Harbinger, Volume 2: Renegades. Joshua Dysart, Phil Briones, Barry Kitson, Lee Garbett, and Matthew Clark. 2013. Valiant Entertainment. 128 pages.
Rating: 5/5
I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I received it in the June 2016 box from Comic Bento, so I didn't get a chance to read volume 1 yet. There is an opening page that gives some background for readers like me that didn't pick up the first volume, which is quite nice. Even without that, the book is pretty friendly to new readers.
This book details how the group known as the Renegades formed. It includes some fallout from the first book, which I thought was detailed enough here that I could get by without knowing exactly what happened before without being overly repetitive. Basically, the leader of the Renegades was recruited by the Harbinger Foundation, they had a falling out, and now the Renegades are being hunted. Each issue in this volume tells the story of one of the members of the Renegades.
So each issue focuses on one character and is told from the point of view of that character. But their stories tie together very nicely, and that background information is interspersed with the main plotline. This gives the book a very cohesive feel even though there are multiple voices used and a bunch of smaller stories included. It feels like a good jumping in point because you get to learn about all of these characters in one go without being overwhelmed.
The art is fantastic too. I particularly enjoyed the illustrations that went along with each character's awakening. This helped reinforce how different each of the characters are. And the characters are very different, both from each other and from what you'd think of as a typical superhero. Each character could probably have their own series based on them, yet this book captures enough to make them distinct.
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