Every Superhero Needs His Theme Music

TIM:

It was the suit that did it.

Jamie McKelvie has an immense talent for costume design (one only has to look at how many of his creations have become cosplay mainstays) and in particular for style choices that render a character iconic without placing them in an actual costume. From David Kohl’s black, black and more black to America Chavez’s star motif, he has an astounding understanding of what makes a character instantly identifiable.

For Lucifer in The Wicked + The Divine, it was her flawless white suit, and as Luci battled Baal and Sakhmet in issue #5, I noted that, while Baal’s suit was burnt away, Luci’s remained unblemished, with nary a scorch, scratch or blood splatter, until the moment of her death.

In the real world, suits carry all sorts of meaning, but in the world of superhero comics, suits tend to mean one thing – villains. Heroes who wear suits are thin and far-between, and are almost always morally ambiguous in some way, from the paranoid Question to the autocratic Jack Hawksmoor. Meanwhile, villains in suits include Lex Luthor, Kingpin and about half of Batman’s rogues gallery.

But wait. All this oh-so-clever of tailoring semiotics is irrelevant – The Wicked + The Divine isn’t a superhero comic.

Is it?

Looking at certain sections of #5, one could be mistaken for thinking otherwise. Baal and Sakhmet’s assault on Luci is pure Marvel Comics kineticism, albeit with a better fashion sense – check out how Baal’s initial impact is powerful enough to send rubble flying across the panel borders.

It’s a dramatic shift from the relatively restrained power struggles and personal drama of earlier issues, but we can see the first traces of this development when Luci first reveals her powers. That Ben-Day Dot effect is like the more stylised world of traditional superhero comics pushing through into this serious examination of mortality, belief and the relationship between art, artists and fans. Whenever the gods use their powers, some of that sense of the fantastic leaks into the world.

When Luci decides not to play by the rules established by Ananke and the other gods of the pantheon, she also breaks to rules governing the conventions of the book’s genre. Flaunting her powers and drawing Baal and Sakhmet into a public conflict takes the book from a supernatural drama that sits comfortably in the mold of Vertigo or modern Image to something a lot closer to the overblown struggles of Marvel or DC.

This shift in genre also alters how the characters work. When the gods are playing at being artists and pop stars, tied down by constraints and ceremony, their morality and differing roles are a mess of grey tones, filled with ambiguity. When they embrace their divine heritage and show the world (and the readers) what they are truly capable of, the lines seem more clearly drawn. Lucifer becomes a villain on the rampage (she has, after all, killed at least two men, escaped from custody and set a chunk of north London on fire) while Baal is the hero trying to bring her march of destruction to an end.

It all comes back to the suit. Blood smeared across her face, echoing Bowie’s Aladdin Sane and the Joker in equal measure, Luci could have walked out of the pages of a Big Two crossover. Meanwhile, Baal’s suit (in a heroic tone of primary red) is burnt away to reveal his superhuman abs and the Shazam-esque necklace hanging prominently over his chest like an emblem.

In this moment, as they unfurl their true nature and demonstrate their miraculous might, they are far beyond human. They are icons and archetypes, bringing the fire of the fantastic to the mundane mortal world. Sound familiar?

Tim's Twitter account describes him as ‘A Bert in the streets but an Ernie in the sheets’. Sounds about right. His blog wanders from pop from pen-and-paper RPGs, and his Tumblr combines cute animals, interesting facts and feminism into the delicious paste you’ve always dreamed of.