Juvenile #5 // Review

There’s been a revolt. A group of kids have stopped taking the meds that have kept them from being able to use their paranormal powers. So they’ve broken out of their detention center only to find a man in a surgical mask telling them that they can’t be where they are. It’s a restricted area and they’re operating on someone. They don’t know what they’ve gotten themselves into it Juvenile # 5. Writer/artist Jesús Orellana concludes his five-part series with a frenzied drama that has more than a few unexpected impacts lurking in and around the panels of another well-executed issue.

Sara is a little surprised to turn one corner and then the next and then find out that her father is actually working at the facility...as its director. None of them would have expected that. Of course...the fact that Sara happened to have a romantic encounter with one of the other revolutionary kids involved in the uprising is only going to e of academic concern if they can’t make it the hell out of the facility in question and find the freedom that they didn’t realize they could have. Things are going to get very complicated for everyone involved.

Orellana draws on quite a few different elements to wrap-up a series that doesn’t feel nearly as original on its way out as it did on its way in. The mishmash of X-Men and The Matrix and quite a few other influences still has potential to become something truly amazing, but it would take a whole new series with a whole new depth to it to really turn it into something breathtakingly new and irreverent. Instead...it ends up being a kind of an entertaining riff on some of the more popular elements of contemporary superhuman sci-fi. It’s fun when it could have been a lot more.

Orallana’s art loses a bit in the final sequence. Some of what Orallana was trying to do as a writer doesn’t translate perfectly well onto the visual of the page. It’s difficult trying to put together an overwhelming opposing force for the heroes to face in the tiny, little confines of a complex that has been designed to be small and cramped. The bigger action moments feel a bit too cluttered on the page...though the overal feel of the setting being as tiny as it is still continues to hold a great deal of appeal even in the final moments of the series.

Orellana’s work is only disappointing in that it could have been a real revelation for the genera if he’d found some way to frame the story that might have added something more than what has already been explored. As it is, Orellana’ story is a solidly entertaining mash-up of different elements that all seem to work pretty well together and inform on each other in different ways as the story reaches a largely satisfying climax. It’s been a fun journey with Orallana.

Grade: B