Comic Review: Fairlady #5

Fairlady #5

Image Comics

Writer: Brian Schirmer

Art: Claudia Balboni, Marissa Louise & Lesley Atlansky

This week we got the final issue of a gorgeous series that sadly met its ends far sooner than it deserved. Fairlady explored the mixture between two genres that don’t meet that often and it did so always keeping it interesting with beautiful artwork alongside compelling characters.

In this issue, Jenner teams up with another Fairman in order to find and save the life of a woman tied to the investigation we saw on issue #2. The case presents plenty of loose ends and Jenner refuses to believe that her recent cases have been a sort of play on her life. Throughout the issue, we see that Jenner is chasing/begin chased by a mysterious creature, the likes of which hadn’t shown up in the comic yet.

As per usual, Schirmer’s conducting of the mystery is sublime. He manages to reveal just the right amount of information every page without giving the ending away. In this issue especially, the writer focuses a lot of Jenner’s introspection not only on the case itself but also on her clear idea that she might very well be wrong about the whole thing and is just being paranoid. Not only that but Schirmer is able to develop the comic’s fantastic world (even though he is revisiting a previous location) as well as to work on some development for the new Fairman in a scene.

From the start of the series, one could already see that it was going to be a feast for the eyes of every reader out there. Despite using similar panels quite often, you can always see that it was to focus work on some other aspect of the artwork. The facial expressions are highly effective in giving off the characters’ feels and thoughts. The motion effect, using blur along with some movement lines succeed in describing precisely the trajectory taken as well as the intensity of the movement.
The pages in this issue are composed in various ways making the read instigating at every turn and reflecting Jenner’s sensation accurately, be it confusion or powerlessness. The coloring in this issue remains as staggering as it was in all the others. Precise lighting present in each panel, once more, dragging the reader into the environment of the scene turning the read, even more, into a heck of a ride.

Fairlady departs from our lives far too early as it was just starting to outline its major plot. It was a beautiful project performed by a group of deeply talented artists who I’ll make sure to follow from this point on. For that, I can only thank them for giving us a small taste of what could’ve been.

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