A Righteous Thirst For Vengeance

I heard about Vengeance through a review that put it very high on my to-read pile. I’m familiar with Remender’s work, but for some reason whenever I started one of his series I just couldn’t stick to them. My experience with Vengeance was the opposite, I just couldn’t put it down.

Before reading any further, I highly recommend you read the book(s) without reading about the plot, and let it unfold as you read.

The story itself is familiar territory. It’s fine. It’s not particularly original. If you have consumed popular culture during the last few decades, chances are it will remind you of other. For me the strongest resemblances were to Léon The Professional and Man on Fire. The villain is definitely a product of the times we live in, and similarities to certain people we heard a lot about in the news in these last couple of years are not really subtle.

It’s not a coincidence that reading this reminded me of movies, rather than other comic books. The style is very cinematic, and that is its biggest strength. Just take a look at this early page for a taste.

We don’t have a third-person narrator, and dialogue is also very sparse. The sparseness is intentional. We start midway into the story, and it takes some time for Sonny’s motivations to become clear. This could have been annoying if not done well, but Remender pulls it off, and it becomes a good storytelling device. A lot of “show, don’t tell” going on as the plot progresses. The action is gritty and very well illustrated when it happens, and the books are not light on violence. In fact, there are all kinds of violence at play here: Calculated, sadistic, sociopathic violence, desperate, must-protect-loved-ones violence, and of course, as the title might suggest, satisfying, vengeful violence. Some of the scenes in the second volume were definitely up there in terms of graphicness. Moments of tenderness to counteract it are there, but rare.

I personally enjoyed the first volume more than the second but in my opinion they should be read as a single book. Overall, I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys this kind of stuff, but I can also see it being too violent for some readers. The highlight for me was how Vengeance told the story it wanted to tell using the comic medium, rather than the story itself. I also quite liked how it ended.

My review: 8 / 10.