By Alex Batts — We’re back for another installment of The Wicked + The Divine Re-Read Project, and with this issue, we see our second guest artist of the run and we get an up-close and personal look at a member of the Pantheon that we’ve only heard about in passing, Tara. This issue is relatively self-contained, but it’s one of the most powerful of the entire series. Let’s get into it…

The Wicked + The Divine #13

Here’s the official solicitation text from August 5, 2015:

There's one god missing in our story. It's time to finally meet Tara, Goddess of God-knows. Also, meet TULA LOTAY (SUPREME: BLUE ROSE) who joins Team WicDiv as the second guest artist in our Eisner Nominated Series. We had to mention the Eisner nom. We are shameless.

The solicit sets up an issue that will focus on Tara, and the issue is entirely hers. It also touches on guest artist Tula Lotay joining the book (she’s incredible, but more on her in the art section). And finally, there’s a hint of that classic humor in the solicit with the team mentioning that the book was nominated for an Eisner, which I’m sure you can guess, I think it absolutely deserved.

The Cover: And here we have our second body portrait cover (I’m just gonna go ahead and coin that term for these covers, it seems fitting). This time focusing on Tara. We’ve briefly gotten a glimpse at her character design way back in the first arc of the series (issue #4 or #5) when Lucifer sees a poster of her on the wall, but this is our first real look at the goddess. McKelvie and Wilson are again responsible for the cover and it’s as magnificent as ever. Tara’s outfit is, extravagant, to say the least.

The fem high fashion equivalent of what Inanna brought to last issue’s cover. Her warm skin tone and the outfit colors are all warm, with the white on her outfit creating a nice contrast and highlighting the red and orange hues on the rest of the cover. Her outfit is, admittedly, quite sexy, and she does this for several reasons that become very apparent later in the issue, ultimately serving our story.

The First Page: Interestingly enough, there’s no recap page in this issue. Perhaps because this issue is so stand-alone and Tara-centric. You could almost pick up this comic and read it without having read anything that came before. Almost.

Regardless, the first page here is the first time we’ve seen a full splash page opener in quite a while, and it’s a crowd cheering for Tara. The text bubbles that overlay the page speak to something ominous happening soon, “Right before it all went wrong, you have to know. They loved me.” From the first page of the issue, we know that tragedy is right around the corner. The color palette used by Tula Lotay here is just incredible too, I’ll talk more about it in the art section, but the color FX that Lotay brings to every page creates a great atmosphere and fits in wonderfully with the tone of the book. That’s beside her art just being generally great in the first place.

The Wicked + The Divine #13 First Page.jpg

On-Page Action: This issue is even simpler to break down in terms of plot than the last. This is Tara’s story. We see how she’s been treated her whole life, before and after her ascension to godhood, and what that’s done to her mental health. She’s a gorgeous woman and always has been exceptionally beautiful.

Because of that, she’s been treated as an object rather than a person her entire life. She’s the object of men’s desires and is on the receiving end of an abhorrent amount of sexism. She gets opportunities handed to her not on her talents and merits (though she is extremely talented) but because of how she looks, and she despises them for it. Tara is an artist. The one among the Pantheon who had a passion for music and performance even before her godly transformation into a pop icon.

Because of this, she wants the world to actually listen to her art, not just the godly performances she can give. Her life before the ascension she would take to donning a mask and an eccentric outfit as distractions so that people would see her art for what it is rather than who it’s coming from. No one cared before she became a goddess, and no one cares after. They just want her to do what she’s supposed to do. And they’re vile, hateful, and disgusting to her in order to get that. “Fucking Tara” (a phrase we’ve already seen in the series) is used to berate her and make comments on her “selfishness” for wanting to share her own art, rather than give just her godly performance.

She’s subject to a landslide of constant hate speech and harassment. It ultimately breaks her. Her whole life she’s been treated as though she was only there for other people, not for herself. In a final conversation with Ananke, we get more of a glimpse of her personality aside from the narration she’s had this entire issue, and it’s endearing how genuine, curious, and modest she is. But she can’t go on. She’s asked Ananke to kill her, and after singing one last time, Ananke does just that. Blowing her head up and burning her body. And, we find out the narration over the entire issue was Tara’s suicide note, which Ananke also burns, because she’s got evil machinations at work, of course.

The entire issue is profoundly sad and a comment on how damaging hivemind hatred can be. There are a couple of pages, one double-page spread in particular, that show a windfall of Twitter comments tearing Tara apart. They’re as vile, humiliating, and offensive as they can be, and they’re endless. It’s no wonder Tara couldn’t take it. Then, on the final pages, we get the internet’s reaction to her death. The same people that were harassing her are now flipping their script and playing up sympathy for her. No one cares until you’re dead.

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Deeper Meaning: Well, the deeper meaning on this one is pretty evident I’d say. Don’t bully people. Harassment, both online and in-person, is incredibly and irrevocably damaging. Tara became a literal goddess, able to enact incredible feats of vengeance on those who wronged her if she so chose, but she didn’t, instead, she succumbed to the sorrow those who hated her relentlessly berated her with.

You never know what someone is going through. You don’t know how many times they’ve heard whatever hateful, snide, offensive remark you’re about to say to them, and you never know which comment will eventually, and inevitably, break their spirit completely. Tara’s only mistake was wanting to live her life for herself, on merits besides just her looks, and the world hated her for it. It’s appalling and the entire issue is a meditation on that. No one is immune to bullying.

The Art: Tula Lotay. That’s it. She’s one of the best artists in the industry and she brings an air of warmth, heart, passion, and stylized flair that fits right in with Wic + Div. Her art even feels particularly Tara in a way that’s difficult to articulate. It just fits. The facial expressions, arguably the most important part of this series and especially this issue, are drawn perfectly. You can gauge so much emotion from ever panel with Tara’s face, you feel exactly what she’s feeling. Even when she’s wearing her mask (which is a fantastic design, by the way) you can feel the emotion in her eyes.

Her multiple outfits are all drawn exquisitely, they bring her character to life and serve as an expression of her personality but also as part of her shield against the world, like her mask. A lot of the page layouts are similar, three horizontal panels, but they vary in size across the issue. This creates a pattern for the ready to slip into though, we see the same thing over and over, which to an extent normalizes the abuse we see Tara go through. This is every day for her. The colors are incredible, as I already mentioned it brings a warm palette that fits the story, but when cool tones are used, they’re also used incredibly well. The color FX, as mentioned earlier, is particularly standout. It’s used to show the godly powers, to great effect, but it also adds another layer of pizazz to the issue on the whole. Tula is simply one of the best artists out there, and her work on this issue is a perfect example of why.