“Every ninety years twelve Gods return as young people. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are all dead. It’s happening now. It’s happening again.”

The book begins in London, with fan girl Laura attending a music concert of Amaterasu, one of the young Gods, and while there befriends Lucifer, another of the Gods. Lucifer seems to randomly pick Laura, and now Laura is privy to some of the secrets of the Pantheon. We meet several more of the Gods, who are pop-culture saturated enigmas. A murder occurs, but who did it and why? Laura is on the case, along with a reporter, trying to understand more about this generation’s newest Gods and the miracles and power that they wield.

I read a previous Marvel book from the same author/illustrator duo of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, Young Avengers: Style>Substance, and liked many of the fresh illustrations but thought the title was apropos. This book too seems to have a fantastic idea, but an incomplete follow through. I needed a cheat sheet to keep track of who was who, and wish I had discovered the following graphic sooner. The world building was sketchy and character back stories were non-existent. There is the briefest mention that the Gods were originally regular teens, before the deities merged  with them, and this new fame and the knowledge they will be dead in two years corrupts many of them.

Thus, this first volume makes a huge gamble- it doesn’t give you all the information you need about who all the characters are- it deliberately leaves you in the dark on four of the twelve Gods. Will this confuse and piss you off or will you be intrigued and want to read further into the series to put it all together? In my case, it was both. My initial feeling was frustration and wondering why this book had good buzz. But a fantastic college student at my library (MD!) told me the second volume gets much better. The vivid and beautiful art work plus the promising premise of the story are worth the gamble and I have the next few volumes on hold. So…my final decision on whether the series is wicked or divine has not been made yet.

-Nancy

 

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