Barbarella #4 – Review
The Barbarella series from Dynamite has been hit or miss. The first issue was impressive enough, but the next two seemed less than stellar, to say the least. However, I was still intrigued by the treatment of the character. I decided to try the fourth issue. There was enough science fiction in that first story to be interesting. With a new storyline, I decided to give Barbarella another chance.
Barbarella #4
Writer: Mike Carey
Art: Jorge Fornes
Variant Covers: Stephane Roux, Vincent Aseo, Stephanie Hans, Goran Sudžuka, Kenan Yarar
Rating: Mature
Price: $3.99
ON SALE DATE: 3/14
Solicitation:
Barbarella may have narrowly averted a galactic war-as only she could-but she’s still in need of a null-d regulator. Hitching a ride on a cargo transport seems like a no-brainer, but these great seas in the final frontier are rife with pirates! Plus: someone’s about to learn first-hand the dangers of emotional intimacy!
Review:
There’s enough outlandish science fiction here to make the story interesting for me.Barbarella’s fox is a nice touch as well, appearing to be a little bit of filler or mild comedy relief, but proving to be more useful than we could suspect. The Narpisi on board this freighter adds another little science fiction element as a man from an empathic race. An extra element is added with the towing of planets courtesy of a gravity field. It makes them towable by nullifying their gravity wells. It’s very efficient, unless something goes wrong. Of course, something goes wrong.
The art by Jorge Fornes is not my personal cup of tea,. The weirdest thing happened about half way through . I stopped thinking about the artwork. I don’t think it’s because anything extraordinary with the art, but it did help the story by not getting in the way of it. It doesn’t have glaring errors that distracted me from enjoying the story. The art serves the story precisely as it should.
I also want to point out that this is essentially a “done in one” issue. This story can stand completely on its own. It does set the stage for future stories, but it doesn’t rely on the previous story to make sense.
Variant Covers:
Final rating: 8.0 (out of 10) I liked this issue more than the first one. The fact that this is a complete story helps this book so much.
UPDATE:
Preview Pages:
