What separates a superhero from a god? For Ram V, the answer might have less to do with extraordinary powers and more to do with what happens when people start worshipping the stories we tell.
It’s a question at the very heart of Deicidium: Returned, the new Image Comics graphic novel from Ram V, Evan Cagle, and Anand RK (out this week, November 11). Set in a future where corporations and engineered religions have transformed faith into a global industry, the story follows ancient gods awakening inside ordinary people. Their return threatens a carefully constructed system of power, prompting the release of 12 specially trained orphans raised to hunt and kill them.
Speaking with me over Zoom recently, Ram V discussed the relationship between mythology and religion, how superhero fandom can resemble organized belief, and why capitalism tends to turn meaningful stories into products.
“Superheroes run the same risk of mythology versus religion, right?” Ram V said. “On some level, they started as mythology, and then eventually we started putting them on Tiffany boxes, and then we started making Funko Pops, and we started building statues.”
He pointed to superhero-themed celebrations like Batman Day as examples of how deeply these fictional figures have become embedded in popular culture. That enthusiasm, however, can take a decidedly darker turn.
“These are all signs of fandom, but they’re also signs of fanaticism,” Ram V said. “It’s funny, it is absolutely a tenuous connection until you run across that one person who’s like, ‘I’m going to threaten you because you changed the costume to one I don’t like.’”
For Ram V, the relationship between fans and fictional characters is something corporations are particularly adept at exploitation.
He added, “Stories, good stories, will make you do that, and bad corporations will take advantage of it.”
The Business of Belief
The commercialized religions of Deicidium might sound like an extreme vision of the future, but Ram V sees the premise as an extension of the present.
“It’s not too far off from where we are,” Ram V said. “I do say that it is an extrapolation of where we are currently, but why are there profitability statements coming out of churches and temples?”
The idea also comes from his upbringing in India, where mythology and organized religion were both constant presences.
“I had a childhood in India where I was surrounded by mythology,” Ram V said. “But I was also equally surrounded by religion, and sometimes there is no line between the two. They seamlessly pretend to be each other.”
As a storyteller, he has become increasingly interested in what happens when those stories lose their original humanity.
“As I’ve grown older, and as someone who is involved in telling stories, I have a love of stories,” Ram V said. “And it becomes increasingly galling to watch someone take stories, beat all the humanity out of them, and then go, ‘This is now a self-help book.’”
That frustration helped inspire Deicidium‘s central conflict. What would happen if the gods whose stories the religious institutions had reshaped suddenly returned to see what humanity had wrought?
Ram V added, “I think it might be cool for people to see, like, if the gods that we wrote stories about could come back today, would they be on our side, or would they be on the side of these massive organizations that are reportedly speaking their word?”
At the same time, he also sees a connection between the consolidation of institutional power and attempts to control storytelling itself. He pointed to efforts to remove books from schools and libraries as examples of how authorities seek to shape which narratives people can encounter.
“There’s a reason why all of these famously oppressive people, the first place they go for isn’t like, how am I gonna change the constitution,” Ram V said. “No, it’s always what books can we get out of the library.”
It’s a concern that informs the very world of Deicidium, where the stories people believe have become inseparable from the institutions controlling these important narratives.
When Gods Aren’t Necessarily Heroes
Despite the extraordinary powers on display across Deicidium, Ram V doesn’t want readers to assume its returning deities are superheroes, adding, “I don’t think there’s anything heroic about them yet. And not all of them are heroes.”
The distinction is important because the story’s characters aren’t meant to occupy fixed moral positions. Some gods might liberate humanity, while others could become just as dangerous as the organizations opposing their power.
“I want people to feel that the guy that they loved in the first 10 pages could be someone they absolutely hate in volume three,” Ram V said. “And I want them to feel like someone they detested in the first few pages is going to be the savior of all of it in chapter five.”
That uncertainty extends to the 12 god-killers, whose existence raises questions about whether humanity should embrace divine power or seek to destroy it outright.
Ram V added, “All human mythology is completely full of narratives of human beings taking powers that were only supposed to be of the gods, and then using them to kill gods,” explaining the series’ title.
He also suggested that the boundaries between the two factions might eventually disappear.
“There’s nothing to stop one of the god killers from turning into a god at some point,” Ram V said. “And there’s nothing to stop any of the gods from deciding, ‘No, no, we are the bad ones and we need to go away.’”
While the story draws on superhero aesthetics and Shōnen anime, Ram V is more interested in exploring mythology’s moral instability than nay specific influences.
“I don’t think gods are necessarily worthy of worship or leadership,” Ram V said. “I think these are things we impose on them. I think the original gods were meant as cautionary tales.”
He cited The Odyssey, where encounters with divine figures frequently serve as warnings about human ambition and the consequences of challenging forces beyond mortal control.
“Gods are aspirational expressions of human beings,” Ram V said. “We want so badly to be heroic that we need to write stories about…look, it’s dangerous, you can be heroic, you can be powerful, you can have all of these wonderful things, but know that you’re mortal.”
That fascination with mythology’s stranger corners eventually led our conversation to Jesus Christ and the stories that didn’t make it into the biblical canon. Ram V brought up the Apocrypha, including an account Evan Cagle had shared with him involving a young Jesus with some profound implications.
