#char: sakhmet | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

popculturespiritwow · 6 years

Text

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE #28: COMING OUT PARTY

FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY

For me, the beginning of issue 28 especially on reread and knowing a couple of the twists to come is sort of like boxing Ali. Gillen floats around catching you off guard again and again until you’re just sort of dancing there on your own. Not only does David have a son and a long-departed Asian (ahem) wife but his son is Woden (supposedly) (nice job bro) and yet another riff on Larkin playing out. Oh and all of that is a lie, Woden having totally played the moment (and Cassandra) brilliantly with a classic super villain origin story, complete with school for evil geniuses mental institution vibe. And woven in we’ve got this tremendous argument about identity between Woden and Cass which takes everything to such a deeper place.

Each one of those steps is so unexpected and pleasurable as a reader, I find it leaves me less interested in “figuring it all out” (aka trying to assert control) and more interested in just going with it. Woden’s words to Cassandra really are a challenge to us: comic book-as-puzzle readers, screw you.

There is one mystery I can’t let go of, though. Whose room are we in those first pages?

It’s gotta be Jon’s right? We’ve got that poster of a Transformer type robot, the de rigeur poster of women in slinky outfits (do we still say slinky?) and another of a Terminator-like shirtless sunglasses guy with a gun. It all screams teenager.

But that family photo Cass finds there, Jon as a baby with his parents, I don’t know, it seems much more a “parents remembering the beginning of their family” photo than the kind of thing a kid has in his room. Maybe it’s the last picture before David drove Jon’s mom away? Or the only moment of happy family he has?

Or – and this is a reach – could this actually be David’s room? It seems small, admittedly, again much more child’s bedroom than parent’s. But most of those posters absolutely fit Woden’s gross adult-adolescence. (The Transformer not so much, though it, too, is quite an image of male power.) And somehow the idea that this could be Woden’s room makes him even more disturbing than I already had him at, which makes me think it absolutely has to be at the least a space he spends time in and oh God can we please move on?

PREY-ER...

I go back and forth on what exactly Laura has been up to with Sakhmet. She doesn’t want to talk about her feelings, Laura, why do you keep bringing them up? To me, it reads a little like a false lead to keep “But is she the Destroyer for real though?” alive.

Maybe it’s another form of driving your motorcycle into the embankment – I’ll just keep poking the tiger until it rips my throat out and takes me out of my misery?

In this particular issue, though, it’s clear that Laura is also trying to understand the horror she sees herself as having caused/causing. Who better for the Destroyer to hang with than one who destroys. Some dark dark stuff going on there.

...AND PREY

Meanwhile being an unfeeling sex monster is about not getting hurt. Except as it turns out, it’s precisely in bed–and at the hands of Ammy of all people--that Sakhmet is forced to face her own vulnerability.

In his Notes Kieron has really interesting things to say about how he and Jamie think about sex scenes.

In part, those scenes are meant for us to observe, they’re about us watching, and all the chars here are POV, we don’t want them to be the objects of our view.

Also, we don’t learn anything from the sex. We learn from the choice to have sex and how you feel afterwards. So do lots of that.

What I love about having sex be the context here is that it is Sakhmet’s seat of power, the place she feels safest: here she is the mirror that prevents her being seen, the hunter surrounded by prey, and it is here that she ends up being hurt. It’s brilliant. Even as she is completely wrong in her judgment that everyone thinks her a fool and has been laughing behind her back (can you imagine ANYONE EVER laughing at or about Sakhmet except maybe Luci? I mean, those claws...) – in fact the scene reveals that she is indeed a fool, precisely because she has thought she was safe.

At least when all’s been said and done and revealed she takes the time to eat a little something.

AMMENTO MORI

Is it notable that this is the first time we’ve seen an Ammy service since the very first issue? Probably, though they don’t make a point of how Laura’s life has changed since. If anything the comparison is more about how Ammy has changed, how much more confidently unhinged she is. Most specifically...

This sequence is such a fantastic contrast with the pure apotheotic godliness of our first experience of Ammy in in issue one.

In fact, it leaves you wondering what did we even see in her back then. Which I guess in a way is what Laura must be feeling, too...

DEAR DIARY

Obviously there’s a lot to consider in the very fact that Ananke precedes her likely death by writing a heartfelt letter. It tells us there’s someone else out there that not only knows what’s going on but has the power to get involved. Someone who seems to care for her.

Knowing what we know as of a few issues down the road, it’s almost certainly Baal, isn’t it? He’s the one she’s told the most, and manipulated the best.

Of course, there’s also the question that has floated through the series all along like oil scum on a pond, is it possible that Ananke is actually in some awful way a white hat? We’re definitely in the realm of both/and here – you can’t do what she’s done to any of these characters and not be a full and total monster. But it’s hard not to see this private moment and not gain some degree of pathos for the lady. (Dagnab it.)

(Just realized -- is it me or is this also the very first time we’ve seen Ananke without some kind of mask? God, she’s actually being vulnerable here, isn’t she? ARGH. LET ME KEEP MY PREJUDICES.)

#wicdiv #kieron gillen #jamie mckelvie

3 notes · View notes