The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 8: Old Is the New New

Being a collection of “special” issues taken from throughout the original run, rather than a single story, this is a little different from the rest of collected editions. Fortunately, most of the stories are pretty good, showing how four previous versions of the Pantheon met their respective ends. Of course, this does mean that, in most cases, there are only one or two divine characters in it (Lucifer being the common thread) but that actually works for stories as short as these. Each is illustrated by a different artist, so there are changes in style, but all the artists are good so that's not an issue.

There are a couple of weak points; the 1920s story is largely told as prose, something that just doesn't work for me in a comic. It's followed by a Christmas special that seems fairly random and that I'm not sure I see the point of. Other than those, though, it's a decent collection of stories that fill in the blanks, with some joke pieces at the end to round things out. So, rather better than the collection of isolated shorts that I was expecting.