Furious #5 (Dark Horse – Glass / Santos)
Furious meets her nemesis—a dangerous and deranged shadow from her past—head on. The life of an innocent hangs in the balance as the two face off, and Furious’s doppelgänger, obsessed with unmasking the celebrity vigilante, fights to expose the truth at any cost! As the media broadcast this public showdown, can Furious overcome her own demons in time to save the day?
There are few things more gratifying than a strong resolution to an enjoyable arc. With so many major titles always managing to botch this formula, it seems so easy to screw up a good thing by just mis-managing a single issue. A bad resolution can taint an entire story-arc, or tank an entire series. I really want to stress the gravity of that, because Furious utterly crushes this concern under it’s heel with an effortless feel. Sitting with all 5 issues gathered, you just sort of want to hug them.
I’ve always felt that the strongest mark of a quality dramatic series, or really any series, has been the ability to offer new discoveries on each read-through. It’s just in my nature, I love the option to play detective and pour over old panels and dialogue for those moments that drop my jaw as the connection is made. It’s an incredible eye for detail and a gift for writing and storyboarding as a medium that let’s us read something we love again and again and get something new from it each time. I admire that, and I want that to be very clear. It is a skill worthy of admiration, and praise, and more writers should aspire to it. Reading issues 1 through 5 again, you can almost picture Glass sitting at a table with scraps of paper, organizing it all like a puzzle he intends to make his readers put together without a box-cover to cheat off of. When it’s done, and you step back, you’re content. Issue #5 is the box-cover, and it’s a gratifying look at just what it all means.
The best part is that it’s by no means the “end” of Furia’s story. It’s both a solid launching point for tales of heroism as well as a solid anchor for looking even further into the past. It also raises a number of new questions regarding powers in the world that the series takes place in, and paints a very plausible scene that could viably erupt into a much larger world of heroes and villains. Maybe it already has?
The perpetual compliment to the tone and depth of the story is the particular aesthetic that Santos’ artwork offers. While I’ve raved about how fitting it is in the past, the grand finale’ to this arc would have been nothing without it’s gravity conveyed appropriately across the visual medium. Santos and Glass have a knack for coordinating tone and depth that really makes the series “work” on a higher level.
Grade: A
Go buy it, and then read it all again. Really take in the details. It’s gratifying in ways few series offer, so don’t pass on the opportunity.
