Requiem Chevalier Vampire



An age-old adage was that, if you were bad in life, when you died it generally got worse. Nowhere is this idea more assaulted, mugged, curb-stomped and left for dead face-down in a rancid gutter than in the world of Résurrection, the brainchild of Pat Mills and illustrated in excrutiatingly loving and gory detail by Olivier Ledroit, originally published in French by Nickel Editions and currently being translated into English and published in Heavy Metal as Requiem Vampire Knight.

The comic begins in the real world. Enter Heinrich Augsburg, a young, suicidal and currently rather dying Nazi soldier on the Eastern Front facing the Soviet Army. Within about two or three pages of his introduction, he gets shot in the head. Exit Heinrich.

Only not, because our 'hero' is transported to Résurrection and promptly gets set upon by a gang of looting zombies. He blows them away with a impaling gun and earns the gratitude of the weapon's owner, Otto von Todt, who identifies Heinrich as a person guilty of terrible crimes and therefore now a member of the ruling class of this world (as is Otto himself): a vampire. And from there, it only gets better.

For some.

Because everything is inverted on Résurrection. Where the sea was on Earth there is now land, and likewise for the oceans. Instead of growing older people regress in age, until they turn into foetuses and are then entirely forgotten. Technology from Earth, when discovered, is promptly buried or hidden away. And most important of all, the more cruel a person was in life, the better they are rewarded in their reincarnation, while the innocent are outcasts at best and food or entertainment at worst. As such, morality and good feeling towards others is pretty much out the window - which is something of a problem for Heinrich, now known as Requiem, since for some reason he still possesses a conscience, a sense of honour and a disinterest in ripping little girls apart for kicks.

And because of that pesky conscience, he's pretty interested in finding out what happened to a certain love of his former life, name of Rebecca...

""Scream twice if you can still hear me.""
 * Abnormal Ammo: a Vampire Knight's standard firearm shoots stakes and goes TEPESSS when fired.
 * The seraphic missile (a missile with an angel in the warhead) is described as being equivalent to an anti-matter explosion on Ressurection.
 * Anti Hero: While Requiem has morals and is desperate to find Rebecca again, to get to where he presently is he was obviously more than a bit of a bastard in his previous lives as Heinrich and.
 * The Atoner: Heinrich wishes he was this, but the business of simply surviving being a vampire with a conscience prevents him from doing much atoning.
 * Awesome McCoolname: often overlaps with Meaningful Name. Requiem... Cryptus... Mortis...
 * Badass Mustache: Dracula.
 * The Beautiful Elite: surprizingly averted with the vampires. While they are the ruling caste of Ressurrection, a lot of them, if not the majority, are butt-ugly. Those who are not have tatoos carved into their face to make them uglier. Of course, since everything is inverted on Ressurrection, including the system of values...
 * The Vampire Queen Bathory fits the trope to a T, though.
 * Beauty Is Never Tarnished: averted. Beautiful/sexy creatures in Résurrection are just as likely to get their heads bitten in half or being brutally ripped apart as the others. Rebecca does look like a concentration camp victim at the time of her death, and has even lost her ebony curls at that point.
 * Bizarro World: As stated above, almost everything in Résurrection is backwards from the real world.
 * Blood Magic: Elizabeth Bathory pretty much exemplifies this
 * Body Horror: The Hierophants, highest ranking of the Archaeologists, spend most of their time in sarcophagus like tanks since they have no skin. When they do feel the need to stretch their legs, their servants promptly flay someone alive so that they have a skin to wear.
 * Brain Food: zombies eat brains, as do ghouls.
 * But You Screw One Goat: Subverted with Claudia, who has no problem having sex with her religious-lunatic-turned-werewolf mount. Then again, it's not as if she's very choosy.
 * Also with Black Sabbath (formerly one Alistair Crowley), whose girlfriend is a male mandrill most of the time, as he finds it more exciting. However, she turns back into her normal female form to seduce Thurim.
 * Catgirl: Or Leopard Women. Portrayed somewhat more accurately than is the norm for the female furry, since they have four breasts apiece.
 * Chainsaw Good: the weapon of choice of ghoul pirates is a sort of rapier-chainsaw.
