{"id":26456,"date":"2022-09-07T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=26456"},"modified":"2022-09-06T17:27:53","modified_gmt":"2022-09-06T17:27:53","slug":"the-question-the-deaths-of-vic-sage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2022\/09\/07\/the-question-the-deaths-of-vic-sage\/","title":{"rendered":"The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Jeff Lemire<\/strong>, Denys Cowan<\/strong>, Bill Sienkiewicz<\/strong>, Chris Sotomayor<\/strong>, Willie Schubert<\/strong> & various (DC Comics)
\nISBN: 978-1-7795-0558-3 (HB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

One of DC\u2019s best 1980s comics series was – for the longest time – out of print and unavailable digitally. It more or less still is, except for a prohibitively expensive Omnibus edition, and if you have strong arms and a big budget you should really track those stories down, whilst the rest of us wait for more reasonable trade paperbacks and eBook editions\u2026<\/p>\n

As devised and delivered by Steve Ditko in the 1960s – as he sank ever more deeply into the Objectivist philosophy of Ayn Rand – The Question<\/strong> was Vic Sage<\/em>: a driven, implacable, justice-obsessed journalist seeking out crime and corruption uncaring of the consequences.<\/p>\n

The Charlton \u201cAction-Line Hero\u201d was acquired by DC when the Connecticut outfit folded and was the template for compulsive vigilante Rorschach<\/strong> when Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons first drafted the miniseries that would become the groundbreaking Watchmen<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The contemporary rumour-mill had it that since the creators couldn\u2019t be persuaded to produce a spin-off Rorschach<\/strong> comic, DC went with a reworking of the Ditko original\u2026<\/p>\n

As revised by writer Denny O\u2019Neil and illustrators Denys Cowan & Rick Magyar, Vic Sage was an ordinary man pushed to the edge by his obsessions, using his fists and a mask that made him look utterly faceless to get answers (and justice) whenever standard journalistic methods failed. After a few minor appearances around the DC universe, Sage got a job in the town where he grew up and resumed his campaign for answers\u2026<\/p>\n

Always more cult hero than classic crusader, The Question revival carved a unique niche for itself as \u201ccomics grew up\u201d post Crisis on Infinite Earths<\/strong> and Watchmen<\/strong>. The character was periodically radically rebooted and reimagined, but here scripter Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth<\/strong>, The Underwater Welder<\/strong>, Trillium<\/strong>, Black Hammer<\/strong>, Descender<\/strong>, Ascender<\/strong>, Gideon Falls<\/strong>, Essex County<\/strong>) returns to O\u2019Neil\u2019s canon to tell a revelatory tale of reincarnation, zen mystery and undying evil. The project was part of DC\u2019s latest high end mature reader imprint Black Label: released as four single issues before becoming a spiffy hardback with a digital equivalent\u2026<\/p>\n

Hub City is a hell-hole, the most corrupt and morally bankrupt municipality in America. Mayor Wesley Fermin<\/em> is a slick, degenerate crook, but real power resides in his Special Counsel Holden Malick<\/em>, political cronies, a hand-picked gang of \u201cheavies\u201d and the largely corrupt and racist police force\u2026<\/p>\n

Originally, Sage was supported by college lecturer Aristotle \u201cTot\u201d Rodor<\/em>: the philosopher-scientist who created his faceless mask and other gimmicks as well as being a sounding board for theories and plans and ethical bellwether. He remains so here but is also increasingly challenging his former pupil\u2019s motives and methods\u2026<\/p>\n

After being killed by Fermin\u2019s forces The Question was revived and retrained by O\u2019Neil\u2019s other legendary martial arts creation, Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter<\/a> <\/strong>. A year passed and a reenergised, faceless avenger began cleaning up Hub City\u2026<\/p>\n

The saga opens with the city rushing into chaos and the Question busting a brothel trafficking children to city officials. Later, when reporting the raid on his TV show, Sage ambushes former lover Myra Fermin<\/em> (the mayor\u2019s sister and oblivious City Alderman) with the fact that the Councilman he left for the cops has mysteriously been erased from all official reports. Shocked and outraged, Fermin continues deluding herself about her brother and the administration, but the damage has been done and she starts looking where she shouldn\u2019t\u2026<\/p>\n

When Malick arrives to clean up the mess, Sage notices a ring the politico wears: something old and somehow deeply disturbing\u2026<\/p>\n

Tot is no help, but the ring sticks in Sage\u2019s mind and eventually he uncovers a historical organisation called the Hub City Elder Society that all wore such symbols and draws some telling conclusions to today\u2019s political elite\u2026<\/p>\n

Hot on the trail he moves, unaware that events are converging into a dark miracle. At the exact moment The Question uncovers an ancient den of occult ceremony, an innocent black man is gunned down by a racist cop and Myra Fermin bursts in on her beloved brother committing savage atrocities on a bound captive. The concatenation of blood climaxes as The Question finds an old faceless mask with a bullet hole through the forehead in a cavern under the city. It\u2019s not one of his, but he is assaulted by a wave of memories and images of supernal evil when he holds it\u2026<\/p>\n

