"I am Wick, the Father of Colors. I am the Lord your God. You have freed me from my prison."
Clive Barker's Next Testament is a supernatural horror comic book miniseries written by (obviously) Clive Barker, co-written by his friend Mark Alan Miller and published by Boom! Studios.
Well-known industrialist Julian Demond, who was known to be not too keen about religion, ends up finding himself on the path to finding God himself. However, God is not a bearded white man in a white robe. He's a living being made of multiple colors capable of levitating. And he doesn't call himself God. Instead, he calls himself Wick. And he claims several things, such as the invention of the English language and how the events in the Bible itself are pretty fictional. It doesn't take long for Julian to realize he's bitten off more than he can chew.
Meanwhile, Julian's son, Tristan, and his fiancée, Elspeth, soon find out what his father has gotten himself into and race to figure out how to stop Wick before the worst can happen.
This comic book miniseries contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Heavily implied to be the case with Julian to Tristan. At best, he's just neglectful, but Tristan says that his mother was the only one who could make him into anything resembling a decent man. After her death, he just got worse.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Wick and his "Brothers", Wick being a case of Bright Is Not Good coming in every color possible while one brother is a Big Red Devil another is either blue or pure white and has eyes like whirlpools.
- Babies Ever After: A year after Wick's rampage, Tristan and Elspeth are living at the library with a baby on the way.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Wick (thankfully). He does engage in an orgy at one point, though, in spite of his apparent lack of any vital parts. His brothers are similarly smooth.
- Biblical Bad Guy: Wick who claims to be the God of the Old Testament mentioned in the Bible with the power to back up the claim and the personality to have done all the messed up thing in that book.
- Big Bad: Wick, the Biblical God and Devil as well as the evil brother of Unan and Filt, begins destroying most of humanity upon being released by Julian Edmond to reduce the global population to a small size he is more comfortable with, intending to rule the rest as a tyrant.
- Big Good: Wick's brethren, Unan and Filt are the Big Good Duumvirate, who unlike him, love their creation and want to save humanity.
- Big Red Devil: One of Wick's brothers looks like this, with the traditional horns and oni-like teeth. Ironically, he's one of the good guys.
- Bittersweet Ending: Wick is defeated by his brothers and sealed away, but he vows to return again someday when someone else dreams of him, and the deaths of billions and the damage done to the world cannot be reversed.
- Blank White Void: Where Wick was imprisoned, being the Father of Colors residing in a white, or more accurately colorless, space rendered him powerless.
- Bright Is Not Good: Wick, the Father of Colors aka God the Father from the Old Testament, is a kaleidoscopic creature whose whole body is covered in vibrant colors. However, he's a malevolent, impulsive, hedonistic deity who harbors nothing but ill will for all humanity.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Wick readily admits that he torments humanity not as a test of their faith, but For the Evulz, and compares himself to the Devil of the Bible, being prideful, vengeful, etc.
- Cessation of Existence: Wick specifies that there's no afterlife.
- Demiurge Archetype: Wick is an interesting example, he is the Abrahamic God but he did such things as part of a triune, two of whom turned on him around the time of the New Testament. All the atrocities committed in the Old Testament, the slaughter of the firstborn, the torture of Jobnote , death for those who criticized god and his prophets the real turning point was Abraham being ordered to kill his son. That's when his brothers/peers turned on him and, as they are collectively greater than him, imprisoned Wick away from people. Notably, Gnosticism is in part a reaction to the evil actions of the Old Testament god, interpreting them so that a "real" benevolent god could exist, which Wick and his brothers embody well.
- Devil, but No God: Inverted. According to Wick, the Devil is a purely fictional idea and that there is only him and his brothers, effectively making it so Wick is both God and the Devil as lampshaded himself.
- Disproportionate Retribution: All over the place, to the point, in fact, that Wick's entire rampage is this.
- Julian's dinner guests won't believe Wick when he says he's God? He'll kill them all gruesomely.
