The Magdalena # 3

 By Mark Rodriguez

Sister Rosalia's search for the vampires that caused murders in Paris Church leads her to a nightclub where these creatures reside. She finds a room full of vampires feasting on humans and leaps into action to defend them. However, the Magdalena is knocked out from behind by the very girls she was trying to protect. The vampires will take her to Giselle. What will happen next?

Cardinal Innocent finished reading the letter brought to him by Father Jasper and says it's blasphemy. He laughs at the nonsense and tells Jasper that maybe he can stay at the Vatican for a while to help renew his faith. As Father Jasper leaves, Innocent calls for his errand boy. He tells him to send the relics they have found over to Father Ramundo and to tell no one about this. Innocent thinks the letter was blasphemy and Father Ramundo should be able to prove the relics are false and end this matter. 

Sister Rosalia wakes up and sees herself in a huge room surrounded by the vampires and the women she was trying to rescue. One of the girls apologizes for hitting her on the back of the head. Rosalia gets up and asks why the humans would help the vampires since they are vile and evil creatures. The man in front of her tells her to calm down and says they're not evil. He shows her the cross he wears around his neck and asks if someone evil would be wearing it. The man introduces himself as Damon and says he's still human, and a Baptist. Rosalia asks if they're not vampires. He says they're not, or at least not in the classic sense. 

Damon introduces her to Michael, who leads the group and further explains. They have a disease caused by a virus that effects the necessary component in hemoglobin to transfer oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. They must drink blood to survive, but they won't kill to get it. Sister Rosalia asks about the priest at the orphanage and the deaths in the city. Michael says they were accidents. Rosalia calls this out but one of the women named Giselle says they were accidents unlike The Magdalena attacking them for no reason other than her superstitious folklore. 

Giselle says that they will have to leave Paris because Michael won't let them kill her, despite the fact that she will continue to hunt them down. She says that Rosalia and her church friends are the ones that are evil. 

Damon says the vampire virus is contagious and is transferred through blood to blood contact. There is a chance that Rosalia herself might be infected if any of their blood got into her wounds during the fight. He says this is what happened to Angele. He explains that they found her lying in the alley behind the club and she was badly beaten up. They tried to help her but she got scared and fought back, biting one of the vampires, Mercredi, and drawing her blood. They took her inside the club where she fell asleep.

Damon says the virus is very aggressive and it knocks you into a coma for two days. When you wake up, your body will have been re-wired to be similar to that of a vampire. Angele shouldn't have woken up for 2 days but she woke up the night before and had run off. He explains when you first wake up, you will be confused and not know what you are. You will only understand the need to feed on human blood. By the time they had found her it was already too late. Damon says it was an accident and Angele did not know what she was doing at the time. He says they don't kill for blood since they have willing donors. 

Sister Rosalia says if they are truly human, she is bound by her vows not to hurt them. Damon says he only has his word but it is the truth. Rosalia says she has more than that and looks into Angele's mind. 

Angele has memories of her suffering intense hunger and falling out of her windowsill. She has flashbacks of when Damon and his crew found her and how she bit into Mercredi's hand, hard enough to draw blood. As Angele wanders the streets, she walks by people saying they are nice, so she resists the urge to attack them. She remembers a man named Henri who used to sell her to people for nefarious reasons. She runs into one of his girls that takes her to see him. Once she's face to face with him, she slashes him across the chest. Angele starts to hiss like a feral beast and takes down Henri's bodyguard. The other woman runs out of the room and Angele bites into Henri. 

Angele then goes to the church and attacks the pastor there. She has flashbacks of how he did horrible things to her. Angele kills the priest and finds the girl who was hiding from the whole thing hugging a plush toy. Angele comforts her and then leaps out of the window with her. Once they're outside, the girl gives Angele the plush and she leaves with it. 

The Magdalena lets Angele go, seeing all the things she has been through. She apologizes and tells them she didn't know. She won't tell them where they are, but she warns them that others have already found the club. Just then, The Garduna arrive to attack the vampires. 

Michael tells the vampires to stand down. Rosalia tries to explain that these are people with a disease and they don't mean to hurt anyone. Giselle loses her temper and rushes at them. She leaps in and kicks the Garduna back, taking one of their swords. She gets ready to strike them down and Michael grabs her and tells her they don't kill. Giselle angrily kicks the Garduna and walks off. Michael tells Sister Rosalia that they are leaving now and she is welcome to join them. She says she will make sure they won't follow them and will explain to the church. Michael tells her if she is infected, her own people won't be so merciful. She says she'll explain it to the inquisitors. They won't hurt her because she is The Magdalena. 

The Garduna get up and tell Rosalia that she has allied herself with them. Rosalia explains that they're not vampires, their disease makes them drink blood but they won't kill. The Garduna say that they don't care, they came to hunt the vampires. Rosalia tries to explain further and gets smacked in the face. Rosalia calls this ignorant bigotry. She says AIDS is dangerous too, will they go kill everyone with HIV? They say they will if the inquisitors will it. Rosalia says they're harmless and one of the Garduna tries to choke her out. They explain that her job was to track the vampires, their job is to exterminate. They must complete their duty and Rosalia can either join the Garduna or join the vampires.

