black in WicDiv #2. For the sake of this argument, imagine that all of the pages of black space were condensed into a single page (like above) that has all of the narrative necessary elements but with less black and using less story real estate. Would it work the same? Or would it loose it's mysterious inky depths and the drawn out anticipation for the appearance of The Morrigan. I think the alternate approach is much less effective...

*SPOILERS* *SPOILERS* *SPOILERS*

(Seriously, this next bit has *GIANT SPOILERS* for the issue, so stop here if you haven't read the comic yet.)

.... especially in light of the bait and switch that happens at the end of the issue. This sequence with its black and more black set the stage for The Morrigan to be super impressive and super important. So when the final revelation of the issue is sprung, it felt more shocking and significant. Which is just great comics.

Previously:
WicDiv #1 and popart head-splosions

Worshipping The Wicked + The Divine #1

Or a roundup of my favourite aspects of The Wicked + The Divine #1
by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matt Wilson, and Clayton Cowles; Image Comics

You know what, I'm just going to lay this out: I am probably hugely biased here. Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, and Matt Wilson are individually three of my favourite creators, and when working together, they have made some remarkable comics. Phonogram: The Singles Club is, and I will happily show you the work, one of the best made comics I've read. It's also really accessible in a way that has a fairly ungeeky coworker actively reading comics now. Young Avengers, the last time the band got together, was one of the most interesting and experimental comics being published by mainstream publishers. Having watched this team grow and develop, collectively and apart, how could I not be excited about their newest effort?

The Wicked + The Divine #1 is the second comic I've broken my tradewait for creator owned comics rule for. It is the first comic I have actually preordered properly.

So, yeah, I am an unrequited fanboy and this is going to be shaded by that.

(I feel you Laura, I feel you.)

But, I'm also going to try and be somewhat academic about this because The Wicked + The Divine #1 is also a comic which does some interesting things and some important things that I'd like to try and parse. 

There will be *SPOILERS* for the Wicked + The Divine #1.

This is a relatively small thing, but I really love the 1-2-3-4 on these pages as layout elements. I mean, it's a really clean, great way to integrate the title of the issue into the page and helps solidify the 1-2-3-4 (and indirectly snapping) as important motifs for the issue, but its also really smart reader guiding. Two pages with the same, regular panel layouts, especially without a direct narrative sequence of events (due to time jumps) risk being read accidentally as a single double page spread instead of two discrete pages. The 1-2-3-4 functions to inform the reader that the two pages are separate and provides the correct reading order. It also, in a less direct way, helps set the feel of time passing in the event montage. It's, in the grand scheme of things, a small choice that is really effective.

One of the my favourite things about Gillen/McKelvie/Wilson joints are how they play with the idea of magic in comic books. In Young Avengers they effectively broke the rules of comics to showcase the supernatural: the idea being that comics-as-usual represent reality and things that break the conventions of this represent the impossible happening. WicDiv continues this, but in a (and this is going to sound a bit crazy in a minute) more restrained and thoughtful way. I love this panel here as an example of this in WicDiv: Luci, who is kind of Satan, is about to reveal her wicked/divine nature and make some miraculous shit happen. The lighting has changed and critically, Luci's body breaks the comic rules and becomes spot coloured as the very fabric of the comic reality is being undone by her godly powers. It's a very smart visual cue. 

I am also in love with the way Luci's black forelock, askew, resembles a devil's horn. This is the kind of tiny, smart choice that I love about this creative team.

The showcase act of divine magic in WicDiv #1 are the exploding of heads. Again we see the rules of comics break down, replacing the modern colouring of the main narrative with a boiling cauldron of popart excess. Again we see spot colouring, a white background, and a colour scheme straight out of a Roy Lichtenstein explosion. (And, I strongly suspect some very cool 3D effects on the last head-plosion [right], although I lack the necessary spectacles to test this.) This is a visually impressive representation of magic. 

It's also so fucking thematically perfect it makes me spin. Luci the David Bowie-esque literal Devil makes people's heads explode in popart. 

Just chew on that for a bit.

All of that aside, I think the most important thing Team WicDiv accomplished in their first issue, even more than establishing the premise, is making Luci charismatic. For this series to work, especially given the cliffhanger, we, like Laura, have to BELIEVE in Luci. And for that to work Luci has to be everything we want in a cool, sexy, smooth Lucifer. We have to be convinced, seduced, and terrified. We must feel Sympathy For The Devil and be scared shitless by Satan. And The Wicked + The Divine fucking nails it.

And they do it with the perfect balance of character design, facial acting, and dialogue. For what it has to be, it's perfect.

I love Luci.

(I totally think she's lying.)