Don’t Be Mean: Contrasting Godhood in Kieron Gillen Comics

This was originally meant to be part of a The Wicked and The Divine zine, but due to several factors outside of my control, the zine fell through. So, here's something I wrote for it. Enjoy.

"I couldn't be everything you needed me to be.
And you saw what happened any time
I tried to be anything else."

As many of the readers of this zine are aware, The Wicked and The Divine (WicDiv) is not the first time Kieron Gillen has explored the implications of Godhood. That honor goes to his run on Journey into Mystery (JiM), which focused on the God Loki as well as the narrative of Gods within the Marvel Universe. This ranged from staging a Ragnarok-esque situation to teaming up with the 20^th century Manchester Gods to blow up Stonehenge.

The approaches both WicDiv and JiM take to exploring their gods’ symbolism couldn’t be more different. JiM, for example, portrays Godhood from the point of view of a fictional character. The story revolves around Childe Loki and his attempts at redemption, to find a way out of the cycles of betrayal and evil because they’ve grown repetitive and, even worse, predictable (indeed, the story opens in a one shot drawn by Jamie McKelvie wherein Loki delivers a soliloquy about this very issue). Childe Loki is certainly aware of his lack of agency as part of a story of someone else’s design as at numerous points of the story, Childe Loki addresses the reader directly. But he still tries to better himself, even as it becomes clear we won’t let him. (Loki is, after all, a popular villain.)

There are other examples of creations fighting against their creator’s cruel narratives. There small stories like Noble Sigurd’s rewriting of the Norse Pantheon into a mundane narrative and Childe Loki’s rebellion against his parents by siding with the Manchester Gods (indeed, all of Gillen’s later Young Avengers run pushes this bit even further). But the most telling is that of Leah. Leah was once the handmaiden to the Goddess Hela (note the name) and her mistress enslaved her to Childe Loki. Over the course of their relationship, they became close to one another, developing a bond akin to friendship. And then, Hela killed her before Childe Loki’s eyes. But little did Childe Loki know, Leah was alive in a different form. For she was once a character in a story Childe Loki weaved as part of his scheme to defeat an enemy of Asgard. The ink on the page to describe her was made flesh into reality and found her story lacking. And so she rebels against Childe Loki, until he writes a better story for her. And when her true story ends tragically, she swears revenge upon Loki, as he does to his “writer.” Given this, the tale of JiM seems to tell is that we have control of our Gods, but they will fight against us for a sliver of freedom. And they can hurt us too. After all, didn’t you cry when Childe Loki died at the end?

Conversely, WicDiv approaches its gods from the perspective of pop stars, poets, and other creative types. This is blatantly seen in the influences of the gods ranging including William Blake, Gerard Way, Charlie Chaplin, David Bowie, and Kate Bush, among others. (Indeed, this is most prevalent with 455’s Lucifer Julius who is on the surface akin to Nero, to the point where he is playing an instrument as Rome burns. But at his core, Lucifer Julius is in fact an actor performing as an emperor.) This is done to literalize the perspective an audience has of the creators who gives them the art they desire.

This is perhaps most telling in the Tragedy of Tara, the most sympathetic of all the Gods. She is perhaps best compared to Kesha, as both had to deal with the fall out of people in power abusing them for their own ends both of which hinging on sexual assault (though Tara’s is only ever verbal [that we know of]). Where they diverge is in how their more personal work is received. Kesha was able to get out from under her abuser’s heel and produced the album Rainbow. It was less pop than her previous work, but was met with acclaim by both critics and listeners. Before being cursed with Godhood, Tara performed poetry readings that were very personal to her. She tried to perform one the night before she committed suicide, and was met with “Do your thing, you selfish bitch” and other pleasant remarks. When on Twitter, she’s met with comments akin to those of that night, some even worse. Because fans treat our Gods like they’re not real, and can be dehumanized. And in response to all that cruelty at the non-human, Tara decides to kill herself. If the Wicked and the Divine has anything to say about creators, it’s that they’re human too.

But at the heart of these tales of Gods is the creation of Art. Where WicDiv looks at the relationship between the creator and the audience and JiM is about the creator and the creation, both ask for empathy between the two sides; an acknowledgement that Gods have emotions and needs. In then end, if Gillen has anything of a thesis statement between these two works, it’s that we should be kind to our Gods, because they’re as much people as you or me or any other fan. And… “You have no idea what people are going through.”

“Don’t be mean. You don’t have to be mean. ‘Cause remember: No matter where you go, there you are.” 

-Buckaroo Banzai