Torrent #5 // Review
Michelle has to leave her son. He asks her why. She doesn’t have any kind of valid answer for him, and he calls her out on it. She’s happy to know that he’s smart enough to know that. She’s probably also happy that he cares. She’s had to do a lot of unsavory things in the recent past. She’s got more to do in Torrent #5. Writer Marc Guggenheim concludes the first story arc for the new title with artist Justin Greenwood. Color casts itself over the page courtesy of Rico Renzi. The big conclusion comes really close to making a point about the cyclical nature of revenge, which is kind of interesting.
The man who killed Adam is dead. Now, all that’s left to be done is to kill the man who killed him...who also happens to be the man who told the other guy to kill Adam. (It’s a whole...thing...) Michelle only has just one final bit of revenge to get through, and everything will be fine. And she’ll get to go back to her life and not have to worry about any of it ever again, right? Well...probably NOT, actually. This IS the end of the first arc in the series, and it’s gotten a good response, so...y’know...whatever happens here is NOT going to be the end for Michelle.
Guggenheim wraps the first story arc up with a bit of a surprise ending. Guggenheim HAD been laying the groundwork for the big resolution at the end with a few bits of foreshadowing here and there, but the overall impact of it is A LOT more profound than the finales of most superhero comics. There’s a strong momentum going through the issue...a relatively slow and steady build-up to the big final battle, and then...everything just moves SO fast towards that semi-stinger of an ending.
There’s a six-page fight scene between Michelle and the guy who killed the guy who killed Adam. It’s pretty menacing. It takes a special kind of artist to deliver something like that to the page in a way that feels anything other than excessive. Greenwood is exactly that kind of an artist. It’s beautiful brutality that packs a hell of an impact with a single sound effect that brings it all to a close. Wow. Of course, the action sequence wouldn’t be anything at all if Greenwood wasn’t also a master of bringing the emotional end of the story to the page. Michelle’s journey across five issues has been slowly and subtly lowered into place. Greenwood does a brilliant job of lowering the boom on it in the last couple of pages of the last issue in the first arc.
Not everything is resolved. It’ll be interesting to see where Guggenheim takes Torrent next. As big and sweeping as the first five issues have been, there’s quite a lot of room to explore things further moving forward into another story arc. He’s finished a story. It’s been good. Where he goes with it from here will determine whether Torrent has a future beyond that first story.
