God Is Dead (comics)

God Is Dead
Publication information
Publisher	Avatar Press
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Genre	Mythology
Publication date	September 2013
Creative team
Writer(s)	Jonathan Hickman Issues 1 - 6, Mike Costa 1 - Present, Alan Moore & Simon Spurrier Acts of God
Artist(s)	Di Amorim Issues 1-6, Jillian Figari Issues 7 - 9, German Erramouspe Issues 10 - 12, Omar Francia Issues 13 - 15, Emiliano Urdinola Issues 16 - Present

God Is Dead is an ongoing comic bookseries released by Avatar Press monthly, starting in September 2013. Set in the future world of 2015, it deals with the second coming of the ancient gods and goddesses of the world's pantheons returning to Earth to lay claim to the world of man.^[1] The subplot is of a group of people named the Collective, who resist the ancient gods. The series was created by comic book authors Jonathan Hickman and Mike Costa.

Publication history

God is Dead began as a six-issue limited series in September 2013, with Hickman and Costa as co-writers. Once the initial six-issue story arc concluded, the comic became an ongoing series with Costa as the only writer.^[2] In August 2014, Alan Moore and Simon Spurrier contributed to the first issue of a new story arc entitled God Is Dead: The Book of Acts.^[3]

Plot

In 2015, a figure claiming to be Zeus, the ancient Greek god of thunder, arrives in Vatican City and claims the Earth as his domain. This event becomes in popular mind and culture known as the Second Coming. In subsequent months, several other figures claiming to be gods and goddesses emerge as if from nowhere, and begin to divide the Earth into different territories. However, soon fighting between the various Pantheons breaks out, and drags the Earth into war.

Unknown to the gods, an underground society known as the Collective suspects that the gods are not who they pretend to be, and seek to create their own new gods to rival those of the ancient pantheons.^[4] The Collective is eventually destroyed by the gods, but one member, Gaby, survives, and a generation later has risen to take the identity of the Earth Mother Gaia.

As Gaia, Gaby virtually rules over a world unchallenged by those remnants of gods that still remain. One of her followers, Tansy, travels to Australia which has been abandoned since the events of the Second Coming. Once there, she meets a man named Albert Spencer, who survived the Second Coming and has been residing in the Dreamtime with a rag tag group of humans. Together, they use a device to go to heaven and find God with his head blown off. Albert then decides to unite the remnants of Earth's pantheons to lead an assault on Gaia.

References