The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage

The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage by Jeff Lemire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When The Question tries to take down the mayor of Hub City with a video tape, the city quickly descends further into chaos and The Question unearths some questions about himself...

I liked Denny O'Neil's run on The Question back in the day quite a bit I love Jeff Lemire's work on Black Hammer so I bought this with some reward points from my credit card a few weeks ago.

I'm conflicted about The Deaths of Vic Sage. First off, the art is pretty spectacular. Dennis Cowan is back on pencils with Bill Sienkewicz on inks and Chris Sotomayor on colors. This book feels like a grittier, scratchier, dirtier, moodier version of the O'Neil question run. Hub City feels filthy and unsafe, as it should be, and the Question seems almost other worldly. Visually, it's a stunning work.

The story builds on the O'Neil run. I can't imagine trying to navigate this without at least having a taste of Denny O'Neil's Hub City. The Question, in the process of trying to drag the mayor's sins out into the light for everyone to see, stumbles upon something ancient that he has an unexpected connection with.

SPOILERS - Okay, here's the part I'm conflicted over. Lemire does something that part "Everything you know is wrong" and part "This character is a legacy character now." Turns out The Question is in a cycle of reincarnation, part Dark Tower, part Hawkman, destined to be reborn to fight evil again and again. There was a Question in the Old West and there was a Question in 1941.

In and of itself, it's a good story. I'm just conflicted on it being a story featuring The Question. In the characters' lifetime, he's been a mouthpiece for Steve Ditko's Objectivism and Denny O'Neil turned him in a Zen direction. Is Lemire putting the Question on the Hindu wheel of rebirth to continue on with the philosophical and religious rebirths the character has undergone or did he just have a pitch for a reincarnation/past lives story and just inserted The Question into it?

As soon as I had an inkling of where the story was going, I knew there were going to be some unanswered Questions. Since Victor Charles Szasz, aka Vic Sage, is an orphan, wouldn't he have googled himself at some point and uncovered Charles Viktor Szasz, Question of the Old West, and Charlie Sage, Question of 1941? END OF SPOILERS

At the end of the day, I enjoyed The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage quite a bit, regardless if I liked the new revelations about The Question or not. Four out of five stars.

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