Harbinger #21

By Joshua Dysart, Clayton Henry & Brian Reber

It’s getting to the point where there really isn’t a need to pump this book up anymore because it has been done month after month. Harbinger is a great book that doesn’t get the recognition it deserves, and Valiant is a company that cares about their stories and continuity. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, on to the review.

The Renegades helped @x get out of a jam last issue and now they want to know what he was thinking. Peter, Kris and @x have a nice discussion about repercussions, while Flamingo tries to get some action of her own with Torque. Cabin fever is at an all time high, but can the team stay in the sewers and not go on the surface?

There were some good strides made with several characters this issue. Dysart really fleshed out Charlene, Faith and Torque. Dysart has a wonderful knack of mixing nostalgia and current pop culture into his scripts, and that usually will get a laugh or chuckle from the reader. The romantic scenes between Faith, Flamingo and Torque were handled honestly by Dysart and seemed very realistic. This book is such a great read every month because of the hard work and effort that Josh Dysart puts into every script. His characters react the way most ordinary people would, and that is not something we get from every super hero book.

Clayton Henry does a great job on the art this month. He draws with such crisp clean lines, it’s hard not to fall in love with his work. There is a great deal of shading in this issue and Henry should be given credit for making it work and look good. It’s not easy to shade that well, but Henry gets it just right. One of Henry’s stronger panels contain Faith and Charlene talking about sex. We can see Faith’s emotions as her face changes from panel to panel, and Henry does an excellent job every step of the way. This was a better drawn issue than last month, and it’s scary to see what could happen when Clayton gets comfortable with the characters.

As has been the case since issue #1, Harbinger is an excellent read. Josh Dysart and Clayton Henry put together a really good issue, not that that’s anything new. This is the Valiant book to beat once again.