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Kieron Gillen And Jamie McKelvie Announce The Wicked And The Divine – Not Phonogram 3 – At Image Expo – Updated

Published Thu, 09 Jan 2014 13:50:11 -0600

Last updated Thu, 09 Jan 2014 19:00:41 -0600

David Dissanayake writes:

Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are NOT putting out Phonogram 3 yet. First they'll be doing The Wicked and The Divine.

Every 90 years, Gods are born onto earth, but in two years they die, according to this comic. The story is set in 2014 and follows these earth born gods in their short lives.

Doing Phonogram 3 straight away felt like a betrayal of where their heads were at, so they wanted to do this new on-going series, according to the duo. The first arc will be drawn by McKelvie, then the pair will do Phonogram 3, then friends of theirs will draw the second arc of The Wicked and The Divine, then McKelvie will be back to draw the third arc.

There will be a style-blog for The Wicked and The Divine. The pair of creators want to keep up what they were doing with Young Avengers, and keeping with those themes.

Updated from press release:

What if every 90 years the gods were reincarnated? Coming this 2014, Kieron Gillen (THREE, PHONOGRAM, Young Avengers) and Jamie McKelvie (PHONOGRAM, SUBURBAN GLAMOUR, Young Avengers) team up to infuse new life into the old mythological characters in THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE. The new ongoing series will feature guest creators and surprise arcs with alternate endings that will bring the gods of mythology to life.

Twelve gods will be briefly reincarnated in order to perform miracles like superheroes and bask in celebrity fame. But for the first time, there may be a thirteenth god reincarnated, and lucky number thirteen is tipping the delicate balance.

"The idea of playing superheroes as celebrity isn't exactly new," explained Gillen. "However, it's always played cynical. The celebrity characters are always the debased bad guys, or at least the cautionary tale and wandering from the road of truth. It's always implicitly arguing that these people are worse than the heroes who came before them because they're on the cover of a magazine and they do a bit of coke. We're not interested in that. We're anti-that. We've all had pop-stars save our life."

As if superhero-like gods reincarnated isn't enough to draw readers in, Gillen promises a hefty dose of drama and mystery as well. "There'll be a lot of fights, drama, emotions, secrets, and kissing," hinted Gillen. "Worth noting is the question of whether the lead ends up being a God is the story to begin with. As far as the world knows, there's only twelve gods who appear. There may be a mystery going on."

THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE is a new ongoing fantasy action series coming to Image Comics in 2014.