I’m really interested in the reactions to the black pages in issue #37. Personally it’s the arty farty mic drop move I live for. Those ten pages combined with the resulting grim punchline hit me straight in the gut. It was an even stronger reaction than the repetition in the last issue: “Holy crap, they’re actually doing this”.
And it’s worth repeating, those pages were free story, you got the same number of pages of gorgeous McKelvie artwork as any other issue.
But every reaction is valid. If you felt shortchanged in the moment, I get it. I’ll fight you, but I get it. And if anything, reading different opinions on storylines in WicDiv has really helped clarified my own thoughts on the strengths & weaknesses of the series.
Also really worked for me. Been idly contemplating writing about it but dunno if I have the time or energy atm
I liked it a lot. I think it really drove home just how long Minerva was waiting.
I was surprised that some people didn’t like it, though maybe people’s reactions varied depending on what format they were reading (physical vs digital pages vs digital panel-by-panel). Also I guess if you don’t read the writer’s notes, you might not be aware of how they handle page budget etc.
I thought the modern stuff was clearly pretty full by the standards of the current arc, but I guess the fight scene maybe makes it feel shorter because of the lack of dialogue in those pages?
Yeah absolutely. For me it’s a companion piece to the first half of 36, both are using how comics and time intersect weirdly to show you two different things, and just a double page spread of black wouldn’t work cos this is using the time=space aspect of comics art.
90 years is a long time when every single year is a black void enveloping you and you can’t see the end of it or remember how far in it you are, it’s the same, nothing, on and on.
And like they’ve trained us to associate black empty space with death, despair and fear through things like the underground, when Persephone dragged Woden into the black, the end of issue 11 etc.
It is also a piece of overindulgent formalism, things can be more than one thing lol, wicdiv has always been simultaneously a massive formalist things and a character driven emotional thing.
Then there’s the fact that a character was confronted with their own death and went “never again will I let myself die when others can go in my place” and a character confronted with another’s death choosing instead to die (for whatever murky messy reason) so there’s an interesting mirroring there too.
Sorry for rambling!
Edit: I’d argue that it’s an issue where someone chooses to not ever die again and someone chooses to die, both for selfish reasons (I’d argue it was morrigans final selfish, fucked up act, instead of living with what she’d done and who she was, she died and left bath to live with what happened, and I doubt he’s going to cope great with it)
I can understand if maybe people think it blew the momentum of the issue? When you turn that first page and realise what’s happening I can see it thowing off somebody’s rhythm even if they know they’re getting the same amount of artwork.
I also foresee the pacing working much better for people in the trade. WicDiv has always done a great job making their single issues feel satisfying, but the time jumping structure of this arc will likely read better collected.
But I’m definitely on board with your reading. It just worked for me as a completely unsubtle narrative device.
I’m really interested in the reactions to the black pages in issue #37. Personally it’s the arty farty mic drop move I live for. Those ten pages combined with the resulting grim punchline hit me straight in the gut. It was an even stronger reaction than the repetition in the last issue: “Holy crap, they’re actually doing this”.
And it’s worth repeating, those pages were free story, you got the same number of pages of gorgeous McKelvie artwork as any other issue.
But every reaction is valid. If you felt shortchanged in the moment, I get it. I’ll fight you, but I get it. And if anything, reading different opinions on storylines in WicDiv has really helped clarified my own thoughts on the strengths & weaknesses of the series.
This may end up being my favourite page of the whole series. Such a pretty location with beautifully coloured lighting, interrupted by such a creepy entrance out of nowhere, and then the fucking terror in those eyes, and the horror of that gore, and the existential dread from the lettering of that whisper.
Wow.
If I remember correctly, Gillen said somewhere that #45 would be the last issue. Assuming WicDiv continues with the current cover format until the end, my guesses for the final six issues are:
1. Present Day Minerva - Probably the last issue of Mothering Invention.
2. Cassandra
3. Mimir
(that leaves Sakhmet as the only main character without a portrait, It seems unlikely she would receive a cover now but hopefully McKelvie and Wilson release a print to complete the set.
