Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: felipe watanabe, image, kyle higgins, ordinary gods

Kyle Higgins and Felipe Watanabe Launch Ordinary Gods at Image in July

Published Wed, 21 Apr 2021 18:02:09 -0500

Image Comics has announced a new series launching this July by Kyle Higgins and Felipe Watanabe. Ordinary Gods is the name, and a press release from Image has the details.

Perfect for fans of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández's The Old Guard and Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw's God Country, this monumental new series of mythic proportions will debut with an extra-length first issue. Each issue will also feature stunning, wraparound cover art from such artists as Dave Johnson, Nicola Scott, Declan Shalvey, Rod Reis, Tula Lotay, Dan Panosian, and series artist Watanabe, all with colors by the Eisner Award winning Matt Wilson.

The Luminary. The Prodigy. The Brute. The Trickster. The Innovator. Five gods from a realm beyond our own, leaders in the "War of Immortals." At least, they were—before they were trapped, sent to a planet made into a prison, forced into an endless cycle of human death and reincarnation.

Ordinary Gods follows 22-year-old Christopher. He's got two loving parents and a 12-year-old sister. He works at a paint store. He's in therapy. He's one of the Five. Which means, in order to save everyone he cares about, Christopher will have to reconnect with his past lives and do the unthinkable: become a god again.

Ordinary Gods #1 (Diamond Code MAY210060) will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, July 7.

A comic about gods living in the world of humans is one of the Five Essential Comic Book Pitches Every Creator Needs If They Want to Land an Image Comics Series About One of the Five Things Image Comics Greenlights Series About (remind us to write that clickbait article sometime). And Kyle Higgins is a smart man and he's been working on this pitch for years.

"Sometimes an idea is so good, it's impossible to ignore. Even if it initially seems impossible to crack, you circle back to it time and time again, bringing with you new life experiences and concepts learned from other projects. And even if it takes ten years before you're ready to announce the book to the world, that's okay. Because, as Ordinary Gods will be exploring, everything's connected for a reason," said Higgins in what the Image press release calls "an exclusive scoop on the announcement with SYFYWIRE" even though it was obviously an arranged "exclusive" with Image's PR department, part of the symbiotic relationship between comic book publisher and comic book news website, which is fine, but then don't pretend the SYFYWIRE reporter was Lois Lane investigating the existence of this Image Comics series for months before finally breaking the story and releasing a scoop.

Where were we? Oh yeah, Higgens continued: "This is a book that I've been working on for many years, alongside an incredible cast of artistic partners and collaborators, to try to tell a generational action epic that spans eras, worlds, dimensions and the connections between them all. And that's just issue one."

Oh, and Watanabe was also involved in this interview. SYFYWIRE's investigative journalism not only led to this huge scoop, but they tracked down not one but both creators involved in the project? Somebody call the Pullitzer committee! Here's what Watanabe had to say: "After the first conversation with Kyle about the Ordinary Gods, I already knew I was facing something powerful. And it happened to be a brilliant idea, which took a long way to get to my hands, though right on time to get the best of me. Getting closer to the release of Ordinary Gods just enhances the feeling I have of how amazing it has been being part of the process of creation of such universe, among such talented people, over the past few years. I mean, since the beginning of the story, there were so many cool things, with characters who seemed to be common like us, but who held within themselves the power that was unknown until then."

Press release shenanigans aside, it certainly looks nice. Check out the art above and below, and look for Ordinary Gods #1 in stores in July.