Zeb larson reviews The Wicked + The Divine #9…
It’s time for a private audience with Anake, she who has protected and judged the Pantheon for thousands of years. Yes, it’s time for an interview… with an umpire. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Also: Baphomet being all goth and having a nice little mope.
The deeper you get into this book, the more intelligent it becomes. Obviously, the “celebrity as godhood” angle is an important part of the book and a reason for much of the fun artwork. I think more interesting than elevating David Bowie to the status of a deity is the tensions between creators/poets and critics/scholars in understanding each other. That underpins much of this particular issue, which makes it the smartest of the series so far.
Cassandra spends this issue sitting down for an interview with Ananke, who shares some secrets of the pantheon. According to Ananke, the gods have been visiting for thousands of years, but were stymied in bringing civilization to humans because of their short lifespans. Eventually, Ananke volunteered to serve as a mentor to future generations to allow progress to take root, sacrificing her own divinity in the process. In the course of this conversation, the twelfth member of the pantheon is revealed.
So first, let’s get my criticisms out of the way. This issue continues the “let’s wander around and meet another god” formula I was complaining about last issue, but at least the time spent with Ananke and Cassandra makes for a good read. We get some really biting criticism of negative critics with Ananke’s observation that not experiencing pleasure in another’s art does not automatically negate it for everybody else, a dig at Cassandra’s whole way worldview. Ouch. Was that aimed at me too?
Also, I’ve gotten to a point where I’m really tired of Laura as a protagonist, because she doesn’t really do anything. Even her thoughts are sort of vapid. Is the point of this arc that she shouldn’t be a deity because she has nothing to say and nothing to contribute (at least, at this point)? Perhaps, and that would make for a really interesting idea. Her contribution to this issue is to come home and cry because she’s not a god. I had to put up with that from the theater kids I hung out with in high school, and it’s no more endearing after a decade. Just wanting people to pay attention to you (an attractive perk of divinity) is irritating.
So, how fitting is it that the book explaining this pantheon and divinity is The White Goddess by Robert Graves? This book, which has been loudly and frequently criticized by academics for wildly distorting the popular imagination of Celtic mythology, is a telling choice. The book’s lackluster reputation among experts isn’t necessarily a problem for McKelvie and Gillen, because the book is such an effective representation of the poet versus critic tension in this book. Graves accused his critics of failing to understand the poetry of mythology, and scholars accused Graves of stepping outside his expertise (Roman and Greek mythology), misunderstanding the languages he worked in, and poor archaeological evidence. Does this sound at all like Laura and Cassandra talking to each other? Of course, at a specific level I’m unclear as to how Wicked + Divine relates to Graves’ theories of a feminine goddess inspiring poetry because so much of the pantheon here is male and the gods aren’t muses so much as creators, but perhaps it will relate later on.
This arc has been a slow one, almost maddeningly at times, but it’s been worth it because of an issue like this one. Let’s see what Gillen and McKelvie have in store for us next time.
Zeb Larson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONsp_bmDYXc&feature=player_embedded&list=PL18yMRIfoszFLSgML6ddazw180SXMvMz5
Originally published March 25, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