 * The Chew Toy: poor Igor can't catch a break...
 * Chicken Walker: Mitra's walking mecha tank.
 * The Collector: Mortis collects cursed weapons (the gun the shot JFK, the knife that stabbed Murat), Otto collects weapons from all ages, and begs Rebecca to avoid damaging them during their fight.
 * Cool and Unusual Punishment: the whole of Résurrection is essentially Hell/Purgatory. Ironically, those who have committed minor sins suffer the worst, and some complete innocents get trapped there as well.
 * Cool Airship: most high-ranked races have them. Vampires have gigantic flying warships decorated with skulls and skulls and more skulls (not to mention smaller skull-shaped ships in the shape of skulls). Ghouls have war-zeppelins (a whole city made of them). Dystopians have dragons to fill this role.
 * Cool vs. Awesome: Vampires on werewolves vs ghosts on centaurs, for starters.
 * In the future, the US becomes the site of a battle between patriotic animal-bots and mutants (one of them an unkillable King Kong Shout Out).
 * Costume Porn: the artist pays a lot of attention to details.
 * Crapsack World: Man oh man, is Resurrection one of these...
 * Cycle of Revenge: Of a sort.
 * Deadly Training Area: The training for vampire knights is carried out in Hell. Not only that, but in a specifically malevolent branch of Hell. Most of the apprentices don't get out with their deaths.
 * Depraved Homosexual / Sissy Villain: Taken to ridiculous levels with Nero, Dracula's right hand man. Looking like the bastard offspring of Frank-N-Furter and Gene Simmons, he struts around in lingerie and high-heeled shoes, makes constant and blatant overtures to other men, is sexually aroused by torture and bloodshed, and goes to the masquerade ball in a dress.
 * Depraved Bisexual: Claudia, not like readers are complaining...
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu: Requiem routinely defeats opponents that should have by all means destroyed him, such as Charnel the Demonic. Justified because he
 * Disproportionate Retribution: The evilest people become vampires, rapists become centaurs, religious lunatics become werewolves, infanticidal mothers become harpies, and the suicidal become... trees?
 * Quite probably inspired by Dante's Inferno. My question is, what the heck did the poets do?
 * Most likely spread thought, poetry and imagination around, and we can't have that in a Crapsack World, now can we?
 * Eldritch Abomination: Dracula and his vampires serve/worship a group of those, who periodically war with another abomination faction using demons and dragons as shock troops.
 * Empathic Weapon: Requiem's sword, when ordered by Claudia to act against him, tells her to get screwed.
 * Everythings Better With Dinosaurs: Dystopians are reptile or dragon creatures, some of them being dinosaur-like. Special mention goes to Sire Smegma, "Noble and Honorable Raptor Knight", a velociraptor-man riding a dinosaur mount.
 * Everythings Better With Monkeys: Aiwass, or more exactly the "Queen of Dead Souls" who serves as his host.
 * Evil Brit: the Dystopians are dishonest, money-grubbing reptiles, including Queen Elizabeth (snake woman) and King Arthur (dragon).
 * Evil Versus Evil: the whole thing is like this. The Lemures are the closest thing to a "white" faction, Requiem himself is a spot of "grey", and the rest of it is just different kinds of "black". The Masters of Infinity are opposed to the Lords of Limbo, but nobody is sure which of them are nicer. Ghouls, vampires, dystopians, archeologists, all of the important factions in Ressurrection are all evil in their own way. Vampires are sometimes considered as the most evil, but really the only difference between them and ghouls, for instance, is that that ghouls are also hypocrites who fooled themselves into thinking they're doing good deeds.
 * Fan Service: Lots of it. Nude and semi-nude women appear in every issue, and the comic doesn't shy away from full-frontal male nudity either. Then there's the bondage themes, S/M overtones, girl-on-girl action etc...
 * Fan Disservice: Mitra.
 * Fat Bastard: Mitra, oh my god, Mitra.
 * Fate Worse Than Death: Seeing as death takes you to the world of Ressurection, and given what a Crapsack World it is...
 * Good Thing You Can Heal: Subverted with Thurim, who had the ability to regenerate, and so was sentenced to being drawn and quartered. Forever.
