The Vigilant: The Dimensional Protectorate #2 is a comic written by Eric Alan Nelson and David McCluskey with art by Jeff Spokes and Benjamin Morse. The Vigilant are on damage control as they try to discover who attacked Professor Isaac Kaplan. This is a fantasy tale with a large cast, intriguing worldbuilding, and plenty of mysteriousness. Due to the sizable amount of protagonists I’ll just focus on the most prominent ones, who all happen to be women. First we have Wardance, a Native American with spirit-based powers, Elizabeth Sweeney, a powerful magician, Domino, a young girl and the niece of the professor, and Anathema, who has some kind of unexplained energy-powers. The story continues where the last issue ended except it’s the day after. The Vigilant decide to split up and follow two different leads focused on these otherworldly portals. Their main goal is to prevent other beings from coming through and wreaking havoc. The action here has hard hits but no blood. The pacing varies as there are more than a few wordy pages that slow the story up a bit. The dialogue is mostly proper and can get deep.  There are a couple stressful situations but overall this isn’t too intense, but there is an overall somewhat serious tone. This is a comic that is calmer than the previous installment but still has excitement and interesting developments while setting us up for the next issue.

            The art style is drastically different than the last issue with about the same level of detail but a smoother overall look. The colors here are almost all muted with most of them being either on the brown or green spectrum. The scenery looks idyllic but most of the scenes here take place indoors. There are three primary locations: Ms. Sweeney’s house, a hospital, and Kaplan’s house. These areas sport backgrounds that fill the rooms with character and they tend to persist even on close-ups. The expression level is a bit low as almost everyone here seems to have a stony look on their faces at all times. The faces are drawn with enough detail so that when do get other looks they come across clearly. A couple of the faces do look similar but not enough to get confused. The reason for the low ranges of visible emotions seems to be story-related. The mystical effects stand out due to their brightness and contrast with the other art. The violence is hard-hitting with the scenes full of powers on display. They also flow very well with blood or gore. Wardance’s combat outfit consists of a Native American breastplate(nothing underneath) and a free-flowing loincloth, and there are a few other characters in revealing outfits.

“Is this worth reading?”

Yes.

“Would I like this?”

If you like large casts of characters on a fantasy earth dealing with the prevention of evil while using mystical powers then this is for you.

“What would this comic’s film rating be?”

R. Some nudity.

“Could I get a quote from the comic?”

“I don’t think this could be called an active anything.”

 

Kickstarter Link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/maelstromwardance/the-vigilant-the-dimensional-protectorate-2/description

***IN-DEPTH COMIC STATS BELOW***

Probably Contains Spoilers

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Actual Pages(not counting covers and credits): 24

Violent Pages: 8, for 33% of the comic

Sexy Pages: 1, for 4% of the comic

 

**The levels below aren’t necessarily maintained throughout the whole comic, but they were definitely reached**

 

Violence Level – 3

“Wasn’t no tussling at all.”

“Sometimes you gotta hit somebody.”

“I’m getting charged with how many counts of assault?”

“This was a tournament arc.”

“All my life I had to fight.”

 

Gore Level – 1

“The only thing leaking out your face is tears.”

“Looks like somebody spilled some ketchup.”

“Might need to soak that up with a bath towel.”

“That isn’t supposed to be outside the body.”

“This is a slaughterhouse.”

 

Death Level – 1

“And everybody lived happily ever after.”

“We might have gone to a couple funerals.”

“It just LOOKS like a serial killer was here.”

“Yeah this was a tragedy.”

“Think Gettysburg.”

 

Porn Level – 3

“Everybody kept their clothes on.”

“I guess it was too hot for a bra.”

“Sometimes you got to let everything air out.”

“This is like late night Cinemax in the early 2000’s.”

“Oh. This is porn.”