Comic Review: Skyward #4

Skyward #4

Image Comics

Writer: Joe Henderson

Artist: Lee Garbett

The story of a zero-gravity apocalypse continues with an all-new issue. The last issue saw Willa on the run from Roger Barrow, the ex-colleague of Willa’s father and the biggest profiteer of “G-Day” – the event that resulted in Earth losing its gravitational field. Barrow believed Willa’s father was dead, but him being alive poses a great threat to Barrow’s fortune as Nathan has a key to bringing gravity back and Barrow is afraid he will use it.

Willa arrives home and is afraid that Barrow got there first, but the intruders end up being the robbers from the first issue. Nathan handled the situation easily as he has spent the last 20 years being inside and training. Willa informs him of the situation and urges him to leave the place as it isn’t safe anymore, and they had to try to fix gravity. The situation was made even more urgent as a storm was approaching. Storms aren’t usually a big deal, but, as we see by the end of the issue, they are a whole other deal in zero gravity.

The ups

Garbett’s art is fabulous. The characters look great and the backgrounds are amazing, especially with everything just flying around. He does a good job at portraying movement in zero gravity.

The coloring is handled by Antonio Fabela and it greatly compliments Garbett’s art. Combined, they offer us some truly beautiful sights, especially two-page splashes of the storm approaching Chicago, at the end of the issue. 

The flow of the book is superb as the team wastes no time on needlessly dragging the scenes. The dialogue is simple and natural, and the book’s urgency is well evoked.

The downs

The fact that Nathan hasn’t left his apartment in 20 years feels like a huge plot hole. How did they earn a living? What did they eat? How did he raise Willa in an environment like that? How come Willa doesn’t share the same fear as he does, seeing that he raised her? This is an eyebrow-raiser and I hope Henderson will address these problems. I can accept wacky physics and weird logic in how things work, but I can’t accept illogical decisions made by characters we are led to believe are intelligent and functional beings.

The end

Get this book, it’s action-packed and really fun. The characters are engaging and the world is really interesting, with potential for some really cool stories and action sequences.

And damn is it pretty.