Reading roundup: WicDiv, Fangirl, more Whyborne and Griffin/SPECTR

[hamsterwoman]

19. Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie, Matthew Wilson, The Wicked + The Divine, volume 1 -- this was a book L borrowed from Awesome Friend Allie (or, more likely to say, that Awesome Friend Allie pressed on her in an effort to get L into comics), and L read it and confessed to me she enjoyed it (with a great dose of chagrin, 'cos she knew there would

Comments

[_profiterole_]

I haven't read WicDiv 3 yet, but my opinion on WicDiv 1 and 2 is that it's so much wasted potential. All these God characters could be super interesting, but they've got nothing to do except insulting each other and having sex with their fans. Also, the diversity is off the charts, but all my favourite LGBT characters are dead (as usual... fuck this trope! >_>). This series definitely doesn't live up to the hype.

[hamsterwoman]

I am wondering if WicDiv is going to have some kind of payoff or what. It is a really neat set-up, and the individual bits are very cool (I can even give a pass on the gods insulting each other and having sex with their fans thing, because that is kind of a lot of what gods do in real mythology, too), but I don't have a sense of the coherent whole at all...

And, yeah, while the diversity is really impressive (both ethnic and LGBT spectrum), it is definitely also true that my favorite LGBT characters have been killed off (Luci and Inanna; and I'm not sure if Laura is bi or just, like, god-sexual, but if she counts, then her, too).

I'm not sure if the series is playing this trope or (as seems likely) if EVERYONE is going to end up dead, and therefore all the LGBT characters are going to be killed off by virtue of there being LGBT characters here, but it's still annoying, because all my favorites are gone, either killed or transformed (like Cass).

[_profiterole_]

Yeah, it also has neat scenes about fan culture, social media, conventions... But it's not doing much with it.

I'm definitely counting Laura as bi.

I expected them to die at the end of the 2 years, not hunted down one after the other like that. The time limit made me think of The Summer Prince, who lives for a year after being chosen. This book did so much with art and many other themes. WicDiv is:
EXPECTATION: The Summer Prince
REALITY: A shiny Game of Thrones :/

[hamsterwoman]

REALITY: A shiny Game of Thrones :/

Yeah, actually, L, who knows I like ASOIAF, told me (after I finished WicDiv 2) that her friend told her that this series is known as the ASOIAF of comics or something like that, due to the "nobody's safe" / protagonist death thing.

But I don't know that I'm getting much out of that besides shock value, right now... though I'm still intrigued by the premise. I'm not sure who I have left to like, though, character-wise!

I was also not expecting this gradual attrition, although the introduction does support that, I guess, with some surviving members of the old pantheon but everybody else being already dead.

[_profiterole_]

I'm not surprised other people have made the same comparison. For all that it's an overdone comparison, here it works well.

I like Baal, because I really got into Baal/Innana, for the 3 seconds it lasted.

[hamsterwoman]

Baal/Innana, for the 3 seconds it lasted

That did look to have been adorable, but, yeah, pity it was entirely offscreen and over before they had more than two panels together.

I think I've actually not really clicked with Baal -- I like him better than Woden or Minerva, and I find him less confusing that the Morrigan and Baphomet and Dionysus, but as a character he doesn't really speak to me... But maybe that'll change when I read the third collection, since I don't know who else from the pantheon is left for me to actually enjoy. I do like Amaterasu, but she seems to have so far just been there for comic relief...