Sidestepping the Event to Tell the Story in Jonathan Hickman and Valerio Schiti’s G.O.D.S.

“JONATHAN HICKMAN RE-INVENTS THE COSMOLOGY OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE! WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE-POWERS-THAT-BE MEET THE-NATURAL-ORDER-OF-THINGS? The infinite détente between THE-NATURAL-ORDER-OF-THINGS and THE-POWERS-THAT-BE nears an end. Old acquaintances are reunited during a Babylon Event. The Lion of Wolves throws the worst parties. Don't look under the table. There's a John Wilkes Booth penny on the ground. This ENORMOUS EXTRA-SIZED first issue features DOCTOR STRANGE, who, while not boring at all, is easily the most boring person in the book.”

The solicitation text for G.O.D.S. #1

Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti, and Marte Gracia’s G.O.D.S. is not the book you want it to be. From SHIELD to Fantastic Four, through to Secret Wars and even Inferno, Hickman’s writing is largely about how the Marvel Universe operates.  With healthy doses of comic book science, Hickman’s standard mode of operation is to pick apart the machinations of a superhero universe and G.O.D.S. looks like it will continue that exploration as it opens with a Babylon Event.  You know what a Babylon Event is, don’t you?  Well, if you don’t know, don’t worry; it doesn’t really matter.  All you have to know is that it’s the end of the world and everyone, good guys and bad guys, have to team up to save all of reality.  It’s another day so it’s just another apocalyptic event.  It’s Marvel, after all.  

The craft on display in G.O.D.S. tricks you into thinking that this could be simply another event comic.  Between Hickman, Schiti, and Gracia, they’ve all been involved in several recent Marvel events, telling “big” and “important” stories,” ones that “matter” to the Marvel universe.  After HOXPOX or Judgment Day, it’s a given that Marvel would use these guys as their big guns to help steer the Marvel Universe in a new and exciting direction.  The opening chapter, where characters like Reed Richards, the Black Panther, Doctor Doom, and Doctor Strange all have to team up, feels big and a perfect place to introduce Wyn, the next power player in this world.  Think of a slightly less damaged John Constantine and you would have Wyn, the man ready for all occasions and prepared to walk a different path than the heroes or the villains to save the universe.  This is establishing a big stage to tell a huge, meaty story.

Hickman, Schiti, and Gracia play into those expectations in this book, setting up the opening chapter to make you think that this is going to be that kind of story. The comic opens in the aftermath of the big battle (but on first read, we don’t know that yet,) with the implication that our hero Wyn and his ally Doctor Strange just barely survived the end of the world.  They talk about weighty things like good and evil, and which one applies to them after their recent experiences.  “And you, Wyn?” Strange asks.  “Are you good, or are you evil?”  Wyn looks coyly over his shoulder; “Stephen, my boy… who can tell the difference anymore?”   That’s our introduction to Wyn, the hero and the cynic all rolled up in one.

The first chapter is a whole event in itself— a Babylon Event threatening reality would normally lead to a big crossover.  You can almost picture what all of the tie-in issues would look like with Reed Richards leading the scientists in one series and another book following Doctor Voodoo tackling the problem from a magical perspective (maybe like the Swamp Thing issues that side-stepped Crisis on Infinite Earths) while Doctor Strange and Wyn have parallel books showing them following their own and eventually converging paths.  Probably something like 30 issues altogether before everything collides in a big Omega issue where the heroes win. 

Well, the first issue is a bait and switch for something more interesting and far more unexpected— a love story.  G.O.D.S. starts with a big bang but only gets smaller, more intimate, and more personal as it moves through the story towards its ending. But that first issue is important because Hickman and Schiti show how Wyn operates; he goes the route less traveled to come at the conflict from a different angle.  He doesn’t join in the obvious fight as he has his own approach.  Like John Constantine, Wyn is not a warrior; we barely see him throw a punch or use a weapon.  He’s a lover, not a fighter.

