2017 was sort of a traumatic year for fans of The Wicked + The Divine. The Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie series - now in its third year - set about amping its mythological roots to the highest volume possible, as was evidenced by the bodycount it had to boast by December.
One of the year's biggest casualties by far was Sakhmet, who was themself responsible for a whole lot of murder in the issues leading up to the series' 32nd.
Sakhmet had previously killed Amaterasu in the preceding comic, and Persephone - who herself had gotten up to her own killing in a previous arc - wasn't all too pleased with her lover's murderous inclinations. The resulting issue set up a big confrontation between the pair, except it was Baal and Minerva who stole the show, with the latter imploding her head with a quick snap of her fingers.
It intimated the severity of Imperial Phase II bluntly, to say the least, and while there were a whole host of notable Wic-Div moments this year - particularly in the recent Christmas issue - Sakhmet's was the first to shake things up proper.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
