Review: ‘Sidereal Apogee’ #5 Mostly Succeeds While Referencing A Movie

Writer Phoebe A. Xavier creates some believable futuristic scenarios. Xavier also raises some questions in relation to technology and corporations in at least the first two stories. Also the dialogue is believable, and often at a good word count. Yet, the omniscient narration has some unnecessary words. Though this is not as obvious as a typo in the second story messing up a character’s name. As far as lettering goes Xavier could do better on some of the placement. This is due to how the placement sometimes affects the sequencing of the reading experience.

Artist Mu Mu SF and colorist Chris McAuley handle the visuals of the first story. The line work is confident and stylistic. Though bits of a few designs take obvious reference from other properties. An example of this referencing is the main character’s helmet making her resemble Black Scorpion (Black Scorpion [1995]). Mu Mu SF also does a great job with facial expressions and proportions. While Chris McAuley gets to provide a key bit of coloring during a point-of-view shot. With the exception of one other moment McAuley does not get to do much else of note.

The second story has visuals by artist Frederick B. Roseman that are more cartoonish in style. Roseman’s work is overall decent. However, Roseman needs to work on having consistent proportions, particularly when it comes to hands. Not to mention that some of the bird’s eye view shots arguably have too much depth. Yet, Roseman does succeed at both providing plenty of detail and maintaining room for lettering.

McAuley provides some nice color accents to artist Eza Toons visuals for the final story. The art is debatably the best out of the three stories when it comes to characterization. Two particular areas that suggest this are the facial expressions and the characters’ poses. There is also a great use of texture on a lot of the pages. Unfortunately, there is not always enough room in panels for lettering to properly exist.

The front cover is by artist Jorge Gabotto. It features the character Afton whose design evokes cyberpunk. Artist Edwin Rwothomio is responsible for the back cover. Rwothomio draws a version of the character Sendo that is properly creepy. Lastly, photographer Dean Peters provides the pictures that are the background for both covers. Arguably, without the background occurring this way both covers would be less unique.

Sidereal Apogee #5 is out now on Indyplanet.com.