 * Gorgeous Gorgon: Queen Perfidie of Dystopie reveals a swarming nest of snakes for hair when she gets really angry. She's more "gorgon" and less "gorgeous", though...
 * Gorn: well, this is a very dark comic about vampires, so there are quite some scenes of mangling of young naked girls and other such material.
 * Government Drug Enforcement: Many of the vampires are addicted to Black Opium which helps them to forget their past sins and generally sleep at night; it also makes it easier for Dracula to control them. A fair chunk of the story is about the trouble that occurs when the Opium supply is blocked.
 * Gratuitous German: unavoidable in a story where several of the characters are Those Wacky Nazis. "Mein gott!" is particularly popular.
 * Gratuitous Russian: either Played for Laughs or a Critical Research Failure, because contrarily to what he says, neither Sabre nor Eretica seems to mean "vampire" in Russian. The word would be "vampir" or "vurdalak".
 * Groin Attack: the Sisters of Blood merely wish to prevent's Sabre's urges by removing their source.
 * Heroes Prefer Swords: averted. Yes, Requiem wields a sword (if one can even call him a hero), but all vampire knights wield runeblades, and pretty much all of them are evil. The closest thing vampires had to a "hero" of their kind (Thurim) wielded a warhammer instead.
 * Historical Villain Upgrade: This being Hell, you'd expect quite a lot of notorious people to end up here, and you'd be right. Understandably the vampires get most of the shout outs, but famous people do appear in the other camps from time to time:
 * In the Vampire corner, we have Dracula and Countess Elizabeth Bathory (although they've already had an upgrade in real life, so they don't really count), Caligula, Nero, Aleister Crowley, Robespierre, Atilla the Hun, possibly Rasputin and, of course,.
 * The strongest of the werewolves is Tomás de Torquemada.
 * It's stated that the Arch-Hierophant, the leader of the Archaeologists, was infamous for his specialty in performing human vivisection, and was possibly a Nazi scientist (Mengele comes to mind).
 * So far none of the ghouls we've seen are based on real people, but one of them does mention Blackbeard and having 'expired' him.
 * Mother Terror, one of the leaders of the ghouls' pirate fleet, is strongly hinted to have been Mother Teresa, reflecting various real-life controversies surrounding her, such as the poor care given in her hospitals and misappropriation of the donations she received.
 * Also, the identity of the queen of the ghouls, Mitra, was revealed recently. She's actually .
 * The Dystopian Queen, Perfidia, resembles Elizabeth I, and her entire race resembles England during the Golden Age. Oh, and during life they comitted evil in the name of empire.
 * One of the ghoul's elite fighters is revealed to be... ? Their being transformed is explained by each putting the blame for   on the others.
 * Humongous Mecha: the Archi-Hierophant's "sarcophagus" looks a lot like one at least, though it has yet to be used in combat.
 * Hypocrite: Ghouls, in life, did as much harm as vampires but believed they were doing good.
 * The Igor: Igor is actually a kobold, but otherwise fits the description perfectly.
 * Doctor Dippel's assistant, Vermicelli, fits perfectly too.
 * Impossibly Cool Weapon: shows up occasionally. The Nuns of Blood are particularly fond of ludicrously overcomplicated weapons/instruments of torture, up to and including nunshakus (an already extremely impractical weapon) adorned with spikes and spiky chains.
 * Vampires get rapid-fire stake-guns. That go TEPESSSSS! when fired.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun: Nunshakus are nunchucks... used by nuns.
 * Info Dump: Dictionary, the handy talking shoulder pterodactyl who knows everything about everyone's sins and will tell you about them at great length! Especially if you don't want him to!
 * Instant Runes: The series is huge on diverse magical symbols, so it's no big surprize those appear in the air every time vampire knights cast spells. They also appear for diverse other occasions and even in the margins, just for decoration.
 * Karma Houdini: Oh, where to begin with this one...
 * Averted with, of all people, . He gets a grand total of four panels, one of which consists of getting his neck snapped and the remaining two of telling us who he was.
 * King Arthur: is an evil, leonine dragon with a Sdrawkcab Name.
