Are There Lesbians? Yes

What Happens:
“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 Verdict:
Gods are dying before they’re supposed to and everyone is blaming Baphomet whom no one is able to find. Baal is influenced into tracking down The Morrigan who is then imprisoned as she is the Pantheon’s only lead to finding him. In other news Tara kills herself with the aid of Ananke, who once again blames her murders on the AWOL Baphomet. We also get an insight into the lives of Tara, Amaterasu, The Morrigan and Sakhmet before they became gods. Woden turns up at one point and proves that not only is he an asswipe but he’s an asswipe who’s not even in command of himself… oh and that Sex Criminals exists in the same universe as WicDiv. Some questions are answered and others are only lampshaded, with yet more questions being asked! Yes, it’s all go in another exiting installment of The Wicked and The Divine!

The Verdict:
Compared to the first two TP’s I found the story a little hard to follow in “Commercial Suicide.” I feel like there was probably a lot of important information provided but it was in such a piecemeal fashion and from so many different perspectives that I had trouble keeping up. With Jaime McKelvie also out of commission for most of the issues, the art style jumped around a bit which, while refreshing to see some new styles (and some I particularly loved), it proved to be a bit distracting and had me missing McKelvie’s clean lines and bright colours. That being said, with each issue focusing on the POV of a different god, I found the art styles tended to reflect their temperaments very well.

I am a massive mythology nerd and I love this series to death, I also deeply appreciate the certain touch that Gillen has where almost all his characters are on the LGBTQA+ spectrum (just check out the new Young Avengers series to see what I mean.) Of course it wouldn’t be a Kieron Gillen comic without Major Character Death and yet again, just as you start to love someone, they wind up dead in classic WicDiv head-exploding fashion. In this case it’s Tara, who has been mentioned in previous issues but who we’ve only just met. Naturally I fell in love with her almost immediately and click-boom, she dead. Thanks a lot Kieron.

As previously mentioned, each of the issues in “Commercial Suicide” is from the POV of a different child-turned-god (and yes they’re pretty much all teenagers or kids, which can get easy to forget) and gives us different reactions to the incarceration of The Morrigan and the death of Tara. Mostly however, it serves to provide a welcome view into the lives of some members of the Pantheon before they became the gods we know and love. Even if the jumping around made the plot a little difficult to follow I definitely enjoyed the more in-depth look into the more personal lives of the gods and their different level of involvement in the deaths that keep occurring. Unfortunately not much information is provided why Ananke is cheerfully killing everyone although I suspect it has something to do with her own eternal life. I’m also beginning to suspect that the whole “twelve gods” thing is imposed by her only, as they seem to be popping up everywhere… that or it’s the curse/gift’s own reaction to the murders – a whole, The Must Always Be Twelve kinda deal.

Of course after the cliffhanger ending of “Fandemonium” the main question is whether or not Laura is still alive… after all, as Persephone the goddess of the underworld and rebirth, she had effing better be. Unfortunately it is not until the very end that we are once again left hanging with the barest of scraps of information – the name Persephone on a bar setlist. So, once again, I am left eagerly awaiting the next installment.