The series is largely influenced by pop music and various mythological deities, and includes the themes of life and death in the story.

It has also been noted for its diverse portrayal of ethnicity, sexuality and gender social roles.

The narrative follows a young teenage girl, Laura, as she interacts with the Pantheon, a group of twelve people who discover that they are reincarnated deities.

This discovery grants them fame and supernatural powers, with the stipulation that they will die within two years as part of a ninety-year cycle known as the Recurrence.

[4] The series ran for 45 main issues[5] and complete in eight trade-paperback arcs, (plus one for the Specials), bringing the total to nine trade paperbacks.

[7] Writer Kieron Gillen's original and core inspiration for The Wicked + The Divine was his father's diagnosis with terminal cancer.

[11] In June 2024, for the tenth anniversary of the series, Gillen and McKelvie launched a Kickstarter to produce a hardcover art book titled The Wicked + The Divine: The Covers Version.

Each member of The Pantheon was at one point a normal person before being chosen to merge with the spirit of a deity.

It has since been revealed that Minerva is not a proper god, automatically created shortly before the next Recurrence begins and working with Ananke the whole time.

She functions almost as a parent, and reveals that she gave up her divinity during an earlier cycle of The Recurrence to protect future members of The Pantheon.

Although she is stern with the deities who are resurrected, she seems to have a genuine maternal connection to them, saying that she will miss them before she kills them, and crying after she does so.

The gods who have had their heads removed previously do not remember having it occur in past Recurrences.

Further brief flashbacks to every Recurrence throughout history show a variety of outcomes for an Ananke awakening a Persephone.

The 2014 Recurrence with Laura Wilson is the first time a third party has interfered with Ananke/Minerva and Persephone's encounter.

Ananke and her sister were part of the first group of twelve with minor talents similar to the descended Laura.

Her sister discovered that labeling themselves as "gods" gave them great power, a shortcut.

Though "godhood" kills one of their group after two years, Ananke found a way to cheat death by creating the Minerva role and sacrificing four heads of each generation of the twelve.

She traps each generation in a story, giving them "godhood" with the name of a deity specific to each individual's flaws allowing her to manipulate and sacrifice them; while also preventing them from discovering their true power as regular humans.

With no heads sacrificed in the 2010s Recurrence, and both the Ananke and the Minerva having been killed, the cycle is finally free from her corruption and cannot be repeated by anyone else.

Laura and her surviving peers go on to commit to a lifetime of work, using their powers without godhood to better the world.

Unusually, the twelve gods all lived close to the end of the Recurrence, forcing Ananke to take drastic measures to complete the ceremony to stop the Great Darkness.

It is revealed that Ananke has found and imprisoned the creature that Woden merged with in the previous Recurrence in the lighthouse near Lucifer's island.

4000 BC – The first successful Recurrence, of which Ananke corrupts and makes the rules with her Sister thus creating the first Minerva.

Persephone fought back against Ananke during this Recurrence, injuring her shoulder, but had part of her head removed in the attempt.

2483 BC – Recurrence takes place on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean.

2391 BC – Recurrence takes place in Harappa in the area known as Pakistan today.

1473 BC – Recurrence takes place in Northern Indus Valley region.

1289 BC – Fifth Recurrence to take place in Egypt, during the reign of Ramses the II.

The review aggregation website Comic Book Roundup reports that the series holds an average score of 8.6 out of 10.

[29] The entire series has been collected as nine trade paperback (TPB) volumes, and also as four deluxe hardcovers (HC):