“There are these things called the Apocrypha, which were, you know, taken out of what is considered the correct version,” Ram Vi said. “…But the Apocrypha are full of really, like, wacko ideas.”
Ram V added, “One of which Evan linked to me in chat talks about an earlier version of Jesus having reality-bending divine powers, which he used on some kid who bumped into him on the street.”
For Ram V, these stranger stories are considerably more compelling than the polished versions that have survived in popular religious storytelling, adding they’re the “version I’m more interested in reading.”
He also brought up Humbaba, a monstrous figure from ancient Mesopotamian mythology whose face was described as being made from the entrails of humans and animals. However, that was “ironed out of mythology,” contrasting their grotesque imagery with the more rigid moral instructions of organized religion.
That concept gets at one of Deicidium‘s most intriguing questions: What would these ancient beings think if they returned to discover how humanity had rewritten their stories?
“What if intestine-face god came back today and saw that he’d been ironed out of our text?” Ram V said. “How would he feel about it?” His answer? “Probably pissed off.”
A Mythology Long in The Works
Ram V’s interest in these ideas even predate his recent work on DC’s similar exploration of the divine, The New Gods.
Ram V added, “There are early documents I sent to Nick Robles…because even in 2015, I was like, ‘We should make a creator-owned book that’s about this.”
Still, working on The New Gods was a kind of “preparation” for what would eventually come in Deicidium.
“I looked at that and went, ‘Oh, these are exactly the things I’ve been obsessing over for years,’” Ram V said. “So I got to do some of this there, but then there’s also things I can’t do with the New Gods, which I very much can do with Deicidium.”
And the scope of his creator-owned project is considerable. Ram V currently envisions nine volumes, with the story eventually expanding beyond the initial conflict between gods and their assassins.
“People assume this is going to be gods are good guys, god killers are bad guys. OK, first assumption, not wrong,” Ram V said. “Then it’s going to go into, ‘What if gods are the bad guys and god killers are the good guys?’ Then it’s gonna go into, ‘Wait, wait, what happened to all the regular human beings in the middle of all of this?’ What if they decide they don’t want either of these people representing them?”
The story could eventually introduce powers even older than humanity itself.
“What if something came along that, in the middle of all our conflict, we had forgotten that there were gods long before there were human beings,” Ram V said. “And what happens when those gods say, ‘What are you kids doing in my playground?’”
Although he knows the direction of the larger narrative, Ram V is still leaving ample room to explore.
“I don’t know what the ending is, but I know the roads that lead there,” Ram V said. “I know the direction of travel, but I don’t know what the ending is.”
One scene, however, has remained with him since early in development. It involves two gods of knowledge, the Counter of Stars and the Weaver, meeting on a park bench as the world collapses around them.
“I had a very early on had a scene in my head where everything is destroyed, everything is blowing up, fire, hellfire, and brimstone everywhere,” Ram V said. “And these two gods who are both incredibly horrific in their own ways, come sit down on a park bench.” One eventually asks the other, “Did you always know it would end up here?”
The creative team is already working on the second volume, with Ram V estimating that they’re roughly seven monthly issues into the larger story.
Why Human Storytelling Matters
Developing Deicidium has also become an exercise in collaborative worldbuilding. Through his Mirror Maker studio, Ram V has invited other creators to contribute fictional histories and foundational texts for the religions that populate the series.
“I’ve been able to pull in people whose work I really enjoy,” Ram V said. “I’ve pulled in Alex [Paknadel], I’ve pulled in Dan [Watters], and I say, ‘Hey, write me a foundational text of this future religion that’s in this world. Write me the background of how the events that are formative in this religion happened, and what is the truth of it and what is the version that the public knows?’”
That approach extends to the backup story “The Stone Mask,” by Darcy Van Poelgeest, included in the first volume.
Ram V added, “There’s a joy in occasionally stepping away from the world that I’m creating and going, ‘What would you do if I gave you eight pages to do something in this world?’”
Mirror Maker is also documenting the entire process through behind-the-scenes videos. Ram V believes showing how creative work comes together has become especially valuable as generative AI enters more conversations about art and storytelling.
“I just can’t wrap my head around AI art or AI stories,” Ram V said. “Because I am of the fundamental belief that art and stories come out of human experience and human endeavor.”
He argued that human experience is what makes creative expression meaningful, even when the finished work depicts something decidedly familiar.
“…No matter how good a machine gets, it could ever claim to have experience,” Ram V said. “And so until we get to that point, I think it’s important for creators to show people that this is what it’s like to actually make something.”
For him, documenting the creative process also reminds audiences of the work and personal perspectives behind the stories they enjoy every single day.
Ram V added, “Now more than ever, I think it’s important for people to be aware of what collaboration looks like, and how are the things that I love…how are they made, and why do they cost what they cost, and then whose lives are behind this, whose experiences am I reading when I read this?”
It’s an idea that brings the conversation right back to Deicidium itself. In a world where stories have become products and faith is now a business, Ram V is interested in the people behind those stories, the people who believe in them, and what happens when the two clash. And with nine volumes planned, there’s plenty of room for those questions to evolve.
“There’s a lot of scope, and there are places for this narrative to go,” Ram V said. “And we will get there one superpowered punch at a time.”
Deicidium: Returned Vol. 1 arrives November 11 from Image Comics.
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