- A woman tries to shush the goth girl for standing up to Wick? He drops a giant block on her.
- Nobody builds the pyramid fast enough? Summon a plague of locusts and blot out the sun.
- The same goth girl asks him what he's doing as he's starting to unmake the world? He snaps his fingers and erases her from existence.
- Dysfunctional Family: Julian and Tristan aren't exactly the best father/son duo. Filt, Unan and Wick too if they're actual brothers and not just "companions in eternity".
- Early Installment Character-Design Difference: The inspiration for Wick comes from a painting Clive Barker made which is very different from the final product., his brothers look quite different in the early issues and covers then they do in the final pages.
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: Filt and Unan do not really want to hurt their brother, but they know that there is nothing that can stop Wick except another seal.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Though Julian freed Wick from his prison and just sat by content to let him do whatever he wants, he eventually thinks Wick has gone too far by murdering the young woman he seemed to actually like.
- Evil Is Hammy: Wick, to the point where he's mistaken for an actor or a performance artist until he gets serious.
- Facepalm: After giving a long "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the dinner guests, expressing his disappointment with humanity for being too civilized, one guest still thinks he's just an actor. He can only clutch his face in annoyance.Wick: Hopeless.
- Faux Affably Evil: Lampshaded, regarding Wick. He'll start out playing along with crowds and will charm them if he finds them amusing enough, but as soon as they do something that displeases him, the results are predictable.Tristan: So there's no rhyme or reason here. He's charming. Mysterious. And apparently a real asshole.
- For the Evulz: Seemingly, Wick thinks his creation should exist for this purpose alone. It's also why he flooded the earth and tormented Job, the latter of which he still considers hilarious.
- Freudian Excuse Denial: Wick scoffs at the Book of Genesis' claim that he caused the great flood to purge humanity after being forced to watch their corruption and brutality. According to himself, he just did it For the Evulz.
- Freudian Trio: Wick is the fickle, destructive id in the trio that comprises himself and Unan and Filt, a silent enforcer and a compassionate but strict philosopher.
- God Is Evil: Wick. BIG. TIME. He does whatever he wants on a whim, because he finds it amusing and doesn't care one bit about ending human suffering. Oh, and he fucking hates free will.
- God's Hands Are Tied: This seems to be the issue for Wick's brothers, as humanity has turned their backs on them, which they're okay with, they can only come back and stop Wick if they're prayed to and asked to stop him.
- Humans Are Flawed: After Wick launches the apocalypse, his two divine brothers Unan and Filt counter Wick's diatribe that Humans Are Bastards by pointing out what that says about them as creators. Humans are necessarily flawed, because that is all the three of them managed to create.
- In Mysterious Ways: Said by Wick when Julian asks him why he doesn't drive. His brothers play this straight, if more actively.
- Ironic Hell: According to Wick, as the Father of Colors, he was sealed away in a colorless void by his brothers when his destructive appetites went too far.
- It Only Works Once: Wick can only be sealed the same way once, first in a colorless void secondly by being diffused into millions of pieces.
- It's All About Me: Wick is a spoiled sociopath who thinks everything revolves around him.
- Kill All Humans: What Wick decides to do to the human race in the end.
- Knight Templar: Inverted with Wick. He's out to destroy the human race for not being evil.
- Laughably Evil: On occasion, Wick is pretty funny, usually when he's doing or is about to do something unspeakable.
- Logical Weakness: Wick is the "Father of Colors" every color in the world is an extension of his essence into creation. So when his "brothers" imprisoned him they put him into a colorless void.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Events certainly align to help Tristan and Elspeth to get exactly the information they need and to get them where they need to go. Subverted in that they eventually figure out that Filt and Unan have been helping them the entire time on their journey.
- Meaningful Name:
- Wick has to be the WICKEDEST character ever!
- Julian's surname is "Demond", meaning "of the world". Wick lampshades this when he asks if Julian wants the world to belong to him.
