Vibe #5 – Review

By: Sterling Gates (story), Pete Woods (pencils), Sean Parsons (inks), Brad Anderson (colors)

The Story: Generally, it’s not a good idea to run away with a girl while you’re on the job.

The Review: You know, we frequently give publishers a lot of crap for putting out inferior titles, but I think we don’t appreciate how deceptive a good pitch can be.  Think of the one for Vibe: Geoff Johns writing the adventures of an underdog, city kid from Detroit who becomes an dimensional border cop.  Sounds pretty good to me!  Who could have predicted that five months later, it’d be Sterling Gates writing a hopelessly insecure kid on the run from his own employers?

While I did think it was a good idea to have Cisco’s fallout from A.R.G.U.S. happen sooner rather than later, now I’m thinking it could have stood to happen perhaps a little later.  Neither Johns nor Gates (nor Andrew Kreisberg, I suppose) ever fully mined the potential of Vibe’s association with A.R.G.U.S. before throwing it on the rocks, which seems a sadly missed opportunity to me.  What about Agent Gunn playing Murtaugh to Vibe’s non-suicidal Riggs?  Think how much fun that would have been!