An evil cult is sacrificing a young woman in a castle by torchlight - enter Violenzia who shoots all the bad cultists dead! There are crazy hillbilly murderers living in some survivalist camp in the mountains - enter Violenzia who shoots all them rednecks dead!
Who’s Violenzia? Why’s she shooting all these people? How’re they connected to some evil corporation called Xadico? Richard Sala doesn’t tell us and there are no clues in this short 50ish page book either. There’s mystery and then there’s nothing - Violenzia is the latter. It’s a totally uninvolving read.
Violenzia’s a departure for Sala who normally constructs more complex stories with elements of horror, fairy tales, fantasy, sci-fi and his own unique imagination. Here, it’s like he’s barely thinking. Violenzia kills people and that’s it - can you call that a “story”? I’m all for strong female characters but Violenzia herself isn’t a character, she’s just someone who shows up and shoots guns.
It’s not even good action - Violenzia poses awkwardly with her guns at strange angles in the middle of whoever she’s shooting and they all magically die. Sala reuses these poses multiple times to the same effect. It’s so boring! It’s not very graphic violence though with tiny bursts of red for blood and little else besides. I still generally like his art here and I thought it was great that the evil senator looks like Dick Cheney - that man is a real monster!
I usually like Richard Sala’s comics so I was disappointed with how this one played out. I’m just not sure what he was going for - maybe wish fulfilment, killing people in society he dislikes? - but Violenzia was a dull story of some cipher who shoots other ciphers for no reason in very un-entertaining ways. I highly recommend The Hidden or Delphine as much better Richard Sala books to read over this.
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