Although it's billed as a first issue, Violent Messiahs: Lamenting Pain #1 is actually the beginning of a new story arc in the ongoing Violent Messiahs series, returning from a hiatus.

And it reads like it - this story is drowning in references to the events of the previous arc, none of which are ever explained all that clearly.  I'm left a bit confused as to whether this is supposed to be a mystery to ongoing readers as well, or whether the continual references to what happened in the North End Mansion are intended to mean something more to me.  Given that characters spend so much time talking about it, I'm guessing the latter, which is a problem.

Anyhow, as we pick up the book, our hero Cheri Major is suspended for psychiatric evaluation.  But she's brought back to active duty after a new psycho vigilante appears on the streets, since she did such a good job with the last one.  Standard sequel set-up, then, although Joshua Dysart and Tone Rodriguez do a good job selling Major's reaction to the idea.

Whether Violent Messiahs will work for you will likely depend on your goth tolerance level.  It's not the most blatantly goth thing I've ever read, but let's face it, it trails the next issue with the words "Fetish, Isolation, Mystery", it has a villain who wears bondage gear covered in knives, and it's set in a city called Rankor Island whose police force apparently see nothing unusual about wandering around in uniforms with "RIP" prominently displayed on them.  This is the sort of thing that inevitably topples on the precipice of absurdity, and the series is pretty much inviting you to take it seriously.  I gather there's some sort of explanation in the first issue about the city being created as a malicious joke, but once again, it isn't repeated here.

If you're prepared to buy into all that, the book's actually quite good.  Ridiculous as Scalpel's costume may be, it's still a striking design.  And in fairness, the art takes a generally realistic tone which makes it easier to suspend disbelief.  The book still strains my personal tastes, although it does give the impression of a well thought out wider story.  If you're more forgiving than I am - or if you're actually a goth - then you should find plenty to enjoy here.

Tone Rodriguez' art is attractive and works well on a panel-to-panel level.  He's got a good sense of character design, and his work is refreshingly full of people who don't look like models.  There are some odd glitches in the choice of camera angles - he "crosses the line" repeatedly during conversation scenes, the strangest example being a close-up on a bottle of wine which is unfathomably shot at a reverse angle compared with the rest of the scene, requiring the off-panel speech balloons for each character to point in the opposite direction from the rest of the scene and disrupting the flow of the conversation.  For the most part, though, these aren't major problems.

As I said, the book has accessibility problems stemming from its continual referencing of unexplained plot points from the previous series.  And it's certainly not going to be for everyone.  But for its audience, it's largely successful.

Rating: B+

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