A Year Older, A Year Wiser

(That’s the title of the piece. It in no way describes Tim + I, who are both still dumb enough to be doing this and still as reliably tardy as ever.)

Hey, it’s a new year, both in the comic and in real life. Funny how these things work out, eh?

We’re now waist-deep in ‘Imperial Phase’, but that New Year spirit remains. There’s debauchery and excess and the hangover that follows, yes, but also resolutions and the promise that things will be different this time. That being a year older means we have changed, moved on, evolved.

One character for whom that is true, if just in the most general sense, is Minerva. When she appears in issue #24, she’s rocking a brand-new style and a new sense of agency in the story. Having your parents splattered into a fine paste in front of you will do wonders for shaking you out of your routine.

Mini’s transformation and subsequent actions are fascinating in their own right, but before we dive into those, let’s take a moment to consider how she’s changed in terms of the story mechanics. 

Prior to this arc, Minerva’s been the most cryptic and least explored member of the Pantheon. She’s not been deemed worthy of a character-focused issue during ‘Commercial Suicide’, nor does she get an interview to explore her psychology in issue #23. In fact, this is only her second appearance on a main cover since the series started (and in the other, she was mostly concealed, trapped behind the machinery of Ananke’s plot).

All of that has to be intentional. We’ve held Mini at arm’s length, and the book has treated her more like a symbol than a character in her own right. Her short blonde hair emphasises her childish features, and her glasses kept us at a distance from her. At best, she was a representation of the stolen youth of the Pantheon, a reminder of their tragically preordained early deaths. At worst, she was a plot device, a cat dangling from a rope in need of saving.

That has all changed now. The death of her parents and of Ananke (on her thirteenth birthday, no less) serves to both free Minerva from her previous restrictions, and thrust her into the centre of the story. Now she is a full-blown character, filled with concerns over Baal and anger at both Ananke and Amaterasu.

While most of the Pantheon have a missing parent or two in their background, Minerva is one of the few for whom that wound is still fresh. The fact that Persephone, the other major one, is now serving as her sort-of adopted mother speaks to how closely their fates are entwined (something that’s emphasised by the callback to issue #2). Each of their reactions serves to illustrate how the other is coping. 

Oh, and hey, I’m sure that perfectly healthy family dynamic they’ve built with Baal won’t blow up in anyone’s face.

More than anything else, Minerva’s transformation in this arc gives her agency. She’s confronting Persephone over her infidelities, she’s vocalising her anger over Amaterasu’s cowardice, and she’s puzzling over the legacy of Ananke, unpicking the unanswered questions left behind in the wake of her death.

Of course, all that new found energy and independence is then threatened by the appearance of the ‘Great Darkness’, but I suspect that even if Minerva is once again endangered by the apparent Big Bad, she won’t be a passive victim this time around, but play an active role in her own (hopeful) rescue.

In the wake of Laura’s apparent death, Alex and I have both asked the question “Who’s the protagonist of the series now?” Well, Laura may have returned (emphasis on the may) but her role has changed. The lines are no longer cleanly drawn, and a question mark hangs over Persephone’s role as ‘The Destroyer’.

The Wicked + The Divine remains, on some level, a murder mystery, in that people keep dying and no-one is quite sure why. And who better to take centre stage in solving a mystery than the Goddess of Wisdom?