 * Knight in Shining Armor: Subverted; while Tolecnal still believes that truth and justice are what the Knights of the Round Table fight for, Ruhtra corrects him and says their motivations are more along the lines of Rape Pillage and Burn.
 * Love Redeems: Presumably, it's the vestiges of Heinrich's love for Rebecca that let him keep his conscience. Now he clings desperately to them.
 * Subverted in Claudia, where Claudia's love for Elizabeth is.
 * Mad Scientist: all Archeologists were those back in the real world, but Doctor Dippel is the most notable as of now.
 * Magic Hair: Lich's hair is steel chains and doubles as Prehensile Hair.
 * Merlin Sickness: The people of Resurrection age in reverse.
 * Merlin himself appears. As an egg. Wearing a wizard hat.
 * If he was afflicted by Merlin Sickness in life, though, wouldn't it have been more logical to have him a fantastically old dragon in the inverted world of Resurrection?
 * Mini Mecha: Mother Superior of the Sisters of Blood is  who rides in a spiked mecha with grappling claws in its breasts. It's not a Humongous Mecha though, it's barely taller than a human being.
 * Mitra also uses a walking mech.
 * Mutants: A bunch of them, who rebelled against the humans who'd created them and took over Future!London before being nuked, suddenly pop on Resurrection. Dracula's forces gleefully mount a massive slave raid/blitzkrieg to crush them.
 * Never Say Die: a surprising use of the trope in a mature comic. Usually the words "death" and "die" are replaced with "expiration", "expire" and similar equivalents, though the reason for that is the fact that everyone on Ressurrection is already dead.
 * Naughty Nuns: of all things, kind of averted with the Sisters of Blood. Even though they wear FetishFuelerrific outfits (the guards at least, not the lowly workers which tend to be fat old hags) and slaughter intruders with extreme prejudice, they actually follow a strict code of vows and seek to preserve virginity (both in terms of sex and vampire bites), their own and that of the victims under their "care".
 * Nun Too Holy: pretty much all the Sisters of Blood.
 * Not So Different: Requiem gets a moment with Dragon where they do the exact same thing (bottle-feeding their infantile masters and burping them).
 * They are actually similar in more than one way. They were both soldiers in life who slaughtered countless people, and they both have retained a certain sense of honor even in death and vampirism.
 * Old Master: Cryptus to Requiem and Tengu to Dragon.
 * Otaku: There's one who got reincarnated as a vampire samurai.
 * Actually, they use the literal translation of the word "otaku" (outcast). He was actually a Japanese officer who participated in the killing competitions during the Rape of Nanjing. He's referred to as an "outcast" because he's turned on his former allies, the vampires.
 * Our Monsters Are Different: Harpies were mothers who knowingly caused the death of their children. It's not revealed what crimes kobolds did, but they usually show up as much-abused lower class service personnel (servants, peddlers, innkeepers...)
 * Our Centaurs Are Different: They're the reincarnations of rapists, used as cavalry against the vampires.
 * Our Demons Are Different: And more gruesome. The original thing about them is that they DO NOT inhabit Resurrection/Hell, but are creatures from a different plane.
 * Our Ghosts Are Different: For one thing they're called Lamias, and are the victims of the various evil-doers who mistreated, tortured, raped, killed etc. them. The only way to escape their rather crummy existence is to 'expirate' whoever is responsible for their presence on Résurrection (whether the 'expiration' is at their own hands or someone else's; in the meantime they also torment their killers in their sleep, like Furies).
 * They're called Lemures in the original French, which follows the myths a lot closer.
 * Our Ghouls Are Different: People who resurrect as ghouls are those who committed evil while pretending they were doing good; they have grey skin, often no hair or apparent noses, sharp teeth and crave brains. They live in a flying city called Aerophagia, and the higher ranking ones are captains of pirate airships; basically it's undead steampunk.
 * Our Mummies Are Different: The Archaeologists - scientists who created weapons of mass destruction or violated scientific ethics - are rather wizened and have no skin, so the lower ranking ones spend most of their time wrapped up in Egyptianesque robes or bandages. The higher ranking ones...have other methods.
