Our new series for 2015! Daily Constitutional editor Adam takes us on a Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London – 20 stops on a metropolis-wide search for all things illustrated.
He'll be taking in everything from Gillray and Hogarth, to Scooby Doo and on to Deadpool and beyond! In addition he'll guide you to the best in London comic book stores as well as galleries that showcase the best in the cartoonist's art.
Panel 10: The Wicked + The Divine
Last week I added Orbital Comics, the comic book store in Great Newport Street to our Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of
London.
This week, Orbital comics are joining our
tour with a great recommendation for a London-set comic book – The Wicked + The
Divine by Keiron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie.
In terms of location I am delighted to say
that we're heading London transpontine – I am that most derided of Londoners: a
South Londoner trapped in a North Londoner's body. One day they'll make
documentaries, maybe even a comic book, about my kind.
The Wicked + The Divine kicks off in
Brockley, SE4, an area of London that was part of Kent until the 1880s…
The
Brockley Jack Theatre can be found there, housed in a Victorian Pub. Spike
Milligan lived in Brockley when he first arrived in this country from India. The entertainers Marie Lloyd and Lily Langtry both lived in the area.
And it is currently home to one of London's most informative blogs Brockley
Central – brockleycentral.blogspot.co.uk – the liveliness of the blog
being very much a reflection of the vibrancy of the area.
This vibrancy aside, Brockley remains a
contrastingly prosaic launch pad for such a fantastical tale.
But it is a wild tale indeed that starts in the suburban South London street depicted above.
The Wicked + The Divine is a fantasy in
which the gods return to earth every 90 years. In the 21st Century their
special abilities see them treated as both super heroes and as celebrities.
What ensues is a great mix of chaos and smart commentary on 21st century fame
and power.
There seems to be something in the ether at
the moment with comic books and gods. It's a natural fit, of course: didn't
Prometheus steal fire from the Gods to help mankind at great personal risk to
himself? What's that if not classic superhero behaviour?
And on the same comic book racks of 2015
where we pick up The Wicked + The Divine, we can also find God Is Dead (there's
ol' Nietzsche again, 'e popped up earlier in another Kieron Gillen work
featured in this tour, Über, read that post HERE). God is Dead (Avatar Press)
is a spectacularly bloody look at what might happen if the gods of all creeds
and cultures and eras all came back at once to claim the earth for their own. Much
less bloody is The Life After, in which Ernest Hemmingway leads us on a tour of
an "alternative heaven", an after life for suicides (as I blog, issue no.6 of The Life After is out this week v. exciting,
another trip to Orbital is in the offing.)
I'm tempted to speculate that the modern
comic book writer seems compelled to help the 21st Century reader fill the
belief-shaped space vacated by organised religion
But then if I'm not careful I'll end up in Pseud's Corner in Private Eye again – see my earlier post.
It's certainly the case that god is on our
minds – as I keep pointing out in reference to the timing of this series, we
live in a world where people who draw pictures get killed in the name of god.
The crime writer Ian Rankin once observed
that prize-winning literary fiction often tends to be set in the past, while
crime writers address the issues of contemporary society. The same could be
said of the modern comic book (no coincidence that Rankin himself has turned to
authoring illustrated fiction in his post-Inspector Rebus years). If historians
100 years hence want to know how we lived – and what we feared – at the start
of the 21st Century they would do well to look at our comic books.
Jamie McKelvie's artwork (the colourist is Matthew Wilson) is seductive. It
always makes me think of the music of Erik Satie: like Satie's piano pieces,
McKelvie's lines at first appear calm, almost obedient. Yet within that
calmness lurks the ability for theatrical shock and drama. The clean lines lure the
reader into a false sense of security and when the narrative takes its regular
hyper-real turns, the drama is thus heightened as the hitherto realistic
drawings burst into life.
The crisp naturalism of the drawings is the
perfect companion to the wild narrative flights of Gillen, a writer (as we have
already scene with Über) of great imaginative gifts. For older readers such as
I, Gillen is impressive in that he is a writer totally at home in his milieu,
comfortable in his own writerly skin. Not at any point does he have to big-up
the medium, to explain that comic books can carry a meaningful tale. Both
writer and artist also work for the mighty Marvel comics. And Marvel is lucky
to have them.
Brockley is the starting point for the
narrative but we range all over London, from Homerton to The Strand. The
old tube station on The Strand is one of my favourite pages in The Wicked +
The Divine so far…
I love the lettering (by Clayton Cowles) descending the page as the characters break in to the disused tube station.
The Wicked + The Divine is an ongoing series and the first five issues are collected in The Wicked + The Divine: The Faust Act, on sale now…
… writer Kieron Gillen is appearing at Orbital Comics for a signing on 7th February. Full details HERE.
Visit The Wicked + The Divine website at www.wicdiv.com
We'll
bring you more recommendations from Orbital Comics soon, as well as D.C Thomson
in Fleet Street, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as our Cartoon & Comic Book Tour of London continues…
A London Walk costs £9 – £7 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.
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