The UnChosen #4 // Review
Aida has been taken out of her place. Those at The Tower todld her she was special. Now she’s beginning to understand why they were telling her that. THere are others who are revealing to her more of te world than the Tower ever would. It’s a much bigger world with a vastness she could not appreciate until it is opened for her in The UnChosen #4. Writer/artist David Marquez and colorist Marissa Louise do a lot of world-building as the true complexity of things begins to become apparent. With more of the journey ahead revealed....the story DOES pick-up a bit of narrative momentum.
The tower needs Aida. They’re going to hunt her down. Thankfully, she’s got allies that will protect her. If they’re powerful enough to stand-up to and stand apart from the Tower, they’re going to be powerful enough to protect her. Still--if they’re out there trying to help her track down some connection with her mother, the Tower is going to be out there looking for her. And they just might find that sh’es a bit more powerful than ANYONE expects...least of all herself. Things are about to get a whole lot more complicated for Aida.
There’s a hell of a lot of world building in this issue. Marquez lays a tremendous amount of it on Aida right away in the first few pages of the issue. So if it feels overwhelming for the rreader to sudddenly have a huge amount of backstory dumped on them, it’s going to provide for a deeper emotional connection with Aida, who is suddenly thrust into a much bigger world of her own. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t a bit of a slgo getting through all of the exposition at the beginning of the issue, though.
Marquez finds suitably moody, tense and intense ways to fraeme the drama of the world-building that he’s scripted into the issue. The progression of the story seems well=paced and natural. There’s a change in her stature from the beginning to the ned of the issue. THere’s a strong sense of subtle character development that fades-into the visual as aida deals with the sudden onset of knowledge. As powerfully percussive as ti feels at times, the subtle shifts in perception and emotion that can sometimes cross Aida’s face can seem all the more intense than even some of the most dazzling magic that hits the page.
Aida’s made a huge journey over the course of the first few issues of the series. If she’s to remain at the center of the series, she’s going to have to slow-down in order for the narrative to catch-up with all of the changes she’s gone thorugh...otherwise she’s going to feel like a dramatic blur across the pages of the series. The caing of the character development has been pretty brisk.The challenge is going to lie in slowing-down her transformation while keeping the pacing fo the rest of the conflict in the series moving fast enough to compensate.
