“The Wicked and The Divine” by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
I love mythology. When I was a kid, I devoured Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaires’ books of Greek and Norse myths. That led me to fall in love with Neil Gaiman’s novel “American Gods” and enjoy catching references in Bill Willingham’s “Fables” comics. So it should be no surprise that Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s comic series “The Wicked and The Divine” is something that I would thoroughly enjoy.
In this alternate reality, 12 gods are randomly reincarnated into young humans every 90 years and then given a life expectancy of two years. Yet what’s interesting is that they don’t know they’re gods until the Greek goddess Ananke grants them divinity. The new gods also then keep both their human memories and recover the ones from past lives.
The series starts when Lucifer is framed for murder, and the story goes more out of control from there because, well, they are gods after all — famous for holding grudges and interfering in the lives of mortals. Being gods, they also loved to worshipped, so they become pop stars.
Each god is like a genre of music and some are explicitly modeled on rock stars like Prince and Davis Bowie. Sakhmet looks like Rhianna, Dionysus holds raves, and the colors, bold lines and unique speech bubbles give each god depth.
I can practically hear the music leap off the page. But for those who can’t, or diehard fans who want a little extra, there’s even an official Spotify playlist that’s a perfect accompaniment while you read.