Marvel Review: ‘G.O.D.S.’ #1 Defies Expectations
Jonathan Hickman & Valerio Schiti’s long-teased series finally hit shelves after weeks of promotion from Marvel and complaints from comic book shops frustrated with an expensive number one without the backing of any major Marvel superhero front-and-center on the cover. I’ll leave the marketing strategy debate for other sites and focus my review solely on the issue itself. And boy did this feel like a meaty Hickman story if there ever was one. Putting aside the glaring fact that these G.O.D.S. are meant to have existed four hundreds, if not thousands, of years yet have been missing in action up until now, this issue read with a level of gravitas that is hard to pull off with a cast of brand new characters and factions.
Speaking of the new characters, I found them to be instantly endearing and I was actively interested in their lives and connections by the end of the issue. Hickman did a tremendous job developing Wyn, Dmitri, and Aiko to set them up as believable main characters. That was helped by the sheer number of pages that featured dialogue exclusively between them, but selling these characters may have been THE job Hickman needed to this issue and I thought he did it in spades for these three. I was less sold on the new villain, Cubisk Core, but he was given much less of a backstory in this issue. Hopefully that will be explored more in future issues as readers need to understand, and even potentially sympathize, with some aspects of a villain’s perspective to give them credibility and complexity.
Schiti’s art matches Hickman’s elevated writing panel-for-panel. The designs for characters and scenery bring the book to life, with a sense of humanity that grounds readers in this unfamiliar world. Facial, especially those from our new main characters, evoke emotion brilliantly and set the tone for how characters are experiencing the events we’re watching unfold. The breadth of the different types of environments and scenery we see is awe-inspiring and Schiti and colorist Marte Gracia create some truly breath-taking panels that are some of the best work you’ll see this year.
Some will say this issue needed to stop readers dead in their tracks with a big WOW moment, but I think the exact opposite. I wanted to convinced why I should care about brand new characters and Hickman and Schiti surpassed any expectations I had. Was it worth the $9.99 cover price? That’s not a question I can answer for everyone. Was it a nearly perfect debut issue for what promises to be a monumental moment in the Marvel universe? Absolutely.
Rating: 9/10
