REVIEW: Barbarella The Center Cannot Hold #5

Barbarella, what a crazy thing right? A young and beautiful space traveler tries to save the world from an evil being, not that crazy in hindsight but when you watch the movie it’s a whole ‘nother thing. Thankfully though we are not here to review the movie. Instead, we will be taking a look at Barbarella- The center cannot hold issue #5.

In this issue, Barbarella gets inside the mind of a creature named Durix that is part of a larger group of interdimensional beings known as the architects. From what I can, this being my first issue in the series, the architects did some horrible stuff to the Universe and now Barbarella is lecturing them about it. They come to terms with what they’ve done because Barbarella seems to also have the gift of gab on top of her beautiful looks. The story is really well written, it was fun to read and a quick story that took about 15 minutes. A great addition to the series no doubt. The one thing I did not like was that they added a narration box with the words “Epilogue” and I think that’s a little dumb, the way it was written would’ve made just as much sense without it.

The art itself is not bad, it’s not great either, but it’s not bad. The proportions of many of the characters are a little off and it seems like they either have too long of a torso or really small limbs. They also aren’t particularly consistent when it comes to the humanoid characters, which results in some panels looking pretty good and then some others just looking like bad character designs. The non-humanoid characters, which look sort of like lemurs though are really well designed and look really cool throughout the whole story, so I loved all of those. Another really cool aspect of this issue is the backgrounds, I think all of the backgrounds look awesome, and they opted for illustrating all of the backgrounds for all of the panels, and that’s not something you always see. Several comics go the gradients for backgrounds route and I think they made a really good choice going this way because these backgrounds add a lot of feeling to the story, and just look really good.

The coloring is superb! Even if the overall drawings are a little inconsistent and out of proportion, the colorist did an amazing job with what they were given and I think it saves a lot of the mostly mid art. The bright colors and soft shading look awesome, I also love the highlights that are on Barbarella’s suit, because it looks almost like latex and one would imagine that is what Barbarella is in fact wearing. It’s not a particularly futuristic material, but in this genre of femme fatale comics, they’re always wearing latex or something like it so it makes sense. Even though I did not like that they made a clear distinction between the plot and the epilogue, I think that the backgrounds for the epilogue are some of the most beautiful backgrounds I’ve ever seen. The coloring and the line work are fantastic and I’m a huge fan of these bright colors and beautiful greens, reds, and yellows. They hit it out of the park with those epilogue backgrounds. Huge props on that.

Sadly though the lettering could use some work. There were some typos here and there, a ‘y” missing from the word “you”, and some word balloons that weren’t clipped to the panels right, which honestly was incredibly jarring for me to see. It was cringey to see a quarter-page panel not have the word balloon end where it was supposed to, and that sucks because the actual panel was awesome. I don’t want to be too hard on the letterer though, it is a word balloon-heavy comic so it makes sense that something might have gone unnoticed in the end, but I wished they had doubled check that before going to publishing.

In conclusion, it’s still a fun read despite its flaws in character design and lettering. The coloring itself is enough to make this a wonderful experience to read through, and just to look at. I think there is a lot of potential in this story and I am excited to see what the next issue will bring. Also, it is common that as the series progresses and the artists get more practice at drawing the same character over and over they will get better in each issue so I’m looking forward to seeing that growth happen.

Writing: 4 Stars
Art: 4 Stars
Colors: 5 Stars

Overall: 4 Stars

Written by: Sarah Hoyt
Art by: Riccardo Bogani
Colors by: Werner Sanchez
Lettering by: Carlos M. Mangual
Cover art by: Derrick Chew
Varian Covers by: Celina, Geebo Vigonte, Madibek Musabekov & Rachel Hollon Cosplay

Published by Dynamite

Reviewed by Antonio “Mabs”