Velocity #3 – Review

By: Ron Marz (writer), Kenneth Rockfort (art), Sunny Gho (colors), Troy Peters (letters) & Filip Sablik (editor)

The Story: Velocity very-pleasing-to-the-eyes race to save her Cyberforce teammates continues.

What’s Good: Again, Kenneth Rocafort’s art is the main attraction here.  Just keep an eye on his name because he’s a guy who you’ll hear about in the future.  The guy is just very, very talented.  This issue is so pretty to look at that the story kinda fades into irrelevance.  I would probably say he has been heavily influenced by Greg Capullo’s art because I see a lot of similarities to that scratchy, hyper-detailed style.  But, what really set’s Rocafort apart is the dynamism of his figures.  You can tell he has a very good understanding of human anatomy and musculature because when you see his characters in an action scene, it looks like a still taken from a movie because the bodies are all in the proper positions (i.e. they are properly balanced and have correct posture) and the right muscle groups are all taut.  I’m not sure if he uses a lot of photo-reference or if he has just spent a lot of time studying bodies in motion, but the end product is nice.

And atta-boy should also be handed out to Sunny Gho’s colors.  Even though I feel like the girl-with-red-hair trick is almost cheating, I still fall for it every time.  So it must be a little harder than just saying, “Viola!  I give you…RED HAIR!” or else all colorists would do it.  What makes Gho’s work a little different than other comics that have the magical red hair (e.g. Batwoman) is that he is using a pretty bright color palate and it still works.  Nice job.

The story is nothing too remarkable in this issue.  Not bad, but the art is sooooo the main attraction that the story just needs to competent.  And, it accomplishes that as we follow Velocity as she tries to save her teammates from a virus that the bad guy has infected them with.  We do get a pretty big cliffhanger and I’ll be curious to see how that turns out.  The story’s simplicity also works very well with the publication delays this title has had.