A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance vol. 1

It doesn’t seem like Mr. Wen is having a bad day, at first.  We see him making his way through Vancouver out to a remote point in the countryside as he deals with inconveniences both minor and eccentric.  The rain.  Trying to find a pack of his favorite cigarettes.  Bumping into a guy at the mini-mart.  Deciding whether or not to end a pigeon’s life by stepping on it.  Not quite “the usual” but enough to ensure that it’s well into the evening when he gets to his destination.  Unfortunately for him, he finds that the people he was hoping to meet there have already had a Very Bad Time.  Now he has to find out who’s next and see if he can save them from the fate that some privileged rich guy has in store for them.

“A Righteous Thirst for Vengeance” comes to us from writer Rick Remender and artist Andre Lima Araujo.  If we’re judging this by past Remender projects, this is leaps and bounds better than “The Scumbag” but not quite on the same level as “Deadly Class” or “Seven to Eternity.”  It does feel like a refreshing change from what I’ve come to expect from the writer as he’s dialed back the editorializing and speechifying that we so often see his characters engage in.  These things are still there if you look for them, but it feels like the writer is trying to strip away all the excess here.  What’s left is a terse, straightforward action plot that gets you invested because of its simplicity.

Helping matters immensely is the art from Araujo who has a straightforward yet detailed style that draws you in.  His action scenes are as sparse and brutal as the story itself while his characters emote in believable ways as well.  The only problem here is that Mr. Wen is very much a cipher at this point.  We don’t know much about him, which is kind of a problem when we see him risk his life to save some people he doesn’t know at all.  There’s also the dark-web assassin business which treads a fine line between convenient plot point to facilitate the action and trendy topic which threatens to complicate the straightforward story.  Regardless, I’m still going to pick up the second, and concluding, volume of this series because what’s here is a strong start all told.