Comic Stack – 05/20/15

Veiled and Vile #1 by Samuel Lenn (writer), Glen Melnikov (illustrator)
Publisher: Rocketblast Comics (May 13, 2015)
Genre: Superheroes, Crime, Leading Ladies

Veiled and Vile’s description states: “In a world where only women have super powers, a group of female supervillains must band together and learn to cope with their personal demons in order to escape a supermax prison. Orange is the New Black meets Arkham Asylum.” The part about the world only having women with powers was the part the piqued my interest more than anything.

Not that I have anything against Orange is the New Black or Arkham Asylum, but my brain was thinking: “HOLY [BLEEP]! A WORLD WHERE ONLY THE WOMEN HAVE SUPER POWERS? WOMEN HEROES AND WOMEN VILLAINS CREATING CHAOS? OMG!” I admit I am excitable.

I’m surprised I hadn’t heard about this project sooner considering I had heard about and supported the Urbance project by the same creators, and I only happened to find out about this by chance while I was on Comixology lamenting my huge backlog of digital comics and that happened to pop up in their Comixology Submit section, which takes submissions from indie comic makers and puts them out there for the world to find. Well, I found them.

This comic introduces us to Lady Atomica, a super genius who has spent the last 15 years in prison after falling in love with a total nutcase named Dr. Metropolis. A short list of their crimes include making weapons measured in “apocalypses,” making Connecticut disappear into an alternate dimension, and trying to relive Hitler’s dream. Yeah, Lady Atomica’s husband was Nazi-obsessed. To her credit, out of all the bad things they’ve done, she does seem to be pretty ashamed of that fact.

Side note: It had to be Nazis, though, didn’t it? Nazis and zombies are probably two of my least favorite things in fiction with very few exceptions. While it wasn’t heavy-handed in this issue, I’m kind of hoping it doesn’t become a thing in later issues.

This books gives a little bit of Atomica’s background as a villain and then, quickly turns to her life in prison. Even though her power is more benign in nature, her sharpness of mind has landed her in a facility for metahumans. We’re introduced to women who can control fire, harness lightning, read minds, have superstrength, can control their hair as if it was another limb. You meet the core players of the story early, even if they don’t know they’re the players yet. And they are a fascinating, caustic bunch.

Readers also learn that the prison is going through some management changes which doesn’t sit well with the hero, Sovereign. He thinks the prison gives the ladies too many liberties, too many opportunities to mess up. While the warden argues that giving them responsibilities makes them productive. We’ll see who wins that argument in the end because, with these characters, I can see it going either way.

Speaking of Sovereign, one thing is not very clear to me at this point, and since this is only the first issue, this may be something that’s cleared up in the next issues. There is mention of a male villain, Lady Atomica’s husband (Dr. Metropolis, as I mentioned earlier), and a male hero, Sovereign. I was a little curious to their roles if only the women were supposed to be powered. Well, more so Sovereign’s role than Atomica’s husband’s role. Atomica’s husband sounds more like a mad genius type that got with his wife who is a super genius and together they made super crazy evil science happen. (However, it did look like he was flying in one panel, but gadgetry , maybe?)

Bucky…?

So, that really left me wondering about Sovereign. Does he have powers or is he like Batman/Iron Man, relying more on technology and inventions? I’m a little unsure of what to think there since he’s obviously some type of hero who seems to have some type of clout. He also wears a goofy outfit and say things like, “So, they can just swoop in here, big dick swinging….” You’re wearing a goofy outfit, dude. You’re not allowed to talk like that looking while looking like Bucky Barnes, okay. Actually, he reminds me of Homelander from The Boys:

About me. I mean… no, that’s terrible, Homelander!

Homelander is super-douchey superhero, so let’s hope Sovereign doesn’t turn out to really be a Homelander.

This was a fun comic. I expected maybe a little more from it than it delivered. I thought the story was a little hokey in places, but I love the concept and the characters so far. It’s solid as far as a first issue goes, and there were so many ways that this could’ve gone wrong. And this book is much better than some other first issues by seasoned vets. It’s interesting enough for me to think I might need to keep reading to where this is going. I’ll die happy if I get an all out meta ladies fight between the villains and heroes. I haven’t seen any lady heroes, but they have to be here, right?

Also, according to the Tumblr page for this project, there are plans to release audio dramas set to these comics, too. I haven’t had a chance to see if that’s come to fruition or if they’re still working on that, though. Maybe I’ll go on Tumblr and bug them about this a little bit.