Oblique Strategies

Welcome back to Tim + Alex Get TWATD. We’re sticking with our new format, which has Alex and Tim alternating writing duties each month, to match the standalone different-artist-each-issue nature of WicDiv’s current arc.

Below, Tim chats about issue #14′s formal experiments, and where the issue fits in the Gillen/McKelvie canon. For us, the essay is relatively spoiler light, but I’ll still put a cut in before he gets heavy. Enjoy!

TIM: Whether you’re reading Big Two superhero comics, Image- or Dark Horse-style creator-owned properties, manga or even self-published indie titles, it’s entirely possible to spend your entire life consuming comics without coming across anything that truly pushes the form.

Writers and artists can produce good or even great stories just using the standard set of tools that have been around since the Golden Age. I could reel off long lists of comics I’ve loved that have never really experimented in form, format or panel construction beyond the occasional gutterless page. But in all their collaborations, Gillen and McKelvie seem to drive each other to bigger things.

Even if it had been an abject failure, issue #14 would have deserved a standing ovation for its pure audacity: constructing an entire comic from existing illustrations from the previous thirteen (plus some pilfered from a sort-of crossover with Sex Criminals) but telling a new story. Fortunately, it’s not a failure of any kind. Instead, the issue recontextualises elements into a new tale so smoothly and gracefully that you could be forgiven for thinking this was a new creation.

Team WicDiv played their cards fairly close to their chest ahead of the release of issue #14, letting the public know only that the issue would centre on bastard EDM-god Woden, that McKelvie would be drawing it (despite this arc supposedly given him time off to complete Phonogram), and that they were doing something special and experimental. While the particulars of the experiment weren’t known, I’d imagine few people had many doubts that they could pull it off. After all, Gillen and McKelvie have history in this regard.

Phonogram: Rue Britannia is fairly straightforward for the most part and, given that it was some of the earliest work for both parties, one would hardly expect them to come out the gate breaking down the conventions of the medium. Still, when David Kohl travels through to the Memory Kingdom of Britpop, we have that astonishing final page as “Common People” reaches its climax and everything except Kohl’s leaping body fades away into an optical illusion that seems to float him above the page.

Come The Singles Club, there are several examples of Gillen and McKelvie screwing with form. There’s issue #4’s single shot of the DJ booth, maintained throughout the entire comic until almost the end, figures staggering in and out of the locked down ‘camera’ of McKelvie’s art. There’s Lloyd’s grimoires in issue #6, lovingly-created homages to Gillen’s zine-kid past, right down to the photocopied collage and large prose sections. And there’s issue #7, the almost-wordless tale of Kid With Knife’s song-powered rampage, with emoticon speech bubbles.

Gillen and McKelvie’s run on Young Avengers could almost be called their finest hour when it comes to experimentation, with each issue containing a double page spread that tackles an action scene in a different form, from issue #1’s three parallel timelines, to issue #4’s isometric diagram fight scene, to issue #7’s infiltration using the outline of Prodigy’s head as panels.

Which brings us to The Wicked + The Divine, and again the pair have been happy to push the envelope, from relatively subtle touches like the all-black pages of Laura’s descent towards The Morrigan’s gig, to the ever-present beat of issue #7’s clubbing section, to issue #13 and the remix/mash-up of Woden’s story.

As well as saluting their ambition, it’s important to note how well McKelvie and Gillen match their experiments to the tone of the story. Lloyd’s grimoires are so central to his character that not seeing them would leave the character half-explored. Young Avengers was the superhero comic as pop single, with every double page spread an awesome guitar solo.

And with #13, not only are we dealing with the Pantheon’s resident DJ and producer, remixing the previous panels into something new, but we have a story that largely looks back at what has happened so far. The comic gives us a new, previously angle on events we’ve already seen, quite literally colouring them in a new light.

Neither Gillen nor McKelvie seem as inclined to experiment with their solo work (although McKelvie’s work on Defenders features some interesting layouts and tricks), suggesting that it’s truly this partnership that drives them to push the limits of what’s possible in a comic book. If it’s producing stories of this quality, I hope they never stop working together.