Tim + Alex Get TWATD #4.2: Triple Trouble (feat. Michael Eckett)

The Crowd + The Congregation

When I read Issue #10 and the moment that Michael describes, I was also struck with a desire to write about it, although from a very different angle.

Everything Michael says is true. I’ve been on his side of the equation, although not in kind of public way that someone writing, directing and performing in a play has. I’ve known the feeling of laying yourself bare only to have people not ‘get’ it, or to be blandly appreciative in a way that makes it impossible for you to tell if they actually engaged with the emotions and ideas you were putting forward. It’s frustrating and saddening in a way that can make you question everything you’ve been doing. But I want to talk about the other side of the interaction – the audience.

So far in The Wicked + The Divine, we’ve seen a variety of audiences, but they have all tended to act as a mass. From the initial waves of ecstatic adoration at the Amaterasu concert to the goth riot at The Morrigan’s underground gig. At Dionysus’ rave, we find a crowd literally made one, united by the spirit of the god and surrender to the beat. Even more recently, we’ve had the Glastonbury-style gathering at Ragnarock that so disappointed Urðr and the writhing mass of bodies that comprised Inanna’s residency.

In each instance, the crowd is a single entity, with only Laura’s insights there to give us an occasional individual perspective. It’s both a telling element, and a truism. Anyone who’s been swept up in the euphoria of a great night on the dancefloor, chanted along with thousands of others or been carried on the waves of a mosh pit will concur – sometimes you cease being a person and become part of an audience. In those moments, considered nuance is surrendered to visceral reaction, and thought to instinct.

When, in issue #10, Urðr/Cassandra despairs that “they fucking cheered”, it begs the question, what else could they do? I’ve been at gigs where artists have poured their hearts out on stage, in songs about heartbreak, depression, suicide and loneliness, and at the end, when the last chord fades, the question stands. How do I show my appreciation for this act? How do I relay to this person that I have felt what they felt, that they have spoken of my pain in words I could never find? But then the crowd instinct takes over, and all you can really do is clap.

There are some interesting exceptions to the rule though. Let us wander away from the realm of pop music and comics briefly, and consider the other great art form of the 20th century – professional wrestling.

Crowd reaction is a huge part of pro wrestling. One writer once described it as “a LARP where the wrestlers are playing athletes and the audience is playing the audience, and everybody’s in on it”, which gives you some insight into both the theatricality at work, and the importance of interacting with, and playing to, the crowd.

In pro wrestling, the lines are very clear cut. You cheer the faces and boo the heels. While that’s simple once they’re in the ring, entrances (often the best opportunity for a wrestler to convey their persona or hook) can complicate this – and one in particular, Bray Wyatt, is a great example of this, and how a crowd has adapted to it.

Wyatt, like many wrestlers, has cycled through a number of different roles, but currently plays a sort of demonically-possessed Southern preacher character. Most definitely a heel, but an intimidating, awe-inspiring villain, rather than an ostentatious one you could easily boo. His entrance consists of him walking slowly into a darkened arena, the only light a gas lantern he is holding aloft, while Mark Crozer (formerly of The Jesus and Mary Chain) plays.

It’s a fantastically atmospheric bit of showmanship, but not one that easily lent itself to the crowd showing their appreciation. Booing didn’t fit it, and while slow, measured claps worked for a while, they also took away from the power of the moment. Then, at some point, fans realised that if they held their mobile phones aloft in the darkness of the arena, they looked like a sea of fireflies, a silent mark of respect for a great wrestler, and entirely in-keeping with his character. Of course, before too long, the WWE were selling tiny plastic Bray Wyatt lanterns that lit up in a slightly more ghostly manner (and earning them some nice merchandising money), and the entrance was entirely transformed.

Of course, this sort of evolution of fan behaviour is dependent on the way professional wrestling works – the serial nature of character building, the ritual of the entrance, and most importantly the central nature of the crowd to the whole event. But maybe, just maybe, we can find some way to import some of the ethereal majesty of a spectacle like this into how we react the next time we’re in a crowd.

Or maybe we’ll just have to rely on something like this…

Material Girl
As we’re talking about the relationship between audiences and performers this time out, I thought it was time to focus on The Wicked + The Divine‘s main point of intersection between the two: Persephone.

We only get a dozen panels of Persephone before [SPOILER REDACTED], and most of what’s communicated about her in time relies on the comic’s visuals.

The cigarette she’s had between her fingers all arc finally flares into life, phosphorus-bright. It’s a vivid realisation of Laura’s story-long dream but implying, pages before the other boot drops, a sudden end. It’s not the kind of flame that fades slowly; it’s the kind that burns out.

It’s another great McKelvie design, obv, and those few panels have inspired an explosion of fan-art tributes. But her look is less cohesive than most of others in the series, in a way that feels intentional. Our Persephone is a patchwork god, her influences showing through in this first performance.

Not in the way some of the other gods are, cribbing from real-world pop stars – there’s a dash of FKA Twigs in there, particularly her nose ring, arguably a pinch of Madonna in a certain mode,
but no direct reference point – but from the Pantheon themselves.

The white streak in her hair recalls Inanna. The heavy black boots and the skulls strung on her necklace tie her to the Underground gods, Morrigan and Baphomet. The asymmetrical triangle of markings on her face refers back to her Amaterasu-inspired make-up in the first issue, mixed with the harder angles of Morrigan in her Badb form.

The cigarette, of course, is a link to Luci – a bad habit picked up from a bad friend – but it flares with the trademark purple-pink of Inanna. In fact, the colour run through her entire outfit, having apparently become Persephone’s own trademark, possibly in the wake of Inanna’s departure a couple of pages earlier. (Is that too cruel even for Team WicDiv? I actually hope I’m reaching here.)

But at the same time, Persephone is very recognisably still Laura. The lettering and colour of her speech bubbles stay the same – something that was par for the course with the initial gods, but not true of the last four we’ve met – and her physical transformation is less marked than the other before/afters we’ve seen.

Her asymmetric hair remains almost exactly the same as the one Laura wore pages earlier, except flipped from left to right, and with that streak of white. It’s not the haircut one she started the series with, notably, but the one she picked on her way to godhood. Along with the make-up and the cigarette – symbols she’s picked up along the way – perhaps this is a sign that Laura’s has been a gradual transformation, rather than leaping fully-formed from the brow of Ananke.