Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writers: Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell
Artist: Scott Hampton and P. Craig Russell
I'm sure many will remember a time when the American Gods series was advertised before most Youtube videos that you attempted to watch, and seeing these advertisements made me curious to give the first season a look, this of course before ever knowing that it was based on a novel of the same name. I must say that I quite enjoyed it, and they did eventually get around to making a second season, but I would recently go on to choose to read the comic book series first and I'm quite glad that I did. American Gods follows one Shadow Moon, a man on the brink of release from prison after serving three years of a possible six year sentence. Shadow is looking forward to getting his life back, with his beautiful wife waiting for him and guaranteed employment thanks to his best friend. But as we all know, life doesn't always go as planned.
Shadow is released early after receiving the devastating news that his wife and best friend both died in a car accident. Shadow is left reeling, and struggles to fully come to grips with the enormity of recent events. He has nothing to go back to other than memories in a town that he never really called home without his wife Laura. As he takes a series of connecting flights home, he meets a mysterious man on one that suspiciously knows a whole lot about him and his circumstances. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday and offers Shadow employment. Naturally sceptical and untrusting, Shadow declines the offer and the two go their separate ways. But with little to no prospects for a former convict, Shadow decides to eventually take Mr. Wednesday up on his offer to be his errand boy and muscle. It is here that Mr. Wednesday slowly starts to introduce Shadow to a world of Gods and other mythological entities.
The realisation is a slow one, as Shadow seems to go through motions like a man sleep walking, living in a world carefully suspended between dream state and waking life, and even the most bizarre of events are rationalised by a man who doesn't seem to think that much more can surprise him. What he goes on to discover is that he is slowly becoming involved in an ongoing struggle for the Gods of old to remain relevant, each prospering or perishing based on the amount of belief they can invoke. However, with new Gods in the way of technological leaders and masters of transport, commerce and the media, rituals and sacrifices of blood are replaced by sacrifices of time, energy and money, relegating the old Gods to the abyss of obsolescence.
American Gods is a unique series that got a lot right in my book by creating a world that is beautifully unorthodox in both its aesthetic, execution and underlying themes. What has been presented is a very different approach to how we understand divine entities, and truly brings to light a different way of understanding all the aspects that fall under religious practice and theistic ontology. Knowingly or unknowingly, the creators have brought to life the works of people such as Theologian Don Cupitt and French political theorist Pierre -Joseph Proudhon in showing a paradoxical nature with regards to the relationship between the Gods and the humans that believe in them. Cupitt argued for a non-realist interpretation of God, but still spoke to the value and purpose of a religious vocabulary and the necessary function of ritual in our everyday lives. This is shown in flashes to the past in the series, where people carry their Gods with them to new and strange lands, calling upon them and giving them life in the form of their own rituals and sacrifices. Proudhon argued for his anti-theistic view by emphasizing the mutually inter-dependent configuration that God and humanity appear within. According to Proudhon:
“Humanity is a spectre to God, just as God is a spectre to humanity; each of the two is the other’s cause, reason, and end of existence." - Proudhon, The Philosophy of Misery
So in the same way that the Gods in this comic require belief from followers to exist, Proudhon explains that: “also without man God would not be thought, or—to clear the interval—God would be nothing”. It is this backdrop that creates a world where old Gods must find innovative ways of staying relevant, some clearly doing better than others, while new religions and growing trends in life create and sustain new Gods while burying the old ones. This is the landscape that Shadow and others walk, creating a dynamic between a dream state and waking reality, the natural with the supernatural, and all too often these antithetical domains become intertwined. Even the art work carries this theme with it, as Hampton and Russell draw their character and landscapes in a way that looks rotoscoped, which is to say a blend between real and illustrated. This seems to create greater engagement for the the reader, who also will start to question whether what they see is real or not.
The comic is split into three series, each with 9 issues that create a good beginning, middle and end to the story. As far as world building and story are concerned, you won't go wrong with Gaiman and Craig who breathe new life into concepts that we have all seen before. Those who have read my review of The Wicked and the Divine will know that I'm a sucker for mythology, and so it goes without saying that this was a series I truly enjoyed and I hope you will to. For those picking up the comics and books, I wish you happy reading, and for those heading off to watch the series, I wish you happy viewing :).
Read all three at Readcomiconline