I'm Not Sure Who Was Taking Vengeance, To Be Honest

In one of my back issue sprees this spring, I bought Vengeance, the mini-series Joe Casey and Nick Dragotta did last year. I admit, I bought it because I heard Casey used Stacy X and I was curious to see that. I still have a soft spot for the character, to the extent I ignore anything involving her Casey didn't write, for my own benefit. I think the mini-series as a whole turned out to be a chance for Casey to use most of the characters or concepts he'd come up with for Marvel no one else was using, like that Defenders lineup he came up with.

Having admittedly only read it through once, it was an interesting story, even if it doesn't feel like all the threads necessarily hold together. The one about the Red Skull felt somewhat superfluous, and I have no idea what the spectral scientists commenting on the fight were about. Dragotta's artwork reminds me of Marcos Martin's, though, which is never a bad thing, and he makes the monsters pursuing the In-Betweener suitably terrifying.

I did find both the Teen Brigade and the Young Masters of Evil kind of irritating. The Teen Brigade moreso, because they seem to spend a lot of time chastising the super-heroes (like the Defenders) for how they're going about doing things, while patting themselves on the back for how they go about their business. It's akin to someone bragging about how modest they are. It's easy to say you're in it for tradition, not for glory, but when you're clearly glorying in your own exploits, the line of bull starts to fall apart.

I think that was part of the point, but I'm not sure which direction Casey was going with it. Both the Teen Brigade and the Young Masters are the sort of typical frustrated youth, convinced the adults are doing everything wrong, or are focused on the wrong things, the unimportant things. But for all their talk about saving the world without worrying about anyone knowing it, or getting back to real villainy (which seems to be pointless slaughter and chaos, which makes sense given the true villain behind everything), they waste a lot of time hooking up or geeking out over Bullseye's corpse. At the same time, as far as the heroes are concerned, they do spend a lot of time fighting each other, or getting into punchups that don't solve the real problems the world faces (world hunger, climate change, so on). Maybe those aren't the problems the Brigade thinks the heroes should be worrying about, but there's certainly a fair bit of "You're doing it wrong!" in their viewpoint.

What I can decide is whether Casey feels the kids are right, the heroes and villains have lost their ways, and they need to get back to their roots, or if he's making a point that each generation feels this way about the one preceding it, but in reality they all have their blind spots, and the kids are guilty of the same thing they accuse the adults of, just in a different way? I suppose it could be a screed against nostalgia, about wanting things the way they used to be, because the world is going to change, and you can't run back and hide in some time and place you think is idyllic. That might incorporate the In-Betweener, since it tried to hide from its responsibilities in the form of a kid.

Anyway, like I said, an interesting read, and a well illustrated one. I don't know if I'd say splurge on the hardcover (though you can probably find it at reduced cost out their now), but it's worth looking into, especially if you're a fan of Casey's work. I run hot and cold on him myself. I own the two volumes of WildCATS version 3.0, and the 4 trades I could find of 2.0, and it's well-written, but it never totally grabs me. There are ideas I like, that I want to see explored, but Casey never quite seems to get around to it.