30 Days of Getting TWATD: Day One

So, we’ve been biding our time, but obviously we’re jumping on this bandwagon.

DAY ONE
Favourite Issue (not including Commercial Suicide)

Alex: I feel like it’s the obvious pick, but… #11. I wrote just recently about the effect that issue had on me, so let’s just steal directly from that, eh? 

As far as I’m concerned, issue #11 of The Wicked + The Divine is a sacred text. Starting with that cover, which essentially says ‘steel yourself for the worst’. The contents quickly deliver on that promise and then, just when you think you’re safe, do it all over again. It’s an incredible one-two punch to the vital organs. 

I remember shakily putting down the tablet after I finished, pausing to collect my eyebrows from their new position on the ceiling, and immediately firing up Bat for Lashes’ Laura with a lump in my throat. It wasn’t a happy moment, exactly, but it’s one I remember fondly.

Tim: With Alex picking one of The Wicked + The Divine’s big shocking death issues, it feels only appropriate that I pick the other one. Issue #5.

It’s easy to misremember Luci’s death as the full stop of this issue. After all, it’s where the first arc has been building to, and it’s a hell of a moment (pun not intended). But in fact it comes about two-thirds of the way through, giving us plenty of time to languish in the bloody aftermath of the event. 

The visceral panel after the page of black, with Laura clutching Luci’s headless corpse. That fantastic, cinematic pull back over Highbury & Islington. The dull ache of the pages afterwards, spaced with panels of dark void where Laura’s tiny voice echoes. And that final image of Laura’s cigarette blazing into life that we hang with as it slowly fades to black.

Even before that, we get god-versus-god action on the streets of London and Laura’s desperate dash into the tunnels of the underground, our first glimpse of how far she’ll go to achieve what she thinks is right. It’s an issue that echoes forward and backward throughout the series, but remains a perfect unit, in and of itself.

And hey - we get our first (albeit second-hand) line from Tara, “If you exist, you’re staring at me”. Boy does that read differently now, right?