By Zack Quaintance — Well, I just said this in the headline but hey — more than anything, Resonant #5 serves as a major showcase for the mightily-talented artist Alejandro Aragon, who is colored here expertly by Jason Wordie. In fact, the first six pages of this fifth issue are almost entirely silent, with the loan sound effect being a dog’s howl. And, make no mistake, these pages are a kinetic bit of expert visual storytelling.

This chapter opens on the island on which Pax has been stuck. Some time seems to have passed since the last time we’ve seen him. He’s got battle scars and some new duds, which are also battle-scarred. Anyway, he spends those first six pages in heated battle with a mob, all of them using makeshift weapons and really going at it. These pages read fast (maybe a little too fast), but they do give Aragon an opportunity to really show what he can do, and Wordie compliments him by contrasting the contents of the panels. We are in the midst of a gritty battle, to be sure, but the scenery is sunny and tropical, rendered and colored in a way that really heightens the themes of this comic. Resonant is the story of a world like ours on the surface that has gone bad because of mass relenting to darkness within.

There is no sunlight, not anymore, not really. Islands where we once might have vacation have been turned into the setting of depraved and extreme violence. We get all this in the stretch of our opening six silent pages, albeit informed heavily by the four issues that have come before it. So, on a craft level, there’s much to appreciate here, to be certain. As far as the plotting goes, this has fast become one of those stories where the beginning is all but unrecognizable from what’s to come. We started Resonant with a family holed up in the woods, with the stakes feeling dangerous given what was happening to the wider world, yet nonetheless firmly rooted in the relationships between our protagonists.

Now, many of our protagonists have been separated, thrust into wholly different circumstances away from one another. Writer David Andry wisely recognizes this as a prime means of showing his audience what his characters are really made of, throwing obstacle after obstacle in their paths to give us clear illustrations of how the respond. It’s all very engaging, built upon some excellent character work done in the early goings of the tale. Still, I think I’m getting ready to see them reunited, maybe note happily, but definitely in a way that allows us to see what has been both lost and gained from the trials endured during their separations. Thankfully, the stage is set for the journey toward those reunions to be started soon enough. In fact, I think Andry’s best scripting in this issue is a pep talk given to Pax about the quest that is to come.

Overall: An artist showcase that sets the quest for things to come, Resonant #5 shines from a craft perspective with a strong opening sequence. It also starts to move this series back to what made it so engaging at its start — the family dynamics between characters. 8.5/10

Resonant #5
Writer: David Andry
Artist: Alejandro Aragon
Colorist: Jason Wordie
Letterer: Deron Bennett
Publisher: Vault Comics
Price: $3.99

Read more great comic book reviews here!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.