Freedom Fighters #5 – Review

By Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray (writers), Travis Moore (penciller), Trevor Scott (inker), Rob Schwager (colorist)

The Story: The Fighters discover metahuman convict escapees are tougher to deal with than they think, and the rumors regarding mutant creatures in sewer bottoms may have some credit.

The Review: The nonstop action continues as Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray gleefully toss the Freedom Fighters from one scene of chaos to another.  This time, however, the onslaught of narrative-hopping subsides as the masterminds behind the prison break are revealed.  In doing so, Palmiotti and Gray are slowly gelling together the various plotlines they’ve strung through past issues.

Palmiotti-Gray still run into problems with pacing.  Before, the story went all over the place at breakneck speed, never allowing any one scene to play itself out before leaping to the next.  This issue has the reverse problem; it drags its heels in one place for way too long and gets only a couple choice tidbits of new information out of it.  Sure, since it’s Palmiotti-Gray, there’ll probably be some huge payoff at the end of the road.  But in the meantime, it’s vital they offer some progress, either in developing the characters or giving some substance to the plot.

Sadly, even after all the troubles they’ve faced together, the personalities and dynamics among the Fighters still remain a big fat blank.  You really don’t know anything about who these heroes are beneath the costumes and political rhetoric.  Their dialogue mostly consists of the usual groaners of battle-quips or clichés (“All I see is a tough guy who likes to kick women,” and “It doesn’t have to work like this,” being prime examples—all in one panel).  None of these lines do much to give each character a distinctive personality; taken together, they all sound pretty much the same.

The characterization and dialogue of the Jailbreakers, the Fighters’ opponents, aren’t much better.  At least each Jailbreaker has a semi-specific kind of crazy to their talk.  But most of the time they keep rambling on and on about the injustice of being locked away for apparently no reason and experimented on with science and magic—well, alright, that is a pretty good subject to harp on.  But imagine them repeating the same talking points, panel after panel, page after page, either standing around or even in the midst of battle, for most of the issue.