CAPTAIN GRAVITY AND THE POWER OF THE VRIL #5 REVIEW

Joshua tries a desperate gambit to stop the Nazis evil plan.

Review: Yes, this review is terribly late, and I apologize, but the issue got back ordered on me.

This pulp serial continues apace with Joshua putting together the mystery of the swastikas, at least to the point where he knows where Jan is taking Chase. There’s some fighting of Nazis while Mr. Avery is approached by an odd person who seems to think he can help Josh and Chase, although he doesn’t explain how or why. As it turns out later, for good reason.

This is the penultimate issue in the series, and this issue goes to a lot of unusual places. We have the pulp style action and mystery, and later on the darker drama of Josh’s memories, and the quasi-mysticism of the ritual Avery is talked into. Some of these elements just don’t work as well as others, and while the narrative holds, the ritual portion of the story I found a bit too choppy, although I thought the rest of the ending bit, with Josh attempting a rather dangerous and desperate maneuver (that he didn’t, in his haste, think out very well) that will probably end up well, serial style, even though it really doesn’t look too good as the issue comes to a close.

Well, not at the exact end, which features parody comic book ads as well as a couple of real ones, although my favorite ad (a phony, I’m sad to say) is for an “upcoming” Captain Gravity movie, which seems to have him pitted against an evil grandmother. Who couldn’t love an idea like that?

The art continues to be sharply modern, but with an old fashioned sensibility, so the cleverly constructed homage never breaks the “fourth wall”. There are some fluid action sequences, and the supernatural creatures that appear are impressively weird, especially Jaeger, while that last page is a beautiful piece of work. The coloring remains good, touched with that hint of yellowing, like we’re looking back at a set of old photographs.

A solid issue, this has been a really entertaining blast from the past. It’ll be a shame to see it come to an end so soon.

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