G.O.D.S.
Jonathan Hickman’s time at Marvel has been, to put it mildly, remarkably successful. “Secret Warriors” overcame a middling first volume to turn into a compelling superhero spy caper, and one of the best Nick Fury stories in decades. His “Fantastic Four” run was a showcase for the man’s penchant for big idea storytelling that never forgot it was about the title characters. “Avengers” and “New Avengers” served to effectively build up a universe-ending threat that culminated in the epic “Secret Wars” event. Then he left and came back with a reinvention of the “X-Men” in “House of X/Powers of X” that defined the franchise for years, before and after he was part of it. These days he’s showrunning the shockingly successful Ultimate Marvel imprint and writing its flagship title “Ultimate Spider-Man.”
Just about everything the man has done at Marvel has turned to gold. Which is how he got the clout to do something that people rarely get to do at this publisher in this day and age: Launch a new title with all-new characters that seeks to redefine a part of this fictional universe while adding something new to it. The direct comics market has become outright hostile to these kinds of things over the years as the existing audience for mainstream superhero comics grows older, more insular, and slowly dies off. Hickman launching a brand-new series, with the tremendously talented Valerio Schiti, was therefore a big flex on his part and arguably the surest test of his magic touch at Marvel. So how’d it go?
Eight issues later and here we are with “G.O.D.S.” first and only collected volume.
A run that short implies two things: That something went VERY wrong in the quality department and it may take years (if not ever) for the creators to live it down. Or that it simply didn’t click with its intended audience and everything that was created for it is doomed for the memory hole, until such a time as someone remembers these things to blow them up to showcase the threat for the next big event. The latter feels very much the case here as it was clear that Hickman was looking to redefine the magical side of the Marvel universe, but didn’t do it in a way that demanded the time and attention of its fanbase.
Which is to say that people didn’t feel that it hit the ground running. The first issue introduces us to Ser Reddwyn. Lord of the Highlands. Root of the World Tree. Salt of the Earth. Avatar to the Powers-that-Be. Wyn to his friends. He and his apprentice Dimitri are investigating a daemonic appearance on this plane while his wife Aiko ponders a job offer from the Natural-Order-of-Things. Then the story jumps ahead ten years to the present day as Doctor Strange attempts to organize a magical counteroffensive to a universe-destroying Babylon Event. Wyn and Aiko’s factions are also involved, they’ve got completely different roles here: Doing the real work and holding off the imminent destruction of the universe, respectively.
The reviews I read for this first issue mostly agreed on the fact that it felt like setup for the stories that were going to be told later. Any kind of buy-in the reader was going to make here was going to largely hinge on how they felt about Hickman’s previous work and not on what they read here. I can see how they reached this conclusion. There’s a lot of expository dialogue setting things up, and while a lot of it carries the writer’s familiar wit, it’s very clear that he’s using it to explain all of these new characters and the Proper Nouns that follow them here. That’s undeniably a drag on the proceedings when a good first issue should hit the ground running regardless of the baggage it carries.
That said, I thought the first issue was arguably the most successful in this volume. Exposition and all. That’s because in addition to giving us a solid introduction to these new characters and the organizations they represent, it tells a complete story in and of itself. It may feel like Hickman is leading you around the nose at times, but it all comes together in the end along with a welcome display of the kind of cleverness I like to see in my superhero comics.
It also leaves some threads to follow for subsequent issues, which aren’t quite as successful. That’s because they start feeling more like explicit setup for future stories. The introduction of Mia as Aiko’s minion as she seeks to rebuild the Centivar of the Natural-Order-of-Things. The training of agents of chaos by the In-Betweener in magical skinner boxes. Oblivion’s appearance as an additional instigator of chaos and destruction. The appearance of the last Cassandra in the world. A school for training Black Swans. There’s clearly a lot going on here and, given the writer’s previous track record, I don’t doubt that he would’ve shown how they relate and their true purpose for the story at some point.
As these plot points stand right now, they’re just empty potential leaving you to wonder at where the writer was going to go with them. It’s entirely possible that he, or another creator could come back and pick them up, but that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen in the near future. Plus, while Hickman’s contributions haven’t exactly been ignored by writers who have followed his runs, it’s been shown that it takes one with a certain set of guts to directly interact with them and produce worthwhile results. Looking in your direction Gillen, Duggan, Ewing, and Spurrier.
Even if these threads and the larger story they represent aren’t going to be answered anytime soon, the volume at least has the decency to end strongly with a couple of stories explicitly focused on Wyn and Dimitri. We finally find out why the latter has been placing beacons all over New York in the penultimate issue as its a high-concept story that encompasses the Russian space program, an area outside time and space and the organisms that inhabit it, and filial devotion. Meanwhile, Wyn gets the final issue mostly to himself as we catch up with him a hundred years later traveling up and down his timestream as he tries to answer one question: Was it all worth it?
Pinning that question on a character we didn’t know about before the start of this series seems like it’s asking a lot. However, Hickman has always been good with spinning these high-concept sci-fi stories in the Marvel universe. He understands that you can go as crazy as you want, but you still need some grounded (and well-executed) human concerns to make the reader care about them in the end. The writer does that again with Dimitri here and Wyn, to an even better extent. I even buy the uncertainty hinted at in the final choice presented to him because he’s only been part of this fictional universe for a brief time by the evidence of this volume. It’s entirely possible he might decide to wish it all away for the hope of a better life for himself and his wife.
Even though the writing has its issues, the art is top-notch from start to finish. Schiti has shown time and again – most recently on the “Judgment Day” event – that there’s really nothing he can’t draw. He gets to do that again here as the first issue alone requires him to show us the homes of various magical Marvel entities, the heart(s)-ripping exorcism of a daemon, the breaking down of reality under a cosmic assault as a rogue mage exterminates its guardians, and a heart-to-heart talk between a husband and wife as one of them tries to convince the other that their marriage is over. Things get even more varied in subsequent issues, which made me glad that despite this title’s commercial failure, Marvel didn’t yank Schiti off of it to illustrate something that they wanted to promote more.
Though “G.O.D.S.” mainly stands for unfulfilled potential, is it still worth reading? Yes, especially if you’re a fan of the creators. There are good stories here and I did like the new characters introduced, and they’re supported by some incredible art. Even though this is retailing for $30, it’s a much denser read than your average Marvel comic and it possesses a greater page count as well. So even if “G.O.D.S.” represents a swing-and-a-miss in terms of trying to add new characters and concepts to the Marvel Universe in an all-new series, the quality of this first volume shows that it’s still worthwhile for the publisher to continue to try and do so.