Rating: WORTHY!
I loved Stjepan Šejić's Rat Queens, not so hot on his Dresden Files, but this particular series was another win for him in my book - or for me with his book, I guess. After reading two less-than-appealing graphic novels prior to this one, it was a breath of fresh air to encounter the sotry and artwork here. It wasn't all plain sailing, but overall, this was a very worthy read.
It's a great life in the Vigil. The only drawback is you have to be dead - and then get invited to join because of some special quality you possess. Oh, and you must accept that your hair color will change to white. But not your skin color. I didn't get the distinction there. The evil dudes have, of course black hair, but not necessary black skin - because that would be racist, right?!
Once you're in, though, you get a weapon, and a cool bunch of fun friends. On the downside, you have to fight horrific demonic beasties which try to break through from the abyss into the upper layers. The beasts were sadly clichéd, I'm afraid to report - all scarlet and teeth. The death vigil crew, and indeed the bad guys, all curiously shared the same face - with a change of hair style here and there, and maybe some facial hair or a slightly more square jaw if it was a guy. Sometimes it was hard for me to tell the difference between once character and another from their image, although they all had different personalities. Indeed, when the hair color unexpectedly changes on one of the good guys, she became pretty much a twin of one of the girls on the evil side. I don't think that this was intentional, but who knows - the series isn't over yet!
There's the superficial plot - cracks develop in the barrier, evil beasts break through and the Death Vigil dispatches them, calling in help from their powerful female leader if they get into trouble - and an underlying story arc, and it worked well on both levels. That was what was commendable and different about this series - the guys were not in charge here. This is a very female-centric series, with both good guys and bad guys having a strong female figure calling the shots. On the good side, there was more than one interesting female character: try five!
Bernie (Bernadette) is the leader - an ancient and powerful female who rules the roost, advising and guiding her apprentices. She has two younger females working with her and as the story begins, she adds a third, who serves as the passport for the reader to learn how this set-up works. The newbie is amusing in her own right; she has real personality, but she;s also fascinating in that whereas other vigil-ers have swords and pick-axes for fighting demons, she ends up with a feather. It proves to be far more than it seems, however. Last but not least, later in the story, there's an Asian female from another team who, along with her male colleague, joins with Bernie's group to fight a particularly dangerous threat. This is what really won me over. It's rare in comics and it was nice to see it bloom here.
I really enjoyed this story. There were some issues with poor printing of speech balloons. I don't know what that was about. Some of it was intentional - red print on a black background for some of the evil characters, for example. That didn't work - it was very hard to read and simply annoying. In other cases the speech balloons were transparent and this looked unintentional - like someone had forgot to put in a white backing for these balloons. Some of the text was hard to read on an iPad in my advance review copy, because it was so small, necessitating an annoying need to enlarge and then diminish the page to read the text. That was a minor upset compare with the generosity, warmth, complexity, and humor of the story, so titanic good v. evil battle clichés aside, I really enjoyed this and recommend it as a worthy read.
