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Warning: Do not read this until you've read The Wicked and The Divine #4. Or, for that matter, issues #1-3. But mostly #4.
Earlier this year I said that I couldn't write about
Young Avengers because it was too personal, too close to me, that it would be too much like exposing myself.
The Wicked + The Divine is also too personal, but that's exactly why I need to write about it.
The Wicked + The Divine #2 is out today. Have you read it yet? If you haven't yet... well, there's nothing I would call a substantive spoiler in here, but I mention a bunch of god names that are not in #1, so read on at your peril...
Are Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie in their
imperial phase yet? It's debatable - the answer is probably "not quite yet", but either way, they've chosen to create a comic about a group of people who are very firmly in one. And by the time it's finished its first year, there's every reasonable chance its creators could be in their own.
Two successful creator-owned Image series, with very little in common tonally or story-wise other than that they both feature cops/feds and have a supernatural twist, come together for this one-shot special in which each creative team gets to tell their own crossover story featuring both sets of characters. I'm still not sure exactly why this exists, beyond the creators having a bit of fun, but if you're a fan of either series (or both) there's a decent amount of enjoyment to be had from it.
It's only when I sit down to transcribe this interview with
Young Avengers,
Journey into Mystery and
Phonogram scribe Kieron Gillen that I discover that my computer has inexplicably decided only to record his half of the conversation. Obviously, it's a good job it happened that way around and not the other - but it's also a good job it happened with someone like Kieron, who is perfectly capable of giving a lengthy, verbose and compelling interview with very little prompting. As it happens, my voice begins to reappear around ten minutes or so in anyway - but had I needed to, I suspect I could have inferred every one of my questions, or flat out made several up, purely from his essay-length responses.
I'm talking to Kieron - or, rather, he's talking to me - because he's got a new comic on the way:
The Wicked + The Divine, his latest co-conspiracy with
Phonogram artist Jamie McKelvie and their regular colourist Matt Wilson. A creator-owned ongoing at Image, it launches in the middle of June, and it's very likely that it'll be one of the most talked-about comics of the year. Maybe even by people who aren't Kieron.
Well, this is a biggie. Barely three days after Comazonology took a sledgehammer to the legs of digital comics buying, Image Comics have partnered up with indie game distributor Humble Bundle to throw a hand grenade under the apple cart of DRM-free purchasing, and we'll stop with these laboured extended metaphors before we dig ourselves any deeper. The point is this: the first ever
Humble Image Comics Bundle is available now.
