Review time! with ‘Judas Priest: Screaming for Vengeance’

“Then you’re pushed and shoved into every corner, then they lead you out into the final slaughter”

I am fully and completely on board with making comics based on images from album covers, and I just hope we can get a flood of them … even the horrible ones! I mean, everyone wants to know the story about how this band ended up in those clothes, right? Now, obviously, I buy comics based on who’s doing them, not whether they’re using 40-year-old cover art to create a story, no matter how awesome that cover art is (and Screaming for Vengeance has great cover art), and that’s why I got this. It’s co-written by Rantz A. Hoseley, whom I don’t know (he’s an editor at Z2, so maybe he knew people to get permission to use the art?), but the other writer is Neil Kleid, who’s a good writer, and Christopher Mitten, who’s a terrific artist, drew this. Dee Cunniffe, who’s a good colorist, colored it, while Troy Peteri lettered it (I don’t know Peteri, so he could be a super guy, but for some reason his letters bug me … it’s very weird, but there it is). It’s published by Z2 Comics!

When you have a giant metal bird blazing through the sky as your inspiration, you’re probably going to have to come up with something science-fictiony, and that’s what Hoseley and Kleid do. Around a dead Earth, a ring has been constructed that contains five cities where the remnants of humanity now live. They’ve been there for 500 years, and the society that has been created is rigidly controlled by a religion that revolves around the “bloodstones,” which keep the cities in orbit. Of course, the society is extremely stratified, with many people working in the bowels of the cities while the elite hang out and talk about weirdo philosophy and dress strangely. An engineer, Chaen, makes his own bloodstone, as he figures out it’s an AI machine, so the fact that the five bloodstones that are already in use are dying doesn’t matter, because they can make their own. He presents his findings to the leader of his city, who is very intrigued. In this society, people can move up the social ladder (or “ascend,” as the religious overtones are heavy-handed), but they need to prove themselves, and Chaen does want to ascend, but he also believes this will help everyone. Oh, Chaen, you naïve fool! He presents the bloodstone at a gathering of all the rulers and the supreme overlord, but they think it’s blasphemous that he thinks he can just make a bloodstone. He is, naturally, betrayed, and he is, naturally, punished. He ends up on Earth, where he finds out that things aren’t quite as dead as they were told. Sure, people live in squalor, but they’re still living, and Chaen is taken in and given a new purpose. He can’t, however, get vengeance against the fancy people in the cities out of his mind. You might say he’s … screaming for it (I’ll see myself out, although, come on, I had to do it).

This is a fairly typical revenge tale – man does something good, others claim they’ll help him, they betray him, he vows revenge – but it’s elevated by a few things. The weird religious angle helps a bit, as Hoseley and Kleid do a pretty good job showing how superstition still causes people to act irrationally, even when humanity is able to build cities in the sky. There are political overtones, too, of course – one character believes Chaen’s statements about the bloodstones, but doesn’t care because it will be some centuries before they fail, which sounds a lot like certain politicians not doing anything about climate change. Once Chaen is on Earth, the book shifts a bit, but it’s interesting because it’s still about duty to a society versus identity as an individual. The leader of the New York collective keeps telling Chaen he needs to give up his ideas of revenge because the past doesn’t matter and he can’t live in their society if he doesn’t contribute to it. Chaen doesn’t want to give up his vengeance, and the writers make it clear that he’s not going to, but as the story moves along, we’re wondering if he’s really going to go through with it or if he’ll “see the light.” They also make interesting points about the debate – whether people should leave the past behind or whether they should be informed by it, because the New York leader studies history closely, so he knows its value, but he also thinks it’s better to simply study it and learn from it, not repeat it. Chaen is consumed by his own personal history, and that’s what causes him to rebel against his rescuers. He even convinces some others to follow him. So while this is a revenge tale, there’s a lot going on under the surface that the writers don’t touch on too much (because they value subtext!) – the state v. the individual, religion v. science, revenge v. forgiveness – and it’s not clear where they will go with it, which is nice. The final pages are gripping not only because everything comes to a head, but because the writers keep us on our toes. That’s always nice. There are some things in the book that don’t work – the biggest is how Chaen survives being thrown off an orbiting platform straight down to Earth – but for the most part, the story hums along nicely, leading up to the powerful conclusion.

Mitten is an excellent artist, so of course the book looks great. His scratchy line is great for the ruined Earth, of course, and he gets to draw the giant bird, naturally, and he’s great at that (the final pages of the book are not only well written, but they look amazing). You’d think he wouldn’t be good at the shining space cities, but he is, partly because he draws robes really well (a weird thing to be good at, I know, but there you are) and all the elite up there wear robes, but also (and more importantly) because his line, because it’s not as crisp as some, gives off a slightly decrepit feel to it that makes the cities look not quite as sparkling as they’re supposed to be. There’s a decadence to the cities that makes us believe they’re frozen in amber just a bit, which makes their dismissal of Chaen’s claims all too predictable. Cunniffe brightens the cities up nicely, but Mitten adds that sense of decay. When Chaen gets to Earth, Mitten is in his element, and the ruined world looks exactly as it’s supposed to. It’s a beautiful book, but that is certainly not surprising.

Screaming for Vengeance is better than Holy Diver, the Dio comic I read a while back, but they’re both amazing ideas, and I do hope we get more of these. This isn’t quite a great comic, but it’s pretty keen, and well worth a look

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