Rating: 4.5/5 – You won’t like her when she’s angry…
Brian Wood is telling a complex story here, ably complemented by Ming Doyle’s art. In a story that started out in #1 focusing on a sports star with some special abilities it’s gone on from that adding in twists & turns with every issue and each has ended on a very strong story beat. Issue #5 has the best final page of the series yet, which is saying something.
Mara is growing in story depth with each issue, Mara the character is growing in strength, and the stakes of the story keep getting bigger. We get the familiar story trope of the Government being afraid of and wanting to control a person with powers and abilities that it does not understand. This was also explored in the current “Man of Steel” movie as Superman is taken into custody by a military that does not understand what he is so either wants to control or confine him. That didn’t work out for them, it’s not going to work out for the government(s) of the world in Mara either.
Brian Wood has woven a story where he’s tearing Mara’s emotional world down while at the same time her physical boundaries are expanding, perhaps without limit. The point she gets to in this issue is something that would never happen in a Superman comic, but it can be explored here. Is Wood teasing us with what seems to be happening? Perhaps. I know that he’s got me hooked into wanting to know what happens next and isn’t that the goal of every storyteller who writes serialized fiction? Wood does it here quite ably. Mara is a must read.
Reviewed by: Bob Bretall – bob@comicspectrum.com
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