The Veil


By Greg Rucka & Toni Fejzula, with Aljoša Tomić & various (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-492-7

It’s January and the nights are long and cold. Good thing there’s plenty of scary stories and coolly creepy graphic novels to while away the midnight hours…

Written by Greg Rucka and chillingly illustrated by Toni Fejzula with additional colour work from Aljoša Tomić, Veil collects the introductory 5-issue miniseries (March to July 2014) which saw the debut of one of the more intriguing femme fatales in modern comics history…

It all begins in an abandoned, desolate subway station where a beautiful, naked and extremely confused young woman awakens on a bed of most surprised rats. Babbling incoherently but not at all scared, she makes her way above ground and finds herself in a modern Sodom and Gomorrah where her nubile helplessness soon attracts the attention of the pimps and other two-footed predators…

Big mean Vincent especially seems unable to resist his most basic urges but the victim-to-be is rescued by unlikely hero Dante who inexplicably – and unlike every other John on the street – seems compelled to shield rather than covet her…

Covering her nakedness, Dante takes her to his shabby apartment and tries to get some sense out of the girl who calls herself “Veil”. Vincent and his homies, however, are not the types to defer gratification and come looking for her with plenty of guns and bad attitudes…

It’s the last mistake of their short, violent lives but in the bloody aftermath Dante knows more than ever that, whatever she is, this girl must be protected. As they go on the run through the seedy backstreets and alleys of the city Veil seems to grow more clear-headed even as she displays ever-greater impossible abilities.

Elsewhere men wielding a different kind of irresistible power are discussing her. In the gory detritus of a satanic ritual, money-man Mr. Scarborough unwisely chides the black magician he and his consortium have hired – with apparently negligible return…

Despite apparent failure and the clear absence of the thing they paid for, insouciant Cormac remains aggravatingly untroubled. Just why is revealed after Scarborough’s thugs try to kill him for his presumed failure and the scheming wizard displays some of the other powers at his command…

The demands of ego satisfied on both sides, Cormac assures Scarborough that he will find the missing vessel of unfettered power he was hired to summon. He never actually specifies who will profit from it, though…

Back in the nasty part of town, cops have arrested Dante and Veil, but the girl’s uncanny allure compels one of them to force himself upon her as he has so many other street girls. His partner will never sleep easy again after seeing what she left of him…

With Veil vanished, the still-handcuffed Dante flees whilst in an empty, deconsecrated church Cormac works, summoning a rat familiar to scent out his target and draw it to him. If he knows that Scarborough and his billionaire business associates have sanctioned an assassination hit team to take him out, he doesn’t care…

The killer elite arrive soon after the mesmerised Veil and are on site when the mage binds her with a mystic chain, ordering her to change to her true form. The hit squad doesn’t stand a chance…

Dante meanwhile has hooked up with an old friend who has rid him of the handcuffs, if not his obsession to help the strangely compelling Veil. The poor sap isn’t that surprised when a rat bites Gabriel and something terrifying starts talking through his mouth. It seems the Devil wants his property back and is prepared to help Dante save her from the mad mortals who currently possess her…

Sharply scripted and superbly illustrated, this rocket-paced rollercoaster ride to Hell and back is a superb blend of corporate chicanery, sinister sorcery, grimy street crime, gory excess and unlikely heroism that delivers a bloodbath of spooky, sexy action even as it promises more revelations to come.

This classy full-colour hardback edition also includes a copious ‘Veil Sketchbook’ section depicting the evolution and intriguing multiple aspects of the enigmatic star to astound art lovers and all aficionados of the darkly exotic.
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