Review: ‘Adventureman’ #5 Gets Decent
by Benjamin Hall
Summary
Claire and her allies face down villainy from the past. Meanwhile Claire’s family races to assist her. All this occurs and more when New York state’s namesake city faces the bizarre of an adventure on delay. Is this the end? A beginning? Or could it be both?
Overall
5/10Designer Leonardo Olea’s design for the creative credits page really works with the slight change to the color palette. Speaking of designs, the cover by penciller/colorist Terry Dodson and inker Rachel Dodson looks relatively good. I say relatively due to the great amount of depth being lost in due to the cover’s color palette being too narrow. There is also the possibility that it may not attract some readers due to so much going on in the background. Not to mention it may have trouble catching the attention of readers who have serious colorblindness involving greens and reds
When it comes to the interior visuals the Dodsons do better than on the cover. In particular the sense of dynamic action is most effective for the main fight. Not to mention that the proportions and settings display the Dodsons as masters. Nevertheless minimalistic details look off due to the positions of two characters on page 6 of the story. While the interior colors are mostly good Terry Dodson goes a bit too light on one character in the opening pages. One could also argue that Rachel Dodson does not apply thick enough inks to this character on these pages.
Writer Matt Fraction’s script introduces a lot of characters in this issue. While this fleshes out the universe it also distracts from this issue’s plot. There is also the problem of missing bits of text. Whether this is the fault of Fraction, letterer Clayton Cowles, or both is unimportant. Yet, what is important is how obvious it is that the text is missing. Otherwise Cowles lettering is mostly competent, with the only exception being one overly large word balloon. Fraction on the other hand does a relatively decent job, but his script is hurt by the hiatus and an abrupt ending. The latter problem is compounded due to how its set-up seems to be missing, or at least lacking.
In conclusion this issue is overall decent in quality. However, it does not hold a candle to the quality one sees from the prior issues.
Adventureman #5 is out now from Image.