Barely conscious, he retreats from the underground lair into streets awash with blood as a protest march becomes a race riot. Urged by Tot to go on TV to calm the tide, all Sage can think of is finding Dragon and getting some metaphysical first aid\u2026<\/p>\n

What he gets is doped, as the hermit applies zen hoodoo and drugged tea, despatching the unwilling rationalist sceptic on a vision quest into the past\u2026<\/p>\n

Sage awakens in the wilderness that will one day be his home town, bare-footed and wearing a faceless mask\u2026<\/p>\n

In Hub City 1886, Viktor Szasz<\/em> is a blacksmith desperately seeking to escape the vile acts he committed as a soldier fighting the Comanche, in a frontier outpost well on its way to becoming truly civilised. Silent and solitary Viktor intervenes when negro settler Irving Booker<\/em> and his family are repeatedly harassed and ultimately murdered by the local priest and his devout flock. Szasz reverts to his gun-toting ways to save or avenge them but is outmatched until rescued by a red-headed Indian woman. She shares some secrets about true evil, most notably that a mystical \u201cMan with a Thousand Faces\u201d can only be killed by someone named \u201cCharlie\u201d.<\/p>\n

Delirious and experiencing hallucinations of himself in different times, agnostic Szasz still refuses to believe in devils, which is probably why the thing in pit under the town gets the drop on him\u2026<\/p>\n

In 1941, Hub City private eye Charlie Sage<\/em> groggily looks at his notebook, where someone has written \u201cMan with no face\u201d and \u201cman with a thousand faces???\u201d. Blaming too much booze, he cleans himself up whilst glimpsing flashes of unknown dead people and adds \u201cred-haired woman\u201d to the page for no reason he can think of\u2026<\/p>\n

When red-haired walk-in client Maggie Fuller<\/em> hires him to investigate her brother Jacob<\/em>\u2019s disappearance, he has no idea it will be his last case. They are both union organisers and prime targets for the bosses and the city officials they own, and before long the shamus has annoyed all the wrong people, ending up attacked by thugs wearing fancy rings\u2026<\/p>\n

Even his one pal on the Police Force – veteran patrolman \u201cTot\u201d – can\u2019t help him. But does reluctantly pass him a file full of juicy potential prospects for Fuller\u2019s absence. Still enduring staggering western visions and brutal flashforwards, Charlie becomes lost in civil violence in three eras, and succumbs to another ring-wearer ambush.<\/p>\n

The PI awakes in a subterranean chapel in the middle of some kind of crazy black mass, meets a devil and is never seen again\u2026<\/p>\n

Awaking from his vision-quest, present-day Sage leaves Dragon, set on sorting his city\u2019s real world distress: braving riot and savage, premeditated retaliation by the administration and cops hungry to put the rabble back in their place. Unable to stop the carnage with his fists, The Question instead uses mass media to deliver a stunning counterstroke, turning the tables and critically destabilising Firmin and Malick.<\/p>\n

He also has Tot build a permanent solution to the thing in the pit under Hub City, but has gravely underestimated the horror and indeed his own childhood connection to it\u2026<\/p>\n

Even after overcoming the odds, the illusion of victory is tenuous and insubstantial, leaving The Question still looking for answers in all the wrong places\u2026<\/p>\n

This book also offers covers and a gallery of variants by Cowan, Sienkiewicz & Sotomayor, Lemire & Marcelo Maiolo; Eduardo Risso; Howard Chaykin & Gustavo Yen, Andrea Sorrentino plus Cowan & Sienkiewicz\u2019s sketchbook section \u2018Questionable Practises\u2019<\/em> with roughs, finished pencils pages and covers, portraits, finished pre-colour inks, unused cover art and creator bios.<\/p>\n

Combating Western dystopia with Eastern Thought and martial arts action is not a new concept, but here the problems of a society so utterly debased that the apocalypse seems like an improvement are also lensed though a core of absolutism. Is man good? Is there such a thing as True Evil? What can one man do?<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s asking..?<\/p>\n

Although the creators keep the tale focused on dysfunction – social, societal, civil, political, emotional, familial and even methodological – the core motivation for today\u2019s readers has shifted, with the horror show that is and always has been Hub City now arguably attributed to an eternal supernatural presence. Regulation masked avenger tactics don\u2019t work in such a world, and some solutions require better Questions\u2026
\n\u00a9 2019, 2020 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Lemire, Denys Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz, Chris Sotomayor, Willie Schubert & various (DC Comics) ISBN: 978-1-7795-0558-3 (HB\/Digital edition) One of DC\u2019s best 1980s comics series was – for the longest time – out of print and unavailable digitally. It more or less still is, except for a prohibitively expensive Omnibus edition, and if you … <\/p>\n

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