VIGILANTE #1

By: Al Brown
Review Date: Friday, September 30, 2005

Wow, this book sucks. If suckage was oil, this book would be the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. If suckage was cricket teams, this book would be England. If suckage was a contestant on Survivor, Vigilante #1 would be Stephenie.

Have I mentioned that this book isn't very good? Well, it's not. But how does it suck? I'll count the ways. But first: a history lesson!

For those that missed my little background piece on Wednesday about the history of the Vigilante: the original Vigilante debuted in 1941 and was nicknamed "The Prairie Troubadour", which is hilariously not-badass-sounding. Also, speaking of not-badass-sounding, one of his main villains was the Rainbow Man. You just can't make this stuff up.

Then there was a Vigilante from the 80s who was basically a Punisher ripoff, and here's the funny thing about that guy: he eventually came to the fairly obvious realization that, as a vigilante killer, he was one of the people he'd sworn to kill, so he shot himself in the head. Does anyone else find that a little bit hilarious? No? Well, sorry, Mister Serious.

Vigilante III was a lady who slept with Deathstroke. (All together now: "Ewwwwww!") As far as I know she never officially retired, but this new Vigilante is clearly a dude, so...maybe they'll fight it out at some point or something. (Although honestly, it's not a very creative name in the first place. I would think one of them could just make up a new one.)

And this leaves out no less than three other people who've adopted the Vigilante name for shorter periods of time, making this guy either Vigilante IV or VII depending on who's counting. And he's still a Punisher ripoff.

So in this introductory issue, he kills a couplea dudes who were very bad people. (Child molesters are the new commies!) He speaks in a creepy voice, which you can tell because the speech balloons are all quavery. He intimidates a shrink, which I totally understand. There's another shrink who's a lady, who pretty much just flirts with every guy she runs into. (Slutty shrink! Yeah!) And, um, that's about it. A few other characters get introduced and talk in wildly annoying ways. Check it out: when a stereotypical cop is eating a donut in this book, writer Bruce Jones (best known for a run on Incredible Hulk that might optimistically be described as "controversial") actually puts the word "munch" into his sentences. Like this: "Anyone I *munch* know?" Because, apparently, no one told Jones that he was writing a comic book. Dude: you get this artist, see, and he's actually gonna draw a picture of a guy eating a donut. People will probably get the idea. I know: crazy!

But if you think that's annoying...I haven't even gotten started about the accents. The accents, Lord! Jones has clearly never met a single person who was not white and from the suburbs. Okay, here's an example. This is an actual line from an actual hooker who I guess is supposed to be Puerto Rican or something: "Maybe ees a cop, Marko! I coot get enna tropple!"

Now, I don't think this is actually racism. At least, not quite. Some people talk different, and of course it's fine to try to reflect that in your writing. But this, specifically, is not how anyone talks, and it's excruciating to see how inept Jones is at portraying...well, anyone really. I mean..."tropple"? In another example, some photographer guy calls a black guy "boo". "Boo" is your girlfriend, dude. If this was real life, you woulda just got punched. It's one of those things: this stuff isn't, in itself, racist - it's just really, really bad - but there's a part of me that kinda suspects that anyone this awful at writing people of color is probably a little bit racist as well. I feel the same way about people who insist that rap isn't music.

I guess the lesson is, if you have no idea what black dudes or Puerto Ricans talk or act like, maybe you should stick to writing about white people. Honky.

(Okay. Breathe. Find something nice to say.) The art is pretty good. It's kindof a sketchy Michael Gaydos-kinda thing. Ben Oliver draws almost everyone's faces in shadow all the time, though. That's either supposed to subtly hint that anyone could be the Vigilante (whose identity is not revealed in this issue) or maybe Oliver just got sick of drawing this crappy book and decided to take a few shortcuts. Maybe by the next issue he'll just be drawing stick figures with smiley faces. And boobs, if they're the lady shrink. I would applaud him for not wasting his time.

Which, actually, now that I think about it, I'm wasting my own time just writing this stupid revi....