But this is still a Hickman-written comic so it’s got to have the appearance of being interested in how a superhero universe works.  Wyn works for the Powers That Be, who are locked in a Cold War-like conflict with The Natural Order of Things.  Think of it as magic versus science with Wyn on the side of magic and his ex-wife a key player on science’s side.  Is this book the story of magic versus science or the tale of a husband versus a wife or maybe a little bit of all of the above?  In a lot of ways, this is the foundation of The Marvel Way of Creating Comics, these personal stories interwoven with life and death battles.  It’s the question of whether the hero does what they want or what they need to do (see any early issue of The Amazing Spider-Man.)  It was good enough for Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; it’s good enough for Hickman and Schiti.  

Wyn’s ex-wife Aiko is introduced early in the first chapter, along with Wyn’s sidekick Dimitri, himself an envoy for The Natural Order of Things.  In a flashback to 10 years ago, Wyn and Aiko meet in a bar to discuss their future.  They’ve been together six years, five good ones she tells the bartender.  She’s been offered a new position at work that’s in direct conflict with his responsibilities for The Powers That Be.  She asks Wyn if he would give up his life so she could have hers.  That’s the question that hangs over this entire series— when does responsibility for everything outweigh the responsibility for the love two people share?  It’s asked early in the book and when Wyn tries to have it both ways, Aiko shoots him in the face, making her decision and choosing her side.  (Don’t worry, he gets better.). 

Back around 2008, when Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis was a thing, Morrison talked about how their approach to writing that story was to focus on the big beats of the event.  They cut out all of the small, quieter moments to create a story that was only told in loud and major beats.  All propulsion and no rest.  But that means that Final Crisis sacrificed a personal connection with the reader to wow them on every page. With G.O.D.S. Hickman and Schiti pretty much take the opposite approach.  The Babylon Event that kicks off this book is big and loud, but pretty much meaningless.  Have you ever heard of a Babylon Event before?  Me neither.  Sounds impressive but that’s what the story is counting on— us being impressed enough to think that this is an end-of-the-world type story.  

So instead of telling a story through the big, loud moments, Hickman and Schiti seed big beats throughout the story mostly to frame moments for these characters to live in, to share with, and protect one another.  G.O.D.S. is largely a talking head comic where Schiti and Gracia get to show Wyn and the others having to make decisions and then live with them.  Right or wrong, those decisions are what define Wyn, Aiko, Dimitri, and Mia, Aiko’s rookie protege.  Wyn is defined by his choices but he’s also shaped by the decisions that the others make; Aiko’s ambition, Dimitri’s searching, and even Mia’s naivety.  The real conflict isn’t against the gods of the Marvel Universe; that’s all just set dressing.  The real conflict is just how we live up to the idea of right and wrong that we share with each other.  In the beginning, when Doctor Strange asks Wyn whether he’s good or evil, it probably should have been if he’s right or wrong with the sides he’s chosen.

At the end of it all, Wyn is given the same choice he had at the beginning— love or responsibility.  The last chapter jumps 100 years into the future, opening up on the aftermath of the big cosmological battle.  The final boss battle happened off panel and Hickman and Schiti drop us into the aftermath.  We’ve seen what Hickman and Schiti can do in those kinds of big climaxes in other books so do we need to see them do another one here?  They drop enough little visual hints to spark our imagination about what could have happened. Instead, we’re left with the characters asking themselves “Now what?”  “How do we live after everything that we’ve experienced?”  Those weren’t questions that Morrison was interested in with Final Crisis so G.O.D.S. acts a bit like the Marvel answer to Morrison’s work 16 years later.  It’s a book of the moments in between the big, brash battles.  It’s Hickman and Schiti pulling away from telling the huge story that we expect and finding another way to tell a character-driven story between the context of those loud battles.  

The end of the book set some 100 years later than the beginning of it, comes right back around to where it began thematically.  The characters are a bit older, not much wiser, and have to ask themselves the same questions, kind of implying they didn’t get it right the first time around.  Do you choose love or responsibility?  The first time each more (or had the decision made for them) to follow responsibility.  Hickman’s writing is surprisingly tender here, walking a different path than his X-Men, Avengers, or Ultimate stuff has done.  Schiti and Gracia are great artists for this story, able to have an expansive scope for such an intimate story.  G.O.D.S looks, feels, and sounds important in relation to every other Marvel comic but that’s just all scene-setting for the story of a number of people just trying to navigate their way through life.  Just like the rest of us.