Through the continued exploration of familiar characters like Victor, Eli, Stell, Dom, Mitch, and Sydney and the introduction of new POV characters like Marcella, June, and Jonathan, we get new perspectives, new systems of morality, and different sets of priorities to measure against one another. Vengeful does a wonderful job of expanding what was already a textured world in Vicious. As Schwab wrote in Vicious, “There are no good men in this game.” In Vengeful, there aren’t any good woman, either. This story doesn’t give us the relief of a Charles Xavier. This isn’t X-Men, even if it shares some of the same narrative interests it is its own rich, complex immorality tale. Of course, as should be true with any original work of storytelling, the comparison fits poorly in places.

When she is injured wearing someone else’s body, it is the person who suffers, not June.

We even have a Mystique-like character in the form of June, an EO who wears other people the way you or I wear clothes. If Victor is the Charles, desperate to protect the innocent EOs (represented here by Sydney), then Marcella is the Erik, desperate to prove the superiority of the EOs and herself at any cost (save for the cost of her own power, of course). For new character Marcella Riggins, EOs are the superior species-they deserve to shine. If Victor and Eli agree on one thing, it is that EOs belong in the shadows, they must never draw attention to themselves. If Vicious was reminiscent of Frankenstein( unintentionally, on Schwab’s part), the story of two men who create monsters in themselves and each other, and then hunt each other to the ends of the Earth to vanquish that villainy, then Vengeful is X-Men: a fight for the future of EOs as a species, one defined by two differing opinions from within the EO community of what that future should look like. Sydney is struggling with her part in Victor’s condition, as well as the isolation that comes from being an 18-year-old stuck in a 13-year-old girl’s body. Eli has been locked inside of a cell at ExtraOrdinary Observation and Neutralization (EON), an organization set up to catch and contain EOs. Victor is suffering from the increasingly-serious side effects of having been brought back from the proper dead. Vengeful picks up five years after the events of Vicious, and those years have not been kind to this world’s central characters.

Victoria schwab vengeful