Review: ‘Ordinary Gods’ #2 Go Up And Down

The regular cover by artist Felipe Watanabe and colorist Frank William dovetails nicely into the main narrative. Though the art slightly obscures the logo design that designer Rich Bloom provides it still looks high quality. It also suggests fanciful high quality interiors will be present throughout the issue. Speaking of the interiors Watanabe does good job for the most part with sequencing. However, editor/designer Michael Busuttil and production artist Ryan Brewer place the art breaks in this issue in a way which is disruptive. While the hues William uses are as good as last issue they sometimes deflate the art’s quality.

Unfortunately the variant cover artists (Doaly, Ivan Tao, and Yoshi Yoshitani) again do not get proper credit in the creative credits. Doaly is responsible for the creation of the 1:25 incentive variant cover that features a design which may intrigue potential buyers. While Tao and Yoshitani go for designs that evoke eastern sensibilities. Yet, Yoshitani’s design of the Linebreakers variant cover is arguably rather standard in comparison to Tao’s Yellow Snow Comics variant cover. Although Tao does almost go too far with creating a sense of depth via the use of an angle. Apparently the logo is missing from the front of the latter two covers, and only gets a color swap on Daoly’s variant. Overall these three covers equate to a mess for creator rights, and why certain people view variants as cash grabs.

There is the main story by writer Kyle Higgins, and a prose back-up story by writer Jana Tropper. While both are high quality Higgins features a cliche reveal on the cliffhanger page. Yet, Tropper’s tale has less clarity regarding a possible time frame. Also we never learn if the character in Tropper’s tale is historical or purely fictional. Nevertheless both writers are great at realistic dialogue and characterization.

Lastly, letterer Clayton Cowles does a better job with this issue than in Ordinary Gods #1 (2021). Though that is just due to how there are no typos in this issue. As for placement, sizing, suggestions of vocal volumes, etc., they are as good as in issue 1.

Ordinary Gods #2 (2021) is out now from Image.