Award-Winning New Comic Series Gets Picked Up For TV
After winning at the British Comic Awards and garnering critical acclaim, a new comic series "The Wicked + The Divine" is heading for its own TV adaptation. The comic series was created by Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie and Matt Wilson, the same team who created "The Young Avengers" for Marvel Comics.
The new comic series was launched in June 2014, by Image Comics. Aside from the British Comic Awards, it also won three Eisner awards, including best new series, according to a report in Deadline. The report also mentioned that Universal Television was the one who optioned the rights to the property under Milkfed Criminal Masterminds, which is under Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue DeConnick. "The Wicked + The Divine" is part of a bigger deal that Fraction and DeConnick recently signed with Uni TV.
Under this deal, Fraction and DeConnick can adapt their own comics and develop original concepts for TV, as well as use Milkfed as "a launchpad for other comic creators' IP, which is the case with "The Wicked + The Divine." This bodes well for comic creators who are not part of the mainstream.
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"The Wicked + The Divine" follows a group of people with superhuman powers, known as "The Pantheon." Each member of the group used to be a normal person, but was specifically chosen to merge with the spirit of a deity. Deities include Lucifer, Minerva, Baal, Inanna, Sakhmet, and many more. Each cycle of "The Pantheon" is said not to live beyond two years from the start of the series, and every 90 years, "The Pantheon" is said to be reincarnated.
This new series breathes new life into old mythological characters, as "12 gods are reincarnated to perform miracles similar to superheroes, and often bask in their new found celebrity fan." Gillen shared this explanation:
"The idea of playing superheroes as celebrity isn't exactly new. However, it's always played cynical. The celebrity characters are always the debased bad guys, or at least the cautionary tale and wandering from the road of truth," he said. "It's always implicitly arguing that these people are worse than the heroes who came before them because they're on the cover of a magazine and they do a bit of coke. We're not interested in that. We're anti-that. We've all had pop-stars save our life."
It's a different perspective of superheroes and deities, and it has a lot of drama and mystery, according to a Cinema Blend report. This makes it a perfect concept to bring to the small screen.
