Recently I started to delve into the comic book world and, more specifically, graphic novels. I went over to Barnes & Noble looking for a book that wasn’t even there and I stumbled across the graphic novel aisle. I saw all the cool superheroes, but I didn’t want to read those because I knew about them already. As I was about to give up, I found this graphic novel called “The Wicked + The Divine” by Kieron Gillen with art by James McKelvie, and published by Image Comics. The title alone was really appealing, so I bought it, and thankfully, one of the employees told me they were having a great sale. It was buy two graphic novels and get a third free. So of course I bought volumes 1-3.

Since then, I’ve been trying to read these three graphic novels, and I’m so glad I did. The series is set in present day U.K., so it’s not some alien universe, it’s the real world. There’s this group of people who go by the name the Pantheon, and they are basically the most influential people on the planet. They are the musicians and taste makers of society, but the catch is these people are actually reincarnated gods. For example, one of them is Lucifer, but in this life Lucifer is a woman who basically does everything in her power to go against social norms. Another character is Baal, who at first glance resembles Kanye West in appearance and personality.

Many of the characters do look like celebrities, which is another reason why I loved this series. It wasn’t so unbelievable, it made sense because in today’s world celebrities are treated like gods.The main storyline throughout the first two volumes was about this 20-something-year-old girl named Laura who, like everyone else, is just a fan of the Pantheon, and then she suddenly gets thrusted in to their inner circle after she witnesses the murder of three men who tried to assassinate members of the Pantheon. This led to her basically driving herself and everyone else crazy trying to figure out what happened, and who was trying to kill the gods. This ultimately led to her being transformed into a god herself.

As the story really got going, volume three didn’t disappoint. This series delivers every time I pick it up from storyline to artwork, and the mythology of the universe is just phenomenal. In volume three we were able to explore backgrounds of characters who in the earlier volumes were just background. By the author and artist explaining the backgrounds of these characters it slowed the pace down, and gave us time to appreciate where the story had gone. Also, it gave us a break from the war that is brewing between the Pantheon, and one of the gods named Baphomet who was semi-wrongfully accused of murder. The thing I would just personally love to know is what the qualifications are to become a god because they have never discussed it. They kind of just pick people and then they go through this cycle of rebirth, but what do these people have that others don’t? Also they keep killing characters off that you invest in. Stop building these people up just to kill them. The artwork, on the other hand, just keeps getting better and better.

(5 out of 5)