God is Dead #4 – Review

By: Jonathan Hickman & Mike Costa (writers), Di Amorim (art), Juan Rodriguez (colors) and Kurt Hathaway (letters)

The Story: The Norse gods continue attacking the other pantheons while the Earthly scientists test their secret weapon.

Review (with SPOILERS): This is a series that probably could be better with more adventurous art, but it would still have a hollow core of a story.  There’s nothing too mind-bending about the premise for the series or the storyline that has developed from it.  Basically, many pantheons of gods have returned to Earth and now the gods are fighting for supremacy with lowly humans trapped in the middle.  It’s just kinda stale and because the art is very direct and straight forward – there just isn’t much to get excited about.

The big event from this issue was seeing the Norse gods attacking the Egyptian gods.  It’s pretty standard stuff.  Odin postures at Anubis; Anubis postures back.  Odin grabs Anubis around the neck and rips his head off.  Turn the page and there is a double-pager of Odin holding the head and making some proclamation.  Then we get to see Thor smash in Ra’s head with his hammer.  Yay Norse gods!  I guess…

The problem is that I’m not really invested in any of these characters.  These aren’t the same Norse gods from Marvel’s comics, so it’s just watching one set of gods beating up on another set of gods.  I’m not personally a worshiper of any of these gods, so it isn’t like I can say, “Hell yeah!  Thor is THE MAN!” or “That is such bull$hit!  Everyone knows that Anubis is more powerful than Odin!”  I’ve never wasted a second of my life wondering whether the Egyptian gods were powerful or not.

God is Dead #2 – Review

By: Jonathan Hickman and Mike Costa (writers), Di Amorim (art), Juanmar (colors) and Kurt Hathaway (letters)

The Story: The Gods have returned to Earth.  Some people aren’t happy about that.

Review (with SPOILERS): There are a few decent moments in this issue, but it doesn’t seem to be interested in tackling the really big questions that would put it over the top.  There is more slam-bang than anything deep.

If you missed the first issue, the basic premise is that in modern times, several pantheons of Gods return to Earth: Zeus, Odin, Quetzacoatl, etc.  They are not benevolent Gods and demand to be worshipped and honored.  Some humans fall right into line as governments crumble.  Some humans hang on and resist…

The issue largely misses the mark because it takes the easy and noisy path.  Most of the action takes place with humans fighting Gods and infighting amongst the Gods themselves.  There’s just nothing novel about seeing a US military being threatened by Gods or aliens or whatever and taking the drastic step of using nuclear weapons in a US city.  We’ve seen that.  We’ve heard the dialog about the “innocent civilians” and we’ve heard the commander dismiss that concern as a necessary sacrifice.  We’ve seen these types of threats stand impervious to “our” biggest weapons before.  I guess it beats home the message that it will take a non-traditional approach to defeat these Gods, but I would have hoped that writers as talented as Hickman and Costa could have come up with a better way for us to get to this point.

God is Dead #1 – Review

By: Jonathan Hickman and Mike Costa (writers), Di Amorim (art), Juanmar (colors) and Kurt Hathaway (letters)

The Story: Gods return to the Earth.  Some people dig it, some people don’t.

Review (with minor SPOILERS): This is an interesting issue.  I’m not sure it is a great issue, but it was entertaining and raised a few philosophical questions that could be intriguing if the creators choose to pursue them.

Honestly, the main impetus to buy this comic was the Hickman name on the cover.  I just think that Hickman is a font of nifty ideas.  He’s also gifted from a graphical design and presentation standpoint and coming along as a pure writer.  He’s one to watch and he’s rarely guilty of being boring, so I’ll sample just about anything with his name on the cover.  Until I read the issue, I wasn’t aware that this was a collaboration with Mike Costa, but his name shouldn’t keep anyone away.  Mike Costa’s GI Joe: Cobra title has consistently been the best GI Joe book the last few years by featuring tight plotting and aspiring to be something other than a fanboy ode.

The basic premise of God is Dead is that the gods of old return to the Earth.  We’re talking about Odin and Zeus as well as the old Aztec and Hindu pantheons.  When the gods get here, they inspire some parts of the population to descend into religious fervor and we get things like groups in Mexico doing human sacrifices on top of the old Aztec pyramids.  Some other parts of the population want to continue with the modern world, so we’ve got a nifty little source of conflict for the series.  We also learn that the gods are working together with a plan for world-domination in a scene that is very much like seeing a supervillain team-up in a Marvel or DC comic book.