Review—'American Gods: My Ainsel # 6'— Empty Calories

Interlude: both Shadow and Wednesday are on the run, and they escape their pursuers by tacking a shortcut “backstage”.

American Gods: My Ainsel # 6, Writer: Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell Artist: Scott Hampton Colorist: Jennifer T. Lange, Scott Hampton, Cover Artist: Glenn Fabry, Adam Brown

There are moments when you are building a big novel where you have to gather your strength: little breathers that give the reader a chance to relax; reflect and digest everything that has been happening so far. I could argue that the entire fourth book of Stephen King′s The Dark Tower is one such a breather, for example: you need to read it to understand some essential things, and you read the slow scenes enjoying the change of pace, knowing that other scenes, exciting ones, will be happening, very soon.

This comic feels like such a thing: nothing much happens, but everything will be important in the end.

We have a chance to take a glimpse of what “backstage” means to Mr. Gaiman (I loved that idea in the novel, it reminded me a lot of a story by Philip K. Dick, where god is just a mechanical thing ambling aimlessly around), and we get a glimpse of the complex beliefs left in America by the Native Americans.

Little by little, Gaiman introduces us to different cultures and different beliefs. Sometimes, he reflects on all of them, laying the foundation for a particular theory of his, the basis for the entire run of American Gods: America needs its myths as badly as it needs its food, and sometimes the country′s choices are not the best nourishment-wise; sometimes they pour their entire belief into empty calories.