 * Our Vampires Are Different: As per usual they're aristocratic, pale (mostly), beautiful (sometimes), proud, vulnerable to silver and just plain evil. As per unusual, they're often addicted to drugs to help them forget their past sins, and they're not immortal but are as susceptible to regression as anyone else in Résurrection; only receiving Dracula's Dark Kiss makes you immune to rejuvenation, and that's pretty hard to come by. Rebirth as a vampire in Résurrection is reserved for the very worst of the worst among humans.
 * Our Werewolves Are Different: Résurrection's werewolves are religious fanatics who persecuted innocents of other faiths; they can transform at will or if they're being threatened, and also, oddly enough, by remote control.
 * Our Zombies Are Different: On Résurrection zombies form the lower classes. They either end up serving the vampires, being served to the vampires or scavenging the wastelands and forming deadly welcoming committees for any newly resurrected. The comic features an interesting subversion of zombies as they are capable of intelligence and even coherent speech, however they are usually simple-minded, and are hinted to be people who committed crimes out of ignorance and mindless obedience, which explains why there are so many of them...
 * Overly Long Tongue: at least one Sister of Blood has an extremely long tongue with blades on it; whether all Sisters have such a weapon or only her is unclear.
 * Mitra's entire throat can be deployed as a toothed tentacle to catch prey that she then devours alive.
 * Pint Sized Powerhouse: remember that extreme youth on Resurrection equivalates to extremely old age and therefore experience. Tengu can perfectly wield a pair of razor-clawed gauntlets of which every blade is attached onto a whip chain. Only slightly less awesome is Cryptus, whose little infantile hands apparently pack an impressive punch and who wields a pair of short swords with enough skill to be an even match to the aforementioned Tengu.
 * Pragmatic Villainy: the use of as a Weapon of Mass Destruction sure is the more time and cost efficient way to blow up a whole cloud of lemures. Not to mention the trouble he could have caused as a trained vampire knight, seeing how there seems to be a clear connection to the extent of evil during life and the capacity for evil during death.
 * Punny Name: The (French) names for the pirate leaders are all words starting with Mère (mother): Mercurochrome, etc.
 * Really Seven Hundred Years Old: Lord Cryptos. Though he doesn't look any less disturbing than the rest of the cast.
 * If anything, he looks MORE disturbing than the rest of the cast. What makes him even creepier is that he mentions that due to his age he can no longer feed on blood, and therefore feeds on pure pain and terror. Doesn't stop him from enjoying some blood on occasion, too.
 * The Reason You Suck Speech: Torquemada gives one to the Dystopians.
 * Revive Kills Zombie: needless to say, the most feared weapons on Ressurrection are holy relics, starting from holy water weapons, to angel tears weapons, to priest's head and saint's head ammunition, to a gigantic missile with a seraph inside.
 * Scars Are Forever: Both Requiem and Sean have red marks on their foreheads left from the shots that killed them.
 * Scenery Gorn/Scenery Porn: both are quite abundant.
 * Shout Out: One of the Archaeologists is very enthusiastic about using photon torpedos.
 * Anthrax, the mutant's secret weapon, is a regenerating monster who ends up climbing a skyscraper to strike at air forces before plummeting to the ground.
 * In one battle a number of winged baboon men are captured and cause Claudia some 'distress'.
 * Cryptos's design bears some resemblance to another vampire...
 * The annoying pterodactyl thing's title is Devils Dictionary.
 * Thurim's world in the Limbo is an obvious shout-out to Hyeronymus Bosch.
 * There is a shout-out to The Exorcist in one comic, where a vampire possessed by a demon yells out, "Your mother sucks cocks in hell!" Though it doesn't provoke the reaction he hoped in the target.
 * A certain ghoul announces, "Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds."
 * Shown Their Work: At least when it comes to Dracula: it takes the historical Vlad Tepes's preference for impaling as a punishment and all but elopes with it. He decorates his ship the 'Satanik' with stakes covered with the bodies of the victims; and an impaling gun has the sound effect of 'Tepes!' whenever it's fired, a reference to his real name. He also has the mask of the High Priest of the Archaeologists nailed to his face, because the priest hadn't removed it as a sign of respect (and also because Dracula really doesn't like the Archaeologists): this pretty much echoes what Vlad allegedly did to a Turkish messenger who refused to remove his turban.
 * Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Particularly noticeable concerning the ghouls; there are quite a lot of nuns amongst their ranks, to say nothing of Venus the trigger happy twenty-third century feminist, but apparently not that many high ranking males at all. What, so the most evil hypocrites are all women? On the vampires' side only Claudia gets a prominent speaking role  - what, so only men can be pure evil? And let's not even begin to consider the gender ratios of the werewolves and the archaeologists...
 * Well, historically in Real Life most proactive religious fanatics (i.e. werewolves) and scientists, ethical or not (i.e. archeologists) were men. Doesn't quite explain vampires or ghouls though.
 * Actually, this also makes sense, since most of the prominent evil figures in history were men, if only because men historically had more influence. Besides, there are female vampires (the Sisters of Blood and Countess Bathory, for instance). It's just that there probably are not a lot of female vampire knights, which makes sense when you consider that Ressurrection has mostly a medieval-level society and therefore women are most likely rarely allowed into the military, barring special cases like the incredibly cruel Claudia.
 * Smoking Is Cool
 * Spin Off: Claudia Chevalier Vampire, which goes into Claudia's backstory.
 * Sink or Swim Mentor: Cryptus takes this Up to Eleven as he proudly proclaims that the vast majority of vampire knights he trains don't survive the training, and by the sound of what they go through, he's probably saying the truth. It's likely that Tengu is also this, though not explicitely stated.
 * Sound Only Death: Usually ignored, but thankfully employed when the Hierophants are having new suits made, possibly because there's really no way to show everything inside someone's skin getting sucked out of them in one picture.
 * Straw Feminist: Mother Venus was the leader of 23rd century Venus; having succesfully found a way to reproduce without men, she then purged her planet of all males. Speaks in permanent Politically Correct: ("Rectify their intestinal transit!" and "Proteic-fluid containers").
 * Sword and Gun: ghouls wield guns and chainswords.
 * Tattooed Crook: Almost all the vampires have cross tattos on their faces, and the knights have more tattos all over their bodies as a mark of their training; Attila and Black Sabbat have upside down pentacles. About the only vampires who don't have any markings are Dracula and Bathory.
 * The Teutonic Knights: Thurim was part of their order (though already evil). His using the magic hammer caused the knights to lose the Battle of the Ice.
 * Those Wacky Nazis: Some of the vampires were Nazis in life, including Requiem himself, his friend Otto Von Todt, and
 * Too Kinky to Torture: Claudia. One of her ex-victims tries to strangle her with chains, she just gets off on it. She also isn't addicted to black opium like most vampires because she doen't need it; other vampires use it to forget their sins and to prevent their victim lemures from tormenting them, but not only does she enjoy remembering her sordid past, her lemures eventually quit tormenting her because she got off on that too.
 * Tortured Abomination: Anthrax is a humongous mutant who's essentially unkillable as he regenerates all wounds. However, when Requiem uses a spell on him that reveals his deepest desires, he proceeds to jump off a skyscraper.
 * Training From Hell: Quite literally in order to become a vampire knight:


 * Unholy Holy Sword:
 * Unusual Euphemism: Venus the ghoul is probably the reigning Empress of this trope. Even being a politician and a feminist does not justify the concentration of euphemisms she employs. She doesn't merely use euphemisms, she speaks in them, each euphemism more unusual then the other. She has euphemisms for sensitive subjects, less sensitive subjects, and completely trivial subjects (such as the word "Mother".)
 * "Proteic fluid containers" for "tits" comes to mind.
 * Villainous Crossdresser:.
 * White Haired Pretty Boy: Requiem.
 * The Worm That Walks: Vermicelli, the assistant of Doctor Dippel, is full of maggots that move his otherwise inanimate carcass. Unfortunately, he needs to be recharged every so often.
 * Written Sound Effect: The Impaler, the cool-as-hell stake gun that Heinrich uses to save Otto's life, goes "TEPES!" when it's fired.
 * You Fight Like a Cow: Tengu, Tengu, Tengu. And Cryptus.