Years ago, the Indian government enlisted brilliant scientist Dr. Sankaran to create a government-funded team of methumans for them. Despite his best efforts, Sankaran failed... or so the government thinks.
In the present, Sankaran and the survivors of his experiments - Blackbird, Dodge, Arclight, and Castle - follow their own secretive agenda, keeping new and dangerous technologies out of the wrong hands, even if it requires them to do some less-than-noble things. Thrown into the mix is Nia Saha, who reports on their activities to their mysterious backer, Mr. Lightless.
This series contains examples of:
- And I Must Scream: In the third issue, the team deals with an old neak ta priest who was kidnapped by holdouts from the Imperial Japanese army and kept alive and awake for almost a century in order to power a Lotus-Eater Machine. When Castle finally finds him, the old man begs him to kill him, as his flesh is rotting and his bones are turning to dust and he hasn't slept in decades.
- Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Dodge is the main female of the team and her costume shows her stomach.
- Batman Gambit: In the finale, Castle's plan for forcing the team to reunite hinges entirely on knowing how each of them thinks and knowing how Mr. Hep's goons would try and take each of them out, knowing for instance that Saya would save Nia's life and that Hep's men would try and take Aqib by cutting all power to the train station where he was waiting... which would cause the electrified tracks to switch to secondary power so that he would be charged up when the goons forced him into the tracks.
- Beard of Sorrow: During his year of grieving for his family, Aqib grew a significant amount of stubble, whereas he's shown to be clean-shaven when he's working.
- The Big Guy: Tyega, the Vigil's missing fifth member, is an enormous bear of a man.
- Conscience Makes You Go Back: Despite having sworn off the Vigil after finding out that Sankaran literally engineered their miserable existence, Saya intervenes to save Nia Saha from an assassination attempt because they know that she is a good person.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Aqib really hates it when people nickname him "Sparky".
- Dulcinea Effect: Saya becomes fixated on Nia after impersonating her for a day.
- Flash Step: Dodge is capable of moving so quickly that to the untrained eye, she sometimes appears to be teleporting over short distances.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Tyega can regenerate his body from almost anything. He is seemingly killed in the final issue, but Castle manages to recover one of his fingers.
- Grey-and-Black Morality: The Vigil seeks to protect the world from new and dangerous technology. They are not above killing innocents for the sake of their missions; in the second issue, Arclight callously electrocutes an entire battalion of soldiers in order to exfiltrate a kid with weather control powers.
- The Handler: Nia Saha serves as liaison for The Vigil and the Indian government.
- The Lost Lenore: Aqib Khan, the future Arclight, lost his wife and daughter in a chemical plant explosion that may not have been an accident.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: In the third issue, the team deals with an old Imperial Japanese bunker where surviving scientists from Unit 731 tried to force a monk with Reality Warper powers to remake reality in their favor. The result was a bunker that has succumbed to a mass dream.
- Mercy Kill: At the end of the third issue, Castle encounters the latest target, an old man who's been forced into perpetual wakefulness for almost a century, and puts him out of his misery. A flashback in issue 5 reveals he's done this before; he murdered a dog that was being tortured by a gang of other children because they would have ended up killing the poor thing anyway.
- Nightmare Face: As revealed in issue 5, Saya's face droops and sags hideously as a result of their condition.
- Required Secondary Powers: Dodge's powers allow her to move faster than the eye can see, but Dr. Sankaran had to reinforce her skeletal structure to deal with the resulting strain.
- Shapeshifting: Blackbird has an extreme form of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that leaves them with highly elastic bones and loose skin. Using electrical and pigment implants under their skin, they are able to shift their appearance to impersonate almost anyone for a limited period of time.
- Smart People Play Chess: The genius Castle is named after "castling", a move in chess.
- Sports Hero Backstory: Dodge was originally a boxer before she used her powers during a match and accidentally killed her opponent.
- The Stoic: Castle is utterly without any emotions, and can only see the world as it is. This comes in handy in the third issue, where he is the only member of the team who does not succumb to the Lotus-Eater Machine.
- Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Issue 3 sees the team dealing with the Imperial Japanese equivalent of this trope, an offshoot of Unit 731 that set up shop in Cambodia after the war and did experiments involving sleep deprivation, neak ta priests, and reality warping.
- Super-Speed: Dodge has an extraordinary amount of fast-twitch muscle fiber, allowing her to move faster than the eye can track.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Dr. Sankaran first found Castle when he coldly murdered a dog that was being tortured by some other children in his neighborhood.
- Wham Episode: Issue 4 reveals that Dr. Sankaran dreamed all four of the Vigil's members into existence, and engineered their lives so that they would all end up in his care. The issue also reveals that there was a fifth member, Tyega, but he washed out of the program.
