Most Pantheon members (barring Minerva) are fine with dying in two years, mainly because the godly powers and the worshippers balance things out.
Turns out Baphomet and Urðr are actually not that cool with the dying thing either. Neither was Luci.
Anvilicious: Issue 13 which contains the misogyny and abuse that Tara went through. One could make an argument for various parts of 14 and 15 as well.
Broken Base: Amaterasu's Race Lift: acceptable, especially with the knowledge that quite a few important characters are non-white (and that there are other Race Lifts in the Pantheon)? Or unnecessary white washing, considering that there are so few characters of Asian descent represented in comics (or at all), even with Cassandra being part of the main cast? While Cassandra voices some of the criticisms In-Universe, the fact that she can come off as a case of The Complainer Is Always Wrong doesn't help.
Minerva's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Woden in issue 42 as he is torn to pieces by his valkyries is so satisfying:
"Oh Woden/David, I have done many awful necessary things. But YOU had a choice. And even at this late date, all your choices were bad. I'll tell you this. I've been around a long long time. And I am oh so bored of men like you."
Issues 44 has Baal finally killing Minerva by way of Murder-Suicide.
Complete Monster: Ananke and her younger half, Minerva, murdered the original "gods", including her sister Persephone, while plotting the Recurrence, where 12 young men and women become new deities, all to use a ritual to harvest their strength and keep herself immortal. Using murder to trick the others and keep them in line, Ananke frequently kills the incarnation of her sister, Persephone, and shows no hesitation in murdering the deities to harvest their lifeforce. Using the myth of "The Great Darkness", she has Baal Hammon sacrifice children, only for it to be revealed the Great Darkness is a hoax she made up to control him. Plotting to have Baal sacrifice 20,000 innocents at a concert for the energy, Ananke intends to keep her life going forever no matter the cost.
From the Pantheon, Cass, Dio, and Luci are some of the most popular characters.
2574 BCE Persephone and Wrangel Island Persephone and Francia Persephone. Despite not being the first to fight back or even manage to wound Ananke, all three of them managed to escape - 2574 BCE Peresphone impaled Ananke, Wrangel Island blew up Ananke's head instead, and Francia Persephone bisected Ananke. This gave some Catharsis Factor and left a lot of fans wanting to see what happened in those specific recurrences.
Fan Fic Fuel: Issue 36's montage of all the Recurrences to date. The series has only gone into detail about a handful of them via the one-shots leaving the rest of the Pantheons open to speculation regarding which gods were present and what happened during their two years.
The reveal that Baphomet is actually Nergal makes sense if you know that Baphomet is not a "real" god in the sense that he was historically worshipped by any culture. note Cassandra actually points this out at one point.The Knights Templar were accused of worshipping him, but Baphomet is only really "worshipped" by modern Satanist groups, and even then he's only really a symbol of human individualism and freedom. So it would make sense that Nergal would choose this fake name, as he is a Satanic religious figure a lot of people, especially those interested in the occult, will have heard of, but he is indeed a fake god that has never really been widely worshipped until very recently among modern occult followers.
In the 455 special, Ananke tells Geiseric, the king of the Vandals, that she hopes in the future, Vandals will be synonymous with wisdom. Except the word "Vandalism" means "to destroy", so Ananke was just Trolling or was entirely incorrect, right? Actually, evidence shows that despite Vandals sacking Rome, they were perpetuators of Roman Culture, not destroyers. So in a way, she was right.
The "Fucking Tara" meme. Turns out that Tara was hated because she tried to showcase her own talents instead of the instant-rave powers of divinity in the middle of a divine concert, causing a riot and immediate hate from everyone, most of it racist and misogynist. "Fucking Tara" was actually the nicest thing anybody ever called her.
The deaths themselves are starting to become this, with Lucifer's analogue David Bowie dying in January 2016, and then Inanna's analogue of Prince following in April. Kieron himself stated after the latter that he was "genuinely creeped out."
In Woden's issue, he gave a monologue on how patriarchy is ruled by fathers, and how most men are merely sons who are sacrificed for the fathers' benefit. At first, the reader would think he said it out of lament. After reading Issue #33, where it was revealed that he betrayed his own son for godhood, it now came out as gloating.
After learning that Woden is David Blake, David Blake's interactions with Cass have become a whole lot Squickier.
Every single heartwarming moment with Minerva is revealed to be as of the "Mothering Invention" arc. She was working with Ananke the whole time and is in fact not ascended, but simply appears before the start of the Recurrence, in this case conning people to pretend to be her parents for the fame and money. Yeah, those "stage parents" people felt so sorry she had? A couple of patsys Minerva and Ananke probably planned to kill all along. Baal seeing her as a little sister? She was using him all along. Baph being unwilling to kill her? If only he had.
Some fans guessed issue #20's twist that Baphomet didn't kill Inanna. Ananke did.
Some fans guessed that Woden was actually David Blake and to a lesser extent, that the Pink/Blue Woden was actually his son, Jon.
With 1923, people correctly guessed Baal was in this Pantheon, but he wasn't the Black man seen in issue #1.
Jerkass Woobie: Most of the gods act like divas and spoiled children due to a mix of personal baggage in their personal lives, the type of ego-boosts being Gods would predictably provide and the fact that they only have two more years to live.
Baphomet/Nergal is a particularly clear example on both the jerkass and woobie fronts. He's a generally obnoxious Troll who is willing to try to kill other gods to gain their time and cheats on the Morrigan twice. However, a lot of his behavior is posturing to cover for his fear of death, and he finds himself unable to go through with killing Inanna. Add to that the fact that his parents died shortly before his ascension, and the fact that Morrigan has been physically and emotionally abusing him, and it becomes clear that in the end he's just a scared, broken teenager.
Fucking Tara. Became a Discredited Meme after issue #13, though.
Moral Event Horizon: As it turns out, Woden crossed this awhile ago. He's actually David Blake, and he sold out his own son, imprisoning him so that he can play at being a god.
Issue 11, all of it. Issue 18 goes further by revealing Persephone survived Issue 11 after all. Issue 20 joins the party by revealing Ananke killed Inanna, not Baphomet.
Issue #33. 'Woden' is David Blake, who backstabbed his son, Jon, for power. Jon is the real god, Mimir, but he's been locked up for two years while his father takes his powers and lives his life. Minerva has been possessed or taken over by Ananke, and the severed heads of Luci, Tara and Inanna are somewhere underground, with Ananke looking for a fourth to fend off the Great Darkness.
Poor Mimir, a.k.a. Jon Blake. His father arranged for him to become a member of the Pantheon against his will. As soon as the transformation was complete, David beheaded Jon and kept the severed head prisoner in Valhalla to power the tech David uses to pass himself off as Woden. When Cass and Persephone find the head they try to free him, only for the security system to just teleport him back to his cell.
