DC’s The Vigil #1: Problematic or Empowering?

Introduction

Welcome back to my Volcano Base. Let’s get into some comics. Specifically, this week, we’re talking The Vigil #1, a brand new book from DC. We open on a ship getting hijacked.

We sort of see all this happening intercut with images of a doctor or professor or someone in a lab coat getting dressed down by some government officials, basically saying, we gave you a lot of money and a lot of time and you didn’t give us anything. So we’re done with you. We’re shutting you down.

Meet the Vigil

We cut back to the hijacking. Now we’re seeing it from the perspective of three individuals on a small boat headed towards the giant container ship. This is the team that is probably going to be The Vigil. They get on the boat. We discover they’re not screwing around.

They are taking people out left and right, getting them with garrotes, the whole nine yards. This is also when we start seeing some of their powers. Saya (I hope I’m saying that name right) has a mask that he can basically use to program his face to look like anybody else’s face. So master of disguise sort of vibe.

The one thing I did notice, he has really long hair when he gets on the ship. The pirate whose face he takes has really short curly hair. When he when Saya takes his face, his hair changes, too. They may explain that, but I did think it was weird

Then we meet The Vigil’s Dodge. She’s got too much fast twitch muscle fiber in her body. And to help counteract that, they’ve reinforced her skeleton to the point where she can move faster than people can see. So she is like a combat expert.

I want to…there’s something about this that I want to come back to, but I want to finish finish talking about the issue first and then sort of like give you my thoughts. So let’s let’s put a pin in this and come back to page 11 in a few minutes.

Things Get Real

Now that we’ve seen The Vigil’s powers, we also find out this isn’t a rescue mission. We see Saya take the face of one of these pirates and think it’s so that he can help the captives. Nah, he just gets on the bridge, knows he can get close to the captain and take him out and he shoots him dead. They leave all of the captives tied up.

We see them go to the bowels of the ship to discover this device with a long name that I forgot.And we find out that the pirates weren’t there to take over the ship. They were there to put something on the ship, and they succeeded in that. And that’s this device that we’re seeing now.

And this is when we find the manifesto of The Vigil — I’m just going to read it because I like it.

“We find dangerous things–technology, ideas, stories– that the world isn’t ready for, just yet. And we destroy them.” That is heavy, but also really cool.

The Good

It gives me strong Planetary vibes. It gives me strong early Wildstorm comics before they were owned by DC Comics.

This like secret history of the universe, the behind the scenes stuff that’s going on that’s fantastical and I’m sure are going to be magical and technological and everything else.

So that’s like a big plus for me.

The Not So Good

The one thing that kind of gave me some pause and this is where we’re going to come back to the pin that, you know, we put in a little bit ago

When we’re first introduced Saya and Dodge, we see kind of a voiceover from the doctor, essentially saying, “I took some very broken people and broke them a little bit more in the hopes of making something special.”

I’m going to be real honest. I recorded this part of the review like five times now, having a little trouble getting through it. As someone who deals with some some disabilities that are no joke, that that are a big deal and a big part of my life, I don’t know how to feel about this. It’s giving me they were useless to society until I made them better vibes.

And I really don’t like that. Like, I’m hoping that I’m wrong and I’m hoping that they’re going to take this in a different direction. And it’s not just going to be like, Look at the cripples. They’re better now. We can make use of them. I really hope that’s not the case, but that’s that’s the vibe I’m getting. And that’s my only hold up with this book.

I really enjoyed it. And honestly, I’m going to pick up another few issues to see where it goes. And if I’m right or not.

But I’m I’m really concerned about that part of the storyline and how that’s going to go. There is the flip side of that that says like, oh, this could be a cool, very empowering thing.

Like people with disabilities can be superheroes too, and that’s really cool. And I don’t want to take away from that. I just know it hit me really hard and really weird. And so I wanted to, I guess, let you all know and make y’all aware of that. So with that being said, I think that’s it for this week.