Death Vigil vol. 1
After enjoying his work so much on “Sunstone,” as well as the fill-in issues of “Rat Queens,” I’ve been interested in picking up more work from its writer/artist Stjepan Sejic. Problem is that he’s had a very long and still ongoing working relationship with Top Cow and their “Witchblade” series in particular. I can’t be bothered to care about that (or the majority of Top Cow’s output in general), but Sejic is writing and illustrating the revamp “Switch” which looks promising. I did pick up the first volume of “Ravine” at Comic-Con and found it to feature pretty if over-rendered art and a dense, turgid story full of fantasy nonsense and tropes that give the genre a bad name. Now we have the first volume of “Death Vigil” and it affirms Sejic as a creator who has really come into his own in the past couple of years. Even if it does have some distracting issues, it’s still an entertaining blend of fantasy, comedy, and horror.
The members of the title organization are the good guys here, protecting humanity from the evil machinations of the Necromancers and the members of their Pale Court. Led by the reaper Bernardette (Bernie to her friends) the members of the Vigil wield weapons known as veilrippers that also reflect part of their personality. Strong but thick Sam has a pick and a shovel, the energetic James has his cards, and the quick Marlene has handscythes. It’s into this quirky mix that Clara Jenkins is thrown after her boyfriend murders her in an attempt to gain incredible power at the Necromancers’ promise. Clara is saved after Bernie claims her for the Vigil, but her initiation heralds a much larger threat. The Necromancers have been stepping up their game and killing members of the Vigil and taking their veilrippers for a plan to summon an unspeakable evil from beyond the void.
Don’t worry. The actual execution is lighter than I’m making it sound here. After all, this title first caught my notice with its irreverent solicitation text in Previews and “Sunstone” showed that Sejic has a real knack for mixing in humor with his character development here. That holds true for “Death Vigil” to a lesser extent. I was expecting more irreverence, but what’s here is still quite good. Moments like Bernie’s teasing of Sam that he’ll be naked after she claims him for the vigil, or Clara using her veilripper as a portal device for scratching her back really do lighten the tone while letting us know more about the cast’s personalities.
Sejic is also working with a fairly large and diverse one here. The good news is that he does a good job with fleshing them out over the course of this volume. Some, Sam and Clara in particular, get more attention than others but the payoff there is that they get more interesting twists with their stories towards the end. It’s also refreshing how Sejic eschews darkness as a personality trait when dealing with the Vigil. Sure, these people have been through some rough times and have seen things that have turned their hair white *rimshot* but they don’t let themselves be dragged down by their circumstances. The fact that they can pull together for a timely photo op at the end drives that idea home in a nice way.
“Death Vigil,” also offers further proof that eldritch horrors summoned from the dark are always more fun if they have the personality of a fun-loving teenage girl. You can try not to like Mia when she shows up, but you’ll just be fighting against the inevitable.
It’s good that Sejic has a firm handle on the comedy and characters here. The fact that he’s got a likeable cast and winning humor helps carry this volume over its more rickety narrative patches. You see, “Death Vigil” features a pretty conventional narrative at its core. It can basically be summed up as the kind of story where the bad guys are summoning a huge monster (as part of a larger plot that will be revealed later) and the good guys have to go put it down. Along the way there’s a ton of exposition regarding the Vigil and the Necromancers and only some of it is laid out in a way that doesn’t feel like the reader is being beaten over the head with a giant infodump in the process.
There’s also a few familiar twists and tropes that didn’t impress me much either. We’ve got one of those moments where the bad guys cause doubt in one of the Vigil’s allies by telling them a convenient half-truth. Which is then followed up by one of the Vigil showing up to let the person in on the full story. Been there, done that, burned the T-shirt in my driveway. I can also see what Sejic was going for in the antagonist who is driven and manipulated to bring about the big bad, but it’s still handled in a by-the-numbers fashion. The man does deserve some credit for tempering some of the “you must find its true nature out for yourself” schtick with the veilrippers with humor, at least.
Rickety and conventional narrative aside, it still provides a great showcase for Sejic’s artistic skills. While anyone who has read “Sunstone” knows that he can serve up emotive characters that amplify the charm of the story, “Death Vigil” shows that he can do fantasy action like no other. In addition to having some great monster designs (as well as the genius idea of having a raven turn into a feathered dinosaur), Sejic serves up some pretty impressive action scenes over the course of the story. They start out small, skirmishes in graveyards, and scale up to primordial monsters duking it out for the fate of the reality. It’s clear that Sejic has an impressive skillset at his disposal and he uses it in an impressive fashion here.
This first volume of “Death Vigil” shows that while Sejic has some ways to go in developing his narrative skills, his skills with characterization and humor, and his artistic prowess are such that they can compensate. For all of its issues, I left this first volume wanting to know more about the characters and their world. It’s clear from the “Volume 1” on the cover that Sejic has more to say about them as well. Unfortunately, this series didn’t set the sales charts on fire while it was being serialized in single issue form. This just means that everyone should go out and buy a copy of the collected edition to let him know that more of the Vigil is wanted (with profit)!