Rosalia shoves them back and says she won't let the Garduna hurt them. They grab their swords and tell her that she can die with them. Rosalia draws her blade and proceeds to clash swords with them. As she fights with one of them, the second Garduna leaps in to strike her from behind. He ends up getting slashed by his partner instead. The first Garduna tries to swing his blade towards Rosalia's head, but she turns and cuts him across the leg, slicing off his foot.

The Magdalena tells them that this is foolishness and they should listen to reason. One of them has his mask partially cut off and lunges out at her. While she dodges the sword strike, she gets run through from behind by the one that is now missing a foot. Rosalia quickly runs her blade backwards, impaling the Garduna through the throat. The Garduna missing his mask is now also missing a hand, which he quickly bandages up. 

The Garduna grabs onto Sister Rosalia and is about to slit her throat. Rosalia says they can't kill her, she is the Magdalena. She is stabbed repeatedly and the Garduna tells her she was The Magdalena, but the seed has been harvested. There will be another. They drop her down a flight of stairs where she lays there until her eyes close for the last time.

Two days later, Cardinal Innocent gets the test results regarding the ancient relics that were discovered earlier. The Cardinal reads more of the letter. It relates to how Jesus was a man and a prophet and he valued men and women equally. His first and head disciple was his wife, Mary Magdalena. Jesus was destined to become the king of Israel but was killed before this could happen. Tales were spread of angels and resurrection to cover this up. Mary fled to Egypt and gave birth to her only daughter Sarah, from which the Magdalenas are descended. Meanwhile power hungry men would use the church and these stories to gain power, leaving out any mention that Jesus had female disciples. 

Salome is entrusted with the child Arianna, and is told to go to Lyons where there will be a convent that will accept her faith. She tells her to go along with their faith if necessary, as long as Arianna is safe. The letter further explains that there are few in the church that know or suspect the truth, but they remain hidden because they will either be killed or used for their own purposes. The letter explains to Arianna, the intended reader, that she will notice she will have powers unlike her peers. She would inherit a small fraction of what powers Jesus and Mary had and she will be able to look into the hearts of men and let her know who to trust. As the letter explains this we see a flashback as how to the nun that entrusted Arianna to Salome was found alongside several others by inquisitors, who proceeded to kill them all. 

The letter ends reminding Arianna that her duty is to keep the family line going and to keep hidden from the false church. The messiah will return someday and he or she will bring peace and prosperity to the world. Cardinal Innocent can't believe what he is reading, for all he has been born to believe has been a lie. He drops to his knees and weeps, overcome by the implications of this discovery.

Elsewhere, Sister Rosalia lays dead in a funeral parlor. Her daughter shall become the next Magdalena.

My thoughts- 

Where do I even begin with this comic? The comic goes into darker themes I try to keep out of this blog, such as people selling people to others, or pastors doing things they shouldn't. What really surprised me was how far they dug into the religious aspect, or rather, how it was handled. I may not be the most religious person out there, but just the fact that the comic flat out says 'everything in the bible is a lie' makes me surprised this got published and there wasn't any heavy backlash against it. 

The story was interesting and it introduced me to the world of The Magdalena. The art was also pretty amazing and we got some decent fight scenes. It bites that we're basically reading Sister Rosalia's final adventure though. While we find out a lot of the backstory through the letter that spans across the three issues, Rosalia is basically called in to investigate some murders and gets defeated twice by these non-vampires. Then she finds out that they're not as evil as she thought and the murder victims were scumbags anyways and she gets killed in battle against the Garduna. I would have liked to have seen more of her adventures. 

What little we saw of Sister Rosalia was that she sworn to her duties but she was compassionate. She didn't blindly follow orders, the way The Garduna do. I wish we got to see more of her adventures.

The non-vampires were cool; though I guess we won't see much of more of them. It's a shame, I would have liked to have seen more of Giselle and her fiery temper. This vampire-like virus deserves more time to be looked into, though it did explain why these vampires didn't fall prey to the same weaknesses vampires usually have when Rosalia fought them in the last 2 issues.

Overall an interesting read, though it might not be for everyone considering the darker themes and the way religion is portrayed.

While doing research, I found out that there are several Magdalenas and the ones I've seen in other stories are (obviously so) not Sister Rosalia. The weirdest thing is, her daughter, who will grow up to become Sister Mariella, won't even get her own book. Instead she appears as a guest character in 3 issues of The Darkness and then another guest appearance alongside The Angellus. The most current version of The Magdalena is Patience who seems to have the longest running series so far. 

I might have to track these books down. Maybe I'll get lucky once again over at Comic World and their long lines of wonderful long boxes.