“We’re dealing with the criminally insane, Mr. Stein. His logic may not be exactly on par with yours. But then again, you do work for the mayor.”
TITLE:
VIOLENT MESSIAHS: THE BOOK OF JOB
WRITER:
by Joshua D. M. Dysart
CREATORS:
by William O’Neill and Joshua D. M. Dysart
ARTISTS:
by Tone Rodriguez (pencillers)
Marlo Alquiza, Walden Wong, Mostafa Moussa, John Stangland, Jay Leisten, Jonathan Glapion, Digital Chameleon (inkers)
PUBLISHER:
Image Comics/Hurricane Entertainment
GENRE:
Graphic Novel (collection), Horror Fiction, Thriller Fiction, Science Fiction, Crime Fiction
DESCRIPTORS:
Political Control, Social Control, Individuality, Theology, Poetry, Serial Killers, Police Detectives, Conspiracy, Secret Organizations, Violence,
SUMMARY:
Lt. Cheri Major is a no-nonsense, workaholic woman little loved by the Rankor police department. She is also assigned to the Citizen Pain task force. After three months, she thinks she has his pattern and lays a trap for him. But it turns out that Pain set a trap for Lt. Major. He has her dead to rights offers her the other serial killer stalking Rankor, The so-called Family Man who she can capture and make her career on and all she has to do is stop chasing him — before he’s forced to kill her.
Citizen Pain confronts The Family Man. He seeks to know why Jeremiah is killing while Jeremiah discovers that Pain is actually Job — they were brothers, genetically engineered to take punishment and heal rapidly and programmed to kill. They fight and are interrupted by the police. Both escape but a clue, a picture of the North End Mansion (where Jubal resides) leads the police to check out the place.
Job returns home where he faces Jubal, his “father” who had to field police questions and is not happy. He had to call in Keepers of the Family — three old men who have been in and out of Job’s life and who wield considerable power. They rip off Job’s mask and threaten him with the what lies behind the great door in the center of the house.
Lt. Major combines forces with Detective Houston and they decide to visit the North End Mansion one more time, this time carrying enough fire power to bring the monstrous Citizen Pain to justice. Meanwhile, surviving Job’s attack and healing with alarming speed, Jeremiah returns home to the mansion to put an end to his treacherous brother once and for all.
APPEAL:
I enjoyed this collection. The story starts in the middle of things, and you barely have time to get settled in when the ride begins. The pacing is fast. The pictures propel the story rapidly, although a few times I needed to slow down and look carefully at an illustration to understand what I was seeing.
“If you hear a human under here . . . then you’re not listening!”
There is characterization through dialog and illustration. For example, Family Man spends his “down” time in his apartment completely naked, and when Citizen Pain arrives (before and after he learns that Pain is his brother), he is unabashed about his nakedness. That says a lot about Jeremiah. We also get to see Job’s face which, without ruining the surprise, spoke volumes about his character and the reasons he approached Lt. Major the way he did.
The stories are told 3rd person omniscient. There is some reliance on captions as the narrative strand and lots of dialog. The visuals and action convey what’s going on although sometimes the angles are odd or the coloring is too dark, the inks a little too busy to make understanding the image easy. But that only slows the reader down, it wasn’t serious enough to interfere with the enjoyment of the story.
More difficult than the occasional dark graphic, was the relationship between Pain, Family Man and Jubal. I had trouble understanding what Dysart was conveying. It was there but I think I was a little slow.
NOTES:
On the back cover it reads: “A genre bending theological sci-fi love story about criminal politics, the nature of violence and man’s search for individuality.”
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