Barbara Gordon: Breakout #5 // Review
The drama is always so over-the-top in Gotham City. Those who fight crime under mask and cape are the closest to that drama. Babs has seen that drama from many different angles on the street and behind the glowing screen. She’s had the feeling of running for her life...never more so than now as she is behind bars in Barbara Gordon: Breakout #5. Writer Mariko Tamaki continues a prison drama with artist Pablo M. Collar and colorist Tamra Bonvillain. Babs’ tension continues to intensify in another satisfying issue that brings her just a bit closer to her objective.
Creote and Savant have found their way into the prison. They're not necessarily no the full reality of what they're dealing with. Given their abilities, they could easily get out. However, there's a bit of a complication going on. They know Barbara Gordon. And they owe her one. So they owe it to her to stick around for a long enough to try to help her out as well. And she might just need the help. She's continuing to investigate a murder. On the inside. With the guards after her. Really it's only a matter of time before they catch up to her.
Tamaki splits time between Barbara and the pair of guys who feel obligated to help her. There's a bleakness about what's going on. But there's also a sense of unraveling mystery that continues to serve as a central focal point to a story that is getting into the heart of who Barbara Gordon is in a way that a few other authors have managed over the decades. She's clearly in over her head. But she's far too fascinated about what's going on in far too concerned about abuses at the prison to be too terribly concerned about her own safety. There's a real sense of heroism that Tamaki is instilling in her rendering of Barbara.
Collat continues to find creative ways to make the cramped confines of a maximum security prison feel both claustrophobic and disorienting. The script specifically says that the prisoner is designed to be disorienting. That's kind of a difficult challenge for any artist to manage in the cold and sterile order of a maximum security prison. There are some really sharp terms of action that are also given quite an impressive appearance on the page. Skewed angles and dramatic framing create quite a visual package. Bonvillain find some very sharp color in the prison to accentuate the intensity of the action.
Things continue to move forward in a series that rests just outside the rest of the chaos going on in Gotham City at this moment. There isn't really much of a focus on the current problems with Mayor Isley and all of the deadly vegetation that’s going on in the rest of the Gotham City titles. Somehow the lack of potential perspective from the outside makes the continuity all the more intense. And it makes the action inside the prison feel all the more serious.
