Vindication #4: A Rough Ending to the Series
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Vindication was a decent enough series and did a good job of building on the intrigue of its mystery and the themes of corrupt cops. How they interact with minorities in their communities. The past few issues were kind of slow builds and climaxed on the fated meeting between main characters Turn Washington and Detective Chip Christopher, after Chip tailed Turn and got ambushed. As the falling action should be, everything just went downhill from there.
What should have been a smooth ending turns into a convoluted mess of plots and subplots being tied up far too quickly, moments not being paid off and just a general lack of satisfaction for how everything resolves. Plots are introduced in this issue and are quickly thrown away by the end of it without seeing the consequences thereof. I suppose it mirrors real life in that regard, but it doesn’t make for good storytelling.
This definitely sucks because there was so much promise for this book to be a slam dunk and a good discussion in race relations. Unfortunately, it suffers from being overly written and lacking the time to let things settle down, only being a four issue mini series and all.
The book begins with Turn Washington’s sister, Lisa, meeting his friend Ron to get a phone unlocked, possibly containing a location of evidence that could free Turn of any suspicion of a murder. Coincidentally, Turn’s brother is also there and through their conversation, she deduces that he was the reason that Turn was sent to prison for ten years.
Corruption Is Rife In This Cop Series
Soon after, Chip’s partner, Cruz finds a tablet in his desk while he’s having a conversation with Carmine Jensen. Jensen is a crime novelist that has a vested interest in Turn’s previous case and is trying to paint him as the murderer of one of the jurors in his case. Jensen himself also served as a juror, but paints himself as a witness to the crime with maybe too much detail.
Soon after, two other cops show up to Chips place, hoping to check up on him, suddenly Chip receives a video of the two cops committing the murder that he suspected Turn of. While still trying to tie into the corrupt cop angle, they reveal that they murdered the woman over some money that they were owed by her boyfriend. They try to bribe Chip for his silence, threatening that he’ll also go down for initially trying to frame Turn in the beginning.
From there, all of the plots are tied up with little to no steam. Lisa and Turn turn over the video evidence and are safe. Cruz found that Jensen sent Chip video of him killing the juror on the tablet she found earlier. Chip turns himself in for everything, claiming that he knew that he was making mistakes, mostly out of misplaced conviction and bad evidence, helping to convict the two cops.
This book was a great disappointment after a pretty good third issue. I feel the need to reiterate that I wish this were a five issue story. Jensen’s plot line feels unnecessary and tacked on for the sake of padding the number of pages in the book. The two cops taking bribes is in line with the story, but without the payoff of seeing them go to jail or something to that effect, the story loses a critical bit of emotional investment.
Vindication Needed An Extra Book To Flesh Out The Series
With an additional issue, the book could have relaxed a little. These plots could have reached an organic conclusion that would have resonated with the rest of the story and brought my opinion of this series as a whole to the next level, but as it stands, it’s just another forgettable story that’ll flood dollar bins in the near future.
You can pick up Vindication #4 (of 4) at your local comic book store or on Comixology.
How did we rate Vindication #4? 2 Sodas
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