We are now two issues into the Fandemonium arc, and the murder mystery subplot that appeared so vestigial in The Faust Act has become the main driving force of the story.
In this issue, Laura has become a guest at a fan convention in order to gather information that might lead her to identities of the people shooting at Luci in issue #1. As ever with this series, however, anyone expecting straight answers can just about jog on, and the mystery element - despite its relative ubiquity here - does not move very far forward in this installment.
Instead - and perhaps preferably - we see a great deal more interaction between the gods, and some of the smallest moments of this interaction are the best ones in the issue. Minerva using her previously unseen powers on a mortal, or Inanna glimpsed through a doorway shouting at Woden, for instance.
Speaking of the Daftpunk-esque WicDiv Woden, we get our first real look at his personality in this issue, and it is unabashedly reprehensible. Kieron Gillen has said of the character that if the other gods are pop singers, then Woden is more of a producer. If that is the case, then we can see from this precisely what Gillen thinks of music producers. Woden has no powers himself and is capable only of giving them to others. He is also cruel, petty, tacitly racist, and pathologically envious of his fellow deities, to the point where - minor spoiler warning - he essentially confesses that he would be willing do kill them if he thought that doing so would give him their abilities.
This issue also sees the return of Cassandra - my favorite character in the series - who is happily just as ornery as ever, as well as another look at underground gods Baphomet and The Morrigan. The only disappointment here is that Baphomet and Badb do not hold another pun-filled and filthily poetic snark-off like in issue 3.
The issue ends by teasing the next god we will be introduced to, whose identity I will not spoil here, though I will say the grapes-as-pills design of his logo in the wheel on the next page over is a brilliant bit of work.
Overall, another excellent issue from Gillen and McKelvie that fails to deliver on what is expected of it but delivers more than we could have reasonably asked for of something completely different. And if WicDiv could be said to have a standard operating procedure, that would probably be as good a summary of it as any.
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