- Misanthrope Supreme: Julian despises the rest of the world, standing by as Wick does unspeakable damage to it and helps him find new places to destroy. At the end, he thinks Wick has gone too far and is tired of his impulsive, senseless acts of destruction and hedonism, and he doesn't know if he hates the world any less after what Wick has done to it.
- Missing Mom: Tristan's mom and Julian's (first) wife. Apparently, their connection with each other died the same day she did.Tristan: My mom was the only person in the world who could keep him on point. When she died, so did any chance of him being a decent person.
- Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, the story of Job was considered this to Wick's brothers, and the reason why he was imprisoned for 2,000 years.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Julian gets a brief moment when Wick violently slaughters his guests wholesale where he seems to regret what he's done, which Wick takes notice of and quickly wipes away the guilt from his mind.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: As soon as Julian frees Wick Tristan is able to tell something is off even half a world away and he's able to tell that it's his father.
- Nonconformist Dyed Hair: A pink-haired woman shows up in issue seven and sticks around for a bit, before Wick kills her. She is the only one that calls Wick out for a lot of the evil he does.
- Not Quite the Almighty: Wick can do amazing things but combined his "brothers" can neutralize and contain him.
- Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome: Tristan and Elspeth are perfectly matched, smart, resourceful and with a keen sense of right and wrong. They're also the pawns of the triune trying to end/save the world and they are put through abductions murder and natural disasters galore in their role in the story.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Wick attempts to annihilate all life after he sees nothing on Earth that is worth saving to his mind.
- Omniscient Morality License: Defied, God never had a plan for anything he was just straight-up crazy.
- Ontological Inertia: The changes that Wick wrought on the "design" or hypostasis
of reality - powered flight rendered impossible and all electronics have stopped working - do not revert when he is imprisoned again. Makes one wonder what other changes he made when he was last freed. - Our Gods Are Different: Compare Wick and his brethren to the usual interpretation of gods. Just do it.
- Ouroboros: The three told cord seems to combine these with the Triskelion, it seems to be a recurrent motief for the triune but fallen out of favor given their war.
- Physical God: God is a brightly-colored creature who, after being released from his slumber, walks the Earth to convert people and perform "miracles" everywhere. This is a VERY bad thing. His divine "brothers" are the same, but noticeably more benevolent towards mankind and even sealed God away the first time around before doing so again.
- Psychopathic Manchild: To put it mildly, Wick is a petulant, genocidal, entitled asshole throwing a global temper tantrum and treating humanity like playthings that he'll dispose of when they displease him.
- Pyramid Power: Wicks prison is a tetrahedron with its three visible sides embossed with the triunes' faces.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The plot is kicked off by Julian freeing Wick from his tetrahedron-shaped prison, a colorless void where he was sealed away by his brothers.
- Single Tear: At the very end, Wick breaks down and lets one tear fall as he's about to be sealed again, moments before his red brother does the same.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Wick, despite being God from the Old Testament, is colorful not just in appearance, but in his vernacular.Wick: I have prepared my response. To use the parlance... (grabs St. Peter's Basilica and crushes it) "FUCK YOU."
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: An in-universe example. Wick claims in Issue #2 that this is the case for the events of the Holy Bible. A number errors he pointed out were how there's no afterlife, how he started the Flood and he started it not because humanity had become evil but out of curiosity, how he didn't destroy Sodom and Gomorrah but it was destroyed during a fight with his brethren, how he never turned Lot's wife to salt, and how he completely wanted Abraham to kill his son to prove his love to Wick but was stopped by his brethren. He still liked reading it, though.
- Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The triune's names are properly written out as Wycke, Filte and Vnan.
- You Got Guts: A goth girl in the crowd in San Francisco tells off Wick when he tries to force them to build a pyramid. Wick takes a liking to her and spares her ... for the time being.
- Your Head A-Splode: What happens to a woman at a dinner party when Wick doesn't like her attitude. It's about as nasty-looking as you'd think.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: Possibly what Wick is doing when he receives the "Sacrament" by doing something to Vera, Julian's second wife.
