Little Help From His Friends: Reviewing ‘Cyborg’ #5

Solace’s synthetic uprising is wreaking havoc across Detroit, and with other villains joining the fray, Cyborg needs some familiar help. Sound the call, the Titans are here to help save the day.

The DC Universe’s current premiere hero team swoops in as Morgan Hampton, Tom Raney, Travis Mercer, Michael Atiyeh, and Rob Leigh ramp things up in Cyborg #5.

There is only one more issue of this series left, and I sure wish there were more. How Hampton handles Vic, and now the Titans, just works. Sometimes building a story that takes this many issues building up to something, doesn’t always work out. There are so many balls to be juggled, and even one down moment can stall a story or cause readers to lose momentum. Not the case here.

Numerous solid threads converge to create this story, held together by precise character development. With each issue we’ve gotten more threads that make the overall end product clearer. Character motives and situations to become transparent, such as why Markus created Solace, and what the Solace version of him has planned.

I hope we see more from Hampton, either with this character or others. I’d love to see him take a bigger crack at the Titans, maybe in a one-shot or mini-series, or even the main series down the line.

There is a bit of a shift within this issue. Raney is still on board for the art, but only to handle the first six pages. Those pages happen to be the ones where the Titans are introduced and come into play, befitting the very superhero classic feeling Raney brings into play. There is fun interplay between the characters there and we feel that on the page, their expressions and body language on point.

Raney’s artwork has a heavier hand, and a bit of roughness sprinkled in, an interesting counter to the somewhat lighter style that Mercer employs. Similarly, it’s a style that is very friendly to superhero stories, just slicker and smoother in many regards. There is slight exaggeration to the work. It’s balanced with a firmer grounded slant. Emotions and personality are very tangible and pop off the page, with the backgrounds and settings given plenty of depth to make a full world.

Balancing the two styles are the colors from Atiyeh. A similar heaviness is found in the colors on each page, allowing the darker colors to be grounded and the vibrant ones to pop more. While on one hand, they play into the more grounded and rougher elements of Raney’s artwork, they take on the same smooth, slick feel as Mercer’s. Even though the two styles are distinctly different, they don’t feel jarring because they aren’t far apart but also because of those colors.

Creative space is something also available on the lettering side. Shifts to bubbles/boxes, fonts, colors, and more allow Leigh to stretch and deliver more for character voices. Those elements enhance each word, making them more fun, while emotions and personalities are sprinkled into the affair as well. Superhero stories are often big bold affairs and Leigh makes sure that feeling is felt on the page.

Cyborg #5 is now available from DC Comics.