The Wicked + The Divine Volume 6: Imperial Phase Part 2

Just a short one this time. The Imperial Phase, Part 2 was a quick read. Lots of backstabbing in this one, lots of death, and lots of drama. Cassandra, Dionysius, and Woden put together a show to power up the machine to try to figure out what it's for. Woden tries to use it to mind control all of the attendees. Meanwhile, Baal and company are hunting Sakhmet after she rampaged when she found out the Pantheon had lied to her. 

But the biggest surprise came at the end: it seems that Ananke may not be so dead after all. And she's trying to get one more head from a god or goddess to stave off The Great Darkness...

I definitely can't wait to see where things go from here!

The Wicked + The Divine Volume 5: The Imperial Phase, Part 1

Well, here we are: the first new (for me) The Wicked + The Divine story that I've read since starting the series back in 2016! The Imperial Phase, Part 1 had a hard act to follow (the crazy ending of Rising Action). I wasn't sure where the story would go (and honestly, it kind of felt like the creative team wasn't 100% sure what to do with the first issue after Ananke's death, though I imagine that was on purpose to show how the Pantheon has to figure stuff out now without the Goddess who guided them for millennia). 

This volume opens as a magazine with pieces about different members of the pantheon. The back pages of the book explain how this was put together, and it was really neat: the creative team got their writer friends to do an email exchange with Gillian, who stayed in character as whoever they were interviewing. Then the writers took that email exchange and crafted an article. I thought that was a really neat idea, and it was fun to read one of the actual interviews in the back pages.

The Pantheon are trying to figure out what is true and what is false from what Ananke told them (as well as what the purpose of her crazy machine is), when there starts to be attacks from the Darkness that she warned them about. But rather than working together, they are now split in three: those who primarily want to stop the Darkness, those who want to research everything about their existence (especially with their second year closing in on them), and those who don't care about any of it. But the attacks are increasing, and research is slow going....

I can't wait to see what Part II will bring.

The Wicked + The Divine Vol 1-4 Rereads

I was browsing on Comics Plus, a comic reading app my local library offers, and found most of The Wicked + The Divine is available on it. I never did read any more after finishing Volume 4 back in 2016, so I decided to start it again and see what I think now. I honestly didn't remember much of what happens in the first 4 volumes. But I think I enjoyed them a lot more this time around. 

I just reread what I wrote about these volumes back in 2016. I didn't find the dance party of Dionysus as bad this time around (it was still a bit confusing, but I wasn't trying to follow it super closely either this time - they were partying, and that was good enough). I also just looked up the god Nergal, and he sounds pretty interesting - I'm not sure why Baphomet lied about who he is. I also didn't really get why people didn't like the Goddess Tara so much (but I also didn't read the pages of terrible social media posts about her, so maybe there was something in there?) 

Needless to say, I'm quite enjoying the story this time around, and can't wait to see where things go now that Ananke is dead...