The Vertigo Vault # 3: Beware the Creeper (2003)

Not to be confused with the 1968 miniseries by Ditko and O'Neil, Beware the Creeper is a story founded on stereotypes.

It takes place in Paris in 1925, and has as it's focus the twin sisters Judith and Madeline Benoir, two artist types. Judith is very promiscuous while Madeline is very reticent, which stems from their parents having died in a Church bombing during the first World War. Judith has since abandoned religion while Madeline embraces it, while having to make a living as a seamstress to fund her and her sister's artistic lifestyle.

Mixed into this is Judith being the object of affection of two men. One is Inspector Ric Allain, who fell in love with Judith after receiving letters signed under her name during the war, only, well, those were writen by Madeline. And yet Judith knows this and doesn't really care for Allain except as another "good time" and knows Madeline is in love with him and still she decides to not tell Ric. Basically Judith is a bitch. The other person in love with her is Mathieu Arbogast, a member of the rich Arbogast family whom Judith despises.

Now the story begins with Judith finding a man with a devil's mask in her room who proceeds to rape and beat her up. She's found badly hurt when she's found by Madeline and then we cut to several months later.

The Surrealists are trying to be provocative and Judith is trying to swing with them because she likes to be the center of attention, going so far as to hit on Ernest Hemmingway while he's visiting Paris. At around the same time a "mysterious" figure in very, very silly getup starts running around Paris, writing huge slogans of "Beware the Creeper" on walls and monuments and defacing art and that sort of thing. She then proceeds to sneak into a family dinner at the Arbogast house, poisons the food so everyone vomits, then steals away Mathieu Arbogast's infant son to put ontop a statue of Joan of Arc, which could have easily ended with the kid falling down and getting hurt. The surrealists can't get enough of the Creeper and make her into their icon.

 

Now to sum up what's actually happening: the story lets you believe it was Judith who posed as the Creeper but it was actually Madeline. Judith died after Mathieu Arbogast raped her and Madeline apparently buried her in their garden in secret, to then assume her identity as well. The problem is the story has her doing these things to the "corrupt elite", portrayed in a way which is not only very typical and predictable, but not the least bit novel. All the policemen except for Ric are bastards, who are willing to force a prostitute that was just beat to hell by someone to have sex with them for free, the rich are all racist and bigoted, the police prefect is working for the Arbogast family etc. These really don't look like characters as much as props, set on the stage to make some sort of statement.

The thing is, the story seems to basically ignore everything wrong Madeline does as "The Creeper" until almost the very end. She defaces public property, ruins a stage magician's performance, and then proceeds to burn down art at an arth ehxibit because "your art has no future" because fuck people trying to express themselves artistically in a way that is not surrealism eh ? Mind you I actually do like surrealism quite a bit, so this isn't coming from any kind of bias.

Now, the worst part of it: at said art exhibit, she proceeds to hijack a small train, deliberately smashes it into a wall which injures the passengers, then she proceeds to spray a trail of gasoline from the train to a wooden statue and then lights the statue on fire. And the only reason she cracks and why anyone actually turns against her is that a little homeless girl gets killed in the subsequent train explosion. Now don't get me wrong the death of a child is a tragic thing but not only does she injure several people, she puts the train, with people trapped inside, on fire, the result of which is apparently seven people being dead. And yet the story really only focuses on the tragedy of Little Colette dying.

Add to that that when Ric finds her, she's abducted Mathieu Arbogast, forced him to write a confession to Judith's murder and then throws him off the Eiffel tower dressed as the Creeper, to then seemingly escape herself, while blowing up the lights of the Tower, just because Ric Allain didn't like them. And all Ric can think of is clearing her/Judith's name of any blame, so he has Mathieu Arbogast blamed for being the Creeper. Not only does this ending not make sense, as the Creeper was seen by many people unclose, especially that stage magician whom she kissed onstage, but he's basically denying the other people who got injured in that train fire/explosion and the families of those who died the right to know who the culprit was.

Mathieu Arbogast did routinely beat up prostitutes, killed Judith and the one prostitute who reported him to the authorities, but Madeline killed at least eight people including Mathieu Arbogast, and he's just acting like she did nothing wrong because she killed a murderer and "didn't really mean to hurt Colette", going so far as to ignore all mention of the wire harness on the side of the building which she could have used for her escape.

Now even if one assumes she went crazy after her sister died, which is highly likely given her plan, then  letting her go after causing the deaths of seven innocent people, to go do God knows what God knows where, without nothing being done to stop her is immensely foolish and I can't believe we're supposed to find this guy to be the one good, decent guy who actually "cares" in the whole of the Paris Police.

Overall the story, while it works, is nothing amazing. Basically we have a "heroic" hero whose defiance of the system amounts to commiting murder and a police officer who lets her get away with it cause he's in luv with her. So no real lesson to be found here either, aside from maybe "don't rape and murder people".