Den of Geek: There are, it seems, two dueling primary stories inThe Wicked + the Divine.

Why only give them two years for every 90?

Is there a method to that number rather than grant them a longer period or a shorter period?

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Kieron Gillen:Its an intensifier.

If youve been told that youve got two years to live, everything comes into sharp focus.

What the hell are you going to do with your life?

There are elements of both poetry and practicality to it.

Ninety years is long enough to become mythical, but not doing something as obvious as the straight century.

The idea that while each generation is of a time, but always oblique in some way.

Theyre people who shake up the world in art.

Theres also always the meta reading.

Im 40 in two years.

I have two years to do something magnificent or its all been a waste.

Im always my characters.

And what is it that made you want to say something about modern idol worship?

Id agree to a degree.

Yes, we let them go far.

However, we also set fire to them.

We indulge them entirely and cackle as they come crashing down.

Theres a big part of the whole king-for-a-year-and-then-sacrificed old paganism in the books thinking.

The books conflicted in many ways.

David Bowie saved my life.

Were also not pillorying.

And Celebrity is more a secondary problem to the book thats a side effect of who the gods are.

Really, its primarily about being an artist in the world.

All the gods are phenomenally, amazingly talented.

Theyre also fuck ups, and the place they find themselves brings all that to the fore.

Cassandra, our streaming journalist, is both our critical and metacritical voice.

Is she a cynic?

But theres the old line about cynics tending to burned romantics.

It also lets us introduce a key element that not everyone flips out over every gods performance.

Cassandra doesnt even see or feel anything at all.

Are these characters influenced by the personalities of the people whose lives they took over?

Thats a question that the book answers.

And each of the gods have their own take on the process.

Some of them are in denial.

Some of them have death wishes.

Some of them are utterly petrified.

Some of them go between all three.

Even when being divine, were being human.

We open with the 1920s gods in the first issue.

We see a flash of the 1830s ones in the second.

Its a big universe, and I mainly look for appropriate voices to find it.

The contrast between the world of the gods and the world we live in is absolutely key.

Its a book with a lot of dualities in it, as made pretty explicit in the title.

We were planning to doPhonogram: The Immaterial GirlafterYoung Avengers.

One night, I realised it wasnt what we should do.

I started writing the firstPhonogramin 2004.

I had the idea a little before.The Immaterial Girlis set in 2009.

It was written in 2010-2011.

It was the right moment to start something new rather than finish something old.

This is us walking like we talk it.

Lets make a new comic for 2014.

Death sits at the heart of the book.

Its a pop song of a book, but its got that deep dark heart to it.

Sometimes they happen simultaneously, like Lucifer, whos our thin-white-duke-gender-switched-Bowie-esque character.

I played with a few trickster gods, but Lucifer sat best.

Jamie and I bounced ideas of people we liked, ways to think of them.

We ran astyle blog, where we collated images we liked.

We ranthis playlist, which is where I try and create a sort of sonic mood sheet for it.

Basically, we obsess, as always.

But still: never underestimate the fun of playing.

I get bored easily, and like to mix it up.

Do you think the latter change is going to hurt your wallet as a creator?

It scares the living hell out of me.

I had my first Comixology check for my backlist and it was a sizeable amount of cash.

It was basically identical to what we earned from thePhonogramtrades in the real world.

Anything which makes it harder for people to buy comics makes me petrified.

We are all but balls in the enormous international corporation pinball table.

I will never escape.

I dont think I would want to either.

While all the above may make you think otherwise, Im one of natures optimists.

As such, I look at games writing and think weve come miles.

Yes, theres an awful lot of crap, but that doesnt matter.

Look at the range and plurality of voices out there.

Look at the different ways people are talking and communicating about games.

No matter who you are, you could probably find a venue that was aligned to someone like you.

I mean, was this fine venue writing about games a decade ago?

How many large cultural organs were?

Now they all at least dabble, and theres been some astounding writing out there in the mainstream press.

I think the most striking thing about the manifesto now [is how] innocuous it is now.

This is just another set of tools in the box.

We won, in short.

God knows what comes next, and thats why its always exciting.

I feel thoroughly obsolete as a game writer, which is exactly how it should be.

The Wicked + the Divineis scheduled for release from Image Comics on June 18, 2014.

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