Back in February, Matt Fraction (Sex Criminals, ODY-C) and Kelly Sue DeConnick (Pretty Deadly, Bitch Planet) announced that their production company, Milkfed Criminal Masterminds, had signed a two year deal with Universal TV to adapt some of their favourite comic books for the small screen.
Sex Criminals, Fraction’s Eisner Award- and Harvey Award-winning comic, which he created alongside Chip Zdarsky, was slated to be one of the first projects but now Universal TV has added Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s latest collaboration, The Wicked and the Divine to the schedule as well.
Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie are one of my favourite teams working in comics right now. From the gritty, music infused Phonogram, to the GLADD award winning Young Avengers, I would probably follow them anywhere — including down the rabbit hole that is The Wicked and the Divine. WicDiv, which won Best Comic at the British Comic Awards, was launched by Image Comics in 2014. The series revolves around a group of twelve gods known as The Pantheon. Every ninety years, they are reincarnated as teenagers and young adults. They take the world by storm and within two years they are dead.
We’ve mentioned before here on Women Write About Comics that The Wicked and the Divine doesn’t “deserve” its own adaptation. It doesn’t deserve it, because a comic book is more than just an extended pitch for a TV series or a movie. Adaptations are not “rewards” for good work (especially since so many of those adaptations pale in comparison to the original material). If The Wicked and the Divine sounds interesting to you, then you should read the comic because it is a beautiful and brilliant piece of art all on its own.
That being said, I’m still looking forward to a TV version of the comic to supplement my reading. If handled properly the show could be daring, provocative and gorgeous to watch. In its ideal form it will have stunning costumes and original music. Not to mention with its plethora of LGBTQ and POC characters – including an East Asian trans woman – it could easily become one of the most diverse shows on television. And with DeConnick and Fraction (a.k.a other comic creators who have done a great deal to represent diversity in their own work) behind it, there’s a good chance many of those dreams could be realized.
Don’t let me down Universal TV and Milkfed Criminal Masterminds.
