Review – The Wicked + The Divine #13 (Image Comics)

Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artists: Tula Lotay,
Release Date: 5th August 2015

The Wicked + The Divine has always had plenty to say about the grotesqueries of celebrity culture but this week’s issue really hits the mark and gives the blade a nice twist for good measure. Unlucky #13 shares the brazenly self-conscious title of the current arc, ‘Commercial Suicide’ and the first scene centres on that tricky balance between pushing yourself creatively and completely alienating your audience.

We’re finally introduced to the infamous and as yet elusive ‘Fucking Tara’ and find out just how she earned that particular term of endearment. Her fall from grace in the roundhouse perfectly shows the consequences when a God falls out of favour with their devotees and just how thin the divide between love and hate can be. Tara makes the critical mistake of deviating from her usual divine performance to play a few adolescent songs and is met with nothing but vitriol.

The decision to use a different artist for each issue is making more and more sense as this arc continues, now that the narrative has splintered off from Laura’s perspective. Tula Lotay’s style seems to embody Tara’s distinct aesthetic, making the issue completely her own. The colours in particular seem to harmonise with her look and shift subtly in response to her emotions. WicDiv has always been particularly adept at illustrating a culture permeated by social media, without being at all gimmicky or distracting and this week is another prime example. The two page spread in particular, near the end of the issue is awful and brilliant – and probably all too familiar for anyone who’s made the mistake of being a woman on the internet.

Kieron Gillen plays with a lot of ideas in Tara’s story but these all swirl around the bleak message she reads in the world around her: ‘I’m here for people’s pleasure’. Ironically she feels like the property of others even more as a supposedly powerful God, than as an 11-year-old being objectified by a passing douchebag. It’s clear that becoming a symbol is just a shade away from becoming an object: in either case you get erased along the way.

Each issue of The Wicked + the Divine is a brilliant reminder of why it inspires such hysterical devotion from its fans, and why it can afford to risk that by making such bold and risky decisions. Let’s be honest, the only other property that can get away with wantonly murdering so many of its best characters is Game of Thones, and WicDiv does it much better. As much as I’m missing Laura (and as always, Luci) the series has so much to say while having a damn good time doing it that I, for one, remain devout.

Rating: 4/5.

The writer of this piece was: Kirsty Hunter
Kirsty Tweets from @kirstythehunter.