Colourist to the Gods

Once more unto the breach, dear friends! Oh no, wait, hang on, wrong catchphrase.

Anyway, Imperial Phase (Part I) is all wrapped up, which means it’s time for Tim + Alex to throw some more words at their favourite topic – starting with a part of the comic we’ve waited far too long to praise.

(Warning: spoilers for everything up to issue #28 below the cut.)

Alex: It’s not too hard to convey physical power on the comics page. Artists can exaggerate features, warping anatomy to emphasise strength or blurring the details for speed. But when things start to get a little more metaphysical, that’s a trickier proposition.

Powers of a magical, cosmic or telepathic nature aren’t inherently visual, but nevertheless they’re a staple of most genre comics, whether it’s Jean Grey or Akira or Zatanna. Over the years, artists have found a few reliable solutions:

Lettering that puts the emphasis on the magic words being spoken, whether it’s a spell-powering secret in Saga or Jesse’s word of God in Preacher. Kirby Krackle, aka those cool dots of energy you might remember from this week’s Thor Ragnarok trailer. Even bending the comics form itself, something that was used to great effect whenever Billy busted out his magic powers in Young Avengers.

The Wicked + The Divine uses a dash of each of these when it comes to showing the gods’ powers at work, but I reckon the heart of its approach lies somewhere slightly different: Matt Wilson’s colours.

There are gods whose powers are specifically tied to a colour combination, like Baal’s white and purple lightning, or palette, like Dionysus’ rave neons and fluorescents. But whoever’s doing it, when shits gets supernatural – whether on stage or in battle – Wilson brings the fireworks.

As a colourist, Wilson is the best I’ve ever seen at making something look blindingly bright. It works well enough in print, but on a backlit screen – especially at the brightness level I keep my tablet turned up to, battery life be damned – a page turn can leave me blinking like I’ve just emerged into the midday sun.

This is a technique I first saw Wilson applying on another comic about all-powerful gods: Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman’s The Mighty Thor. Dauterman’s linework employs these almost impressionist brush flecks to communicate the gods’ magical powers, and Wilson reliably lights ‘em up like the world’s most sumptuous special FX.

Looping back around to my original point, these bright colours effectively convey a sense of power, lending intensity to something that is ultimately pretty abstract. I have no idea what those circles of light Odin appears to be wielding actually are – but they’re awesome, and he’s a god in a superhero comic, so it just feels right.

And from Odin to Woden. Wilson has brought these skills back to WicDiv, honing them in time for Rising Action, which featured more of the gods’ FX than ever before, and in new configurations and combinations. 

I wasn’t too keen on the arc’s endlessly escalating action sequences – they started to feel gratuitous, though I understand that was kind of the point – but each scene did successfully one-up the last. The sense of scale kept building up to the battle of Valhalla, as more and more colours entered the fray.

Somehow Wilson manages to give each god a distinctive colour so their action pops in the larger scene, while also maintaining a vaguely coherent palette. This might not be as eyeball-searingly awesome as the pyrotechnics, but it’s a quietly impressive bit of craft.

That mixing of powers has returned in Imperial Phase in slightly less explosive fashion, as we see more of the gods interacting in ways that don’t involve trying to kill one another. 

Look at this sequence of panels, and how it manages to communicate the involvement of three characters, only one of whom is actually shown, just by using their signature colours.

Amaterasu blasts onto the page in the sunset colours she has become associated with. She picks up a phone that we wordlessly understand was made by Woden, from the sickly green flow it casts over her face. And finally, all of that is overwhelmed by the purple of Baal’s lightning, setting him up for his big entrance on the page turn.

Those signature colours are so distinctive that Imperial Phase Part I was able to lean on them for its final beat. Issue #28 finishes on a page lifted almost directly from Rising Action, with the addition of a single panel (the one on the right below).

The entire cliffhanger rests on this one colouring effect. The comic is confident that Wilson’s choices will stick enough for the reader to intuitively get what’s happening here, on a number of levels.

First, that these colours are associated with Inanna, which means that presumably this magic isn’t the doing of Ananke, who left the scroll there.

Second, that this is specifically the effect used for his teleportation, which means that the scroll isn’t being destroyed or hidden but transported somewhere. 

Third, that we actually saw these sparkles just last issue, in the form of Amaterasu’s “step-by-starlight kit”, which goes some way to explaining that first thing, given that Inanna is ostensibly dead – and opens up the list of suspects considerably.

Amaterasu herself, for one, especially after the slightly unhinged behaviours she’s been exhibiting the past couple of issues. But also pretty much anyone else because, according to Ammy in issue #27, the “glowing arm-piece” was made by Woden. 

It seems unlikely that Woden was the one using it here, given that he’s just walked out the door, and seemed clueless that Ananke was writing her last will & testament. But that leaves the door pretty much wide open: Baal? Baph? David Blake? Woden’s mystery pink Power Ranger friend? 1831-Woden’s Frankenstein? Someone we’ve not met before?

Whoever did it, it’s pretty remarkable that this much speculation can be pulled from a single splash of colour and particle effects. All hail Matt Wilson.