4. Badb or Gentle Annie - whatever issue resolves the Morrigan/Baphomet storyline.
After that we’re into repeat characters unless i’m forgetting somebody.
5. Laura - It seems only fitting to end where we started to show her full journey.
6. Idk. One of the decapitated gods maybe? One of the Valkyrie or Norns seem unlikely. Just David Blake’s boring-ass unmasked head? Do we get Badb AND Gentle Annie? Some sort of morbid punchline a la issue #11 and #33? A pop art exploding/teleported head? BETH? THE GREAT DARKNESS? FUCKING OWLY?
August 2013: Baal & Mimir Ascend
1 January 2014: Laura meets Lucifer
11th January 2014: Lucifer ‘dies’
3 August 2014: Laura Ascends (and worries about the cigarette for seven months)
23 September 2014: Persephone returns (Commercial Suicide takes place in just a month and a half. for us, Laura was gone almost a year)
1st January 2015: Imperial Phase begins. Around christmas, Laura is sleeping with Baal and Baphomet.
5 March 2015: Sakhmet learns they’ve been lying to her.
8 March 2015: Minerva kills Sakhmet (events moving much quicker that I realised)
9 March 2015: Laura tells Baal she’s theee months pregnant. (At what point in this timeline did she learn this??)
It only really struck me working out this timeline how different the gods life expectancies are. Baal has five months left. Laura has 1 year five months (enough time to give birth and raise a child for a year). Those are entirely different mindsets.
It makes me wonder what the final issues of WicDiv will look like. If Laura or Cassandra beat Minerva they’ll have a year without Baal/Woden alive/empowered as antagonists.
If we reach that point, what the hell does that look comic look like?
To me, the “I’ve missed you” panels in issue 36 came across as genuine affection.
Ananke murders her sister across 500 years. She begins to feel the weight of that murder but continues on. Over the next 5000ish years, she keeps her resolve strong and only allows the guilt to get to her a few times.
If I had to guess, issue 38 will be about Ananke drunkenly confiding the psychological toll of her actions to Robert Graves, and the monster known as Gillen will make me feel sorry for her somehow.
Now Baal has joined the growing list of Gods Who Aren’t Who They Claim To Be, i’m even more eager to learn which religion Tara derives from. It would be unlike WicDiv to leave that thread dangling.
I’ve been chewing over the revelations in the latest issue, and the big take-away thought i’ve had so far is:
Ananke chooses “which gods take the children” and seems to be doing so in order to “cage” them & generally has an adversarial relationship with them and of course needs them to “destroy themselves.”
SO…it would seem a pretty valid reading to say that Ananke has been choosing which gods to put into which kids based on which god would be the WORST fit for them. More specifically, she pairs them with the god that aligns with their most negative traits and destructive tendencies. She gives them the powers and pretense to indulge their worst (or most dangerous) impulses and boy, do they go for it.
She gives the obsessive work-aholic historian the ability to divine the past. So Cass wastes six months of her life on a dead-end puzzle and probably does permanent damage to her digestive system with all that coffee.
She gives a self-effacing hardcore altruist a hivemind, and Umar destroys his own mind trying to save everyone he’s connected to.
She tells a naive weeaboo that she’s a reincarnated Shinto goddess and just like that, Hazel is granted the divine right to culturally appropriate from the Japanese with no remorse or self-reflection. She doesn’t have to *learn* about Shinto if she’s literally Amaterasu!
etc.
Hmmm, this makes a lot of sense.
Edgy and unfulfilled teen becomes literally Satan so all hell can break loose.
Warhammer nerd gets Nergal, so he feels even more humiliated.
A Desi girl gets (some) Tara and is told that she has to figure it out, not crossing out the Hindu Tara.
A neglected and abused teen gets cat goddess, which is saying volumes if you remember her speech about “cats not giving a fuck”.
There must be some another irony about Ball getting such a hypermasculine god.
I think we’re onto something…
This is interesting, although it doesn’t really track with Inanna:
Cripplingly shy teen breaks out of his cocoon as the best version of himself.
