I spend a lot of time on Deviant art following some really amazing artists, It's great to see the things they do with their own characters and even some of the ones I've grown up with, btu what is absolutely best is when some of these artists go through all the trouble of creating fully fledged comics and having them released.
It was great when the artist couple/duo of Adam Withers and Comfort Love created their first comic series, Uniques (I bought every issue), and published it themselves.
And it's great now when Stjepan Šejić (AKA Nebezial) released his first completely independent comic series, published by Image and Topcow.
Now Stjepen is a well known comic artist in the comicbook world, having leant his particular style to series such as Army of Darkness, Battlestar Galactica, Darkness, Witchblade (and a whole host of its spin offs) and more recently a relaunch of hte 1996 series 'Aphrodite IX'.
He's worked with Zenescope Entertainment, Virgin comics, Radical Publishing, Arcana Studios, Dynamite Entertainment, Marvel but he's most well known for his work with Image/Topcow who have brought his most recent projects to the people.
Stjepen has worked within the comics industry for a long time, worked on a lot of incredible projects and he's very actuive on his deviantart account, giving fans of his a great insight into him and his humor (Doctor batman Wwoommmmmb). But to the best of my knowledge (and feel free to correct me) he's not before written, designed and drawn an entire comic himself.
And Death Vigil makes me ask; Why not?
It's damn good.
The story flows really well, the characters are incredibly well written and, of course, the art is spot on.
Death Vigil is an interesting new take on the after life, workign with the idea of some people being chosen to continue their life after their death in the form of agents for the reaper. It follows the story of at least two members of an ancient order of post-dead people as they join up with the reaper to fight necromancers. In this world the Reaper - Bearnie - is the protector of peoples lives, of peoples souls.
The comic opens as the first character - Sam 'The Digger' - dies trying to save a young woman from being mugged in an alleyway. Stjepan shows the process that Bearnie goes through to make him into a member of the Vigil and then transports the readers twelve years into the future to show sam, a now veteran of the Vigil, waiting in a cemetary for the preverbial shit to hit the fan. Which it does a mere few minutes later, when a full necromancer opens a portal to hell in front of his fahter's grave.
Necromancers use their gifts to break the barriers of life and death and call forth incredibly detailed and well drawn monsters from the depths of hell. The Vigil was created to stop that from ever happening.
All in all it's a great start to a comic series. It introduces the main characters, shows how everything works, gives the player an insight into how people develop over time and even some lead up to the main story arc.
The layout as much as the artwork itself gives the reader a great sense of the action, speed and tone of the current scenes. Using picture in picture style captions as well as full page and constantly changing panel sizes, and structures. Not to mention that the characters and scenes themselves have been well designed and developed into a practical perfection.
Issue one is available now from most retailers in the states and from Forbiddenplanet.com, it's also available at comixology. So get out there and read it.
Tubage
- James
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