Writer: Stuart Moore
Artists: Pablo Villalobos and Claude St. Aubin(p), Mostaffa Moussa and James Taylor(i), Mike Garcia(c)
Publisher: Penny-Farthing
Para is science fiction storycrafting in comic book form at its finest. This is a story that posses the scope of a thoughtful exercise in speculation as well as a personal microscopy that delves into a three-dimensionally characterized cast.
The story so far involves a super-collider accident that took away Sara's father. This instilled in her deep distrust of science. Though her life took a different path, her critically sharp mind was brought back to focus on a problem when her father's colleague and the government decided to take another look at the the machine that was meant to pick open the secrets of the universe.
As one may have predicted, the government was far from transparent, and Moore's story intrigues through a plausible cover-up as well as more real science being ribetted up in the dialogue and the plot.
The plot seems to have worked itself out. This issue pretty much sews up the nature of the phantoms who attacked Sara's lover and her father. We discover why the government became involved. We discover more answers in Sara's Fortean dreams, but then Moore shoots an anomaly in the stream that just keeps the reader guessing.
One thing that is obvious is that part of Para's success lies in the accomplished artwork. The characters look realistic and move naturally through a strongly realized set based on a little something that more authors should invest in: research.
Para continues to delight with intellectual confection, and just to give you an idea about how much I have enjoyed this series so far; Penny-Farthing has been very kind enough to give me the first three issues without charge. Now, they may have sent the fourth, but I never received it. However, I really wanted to see how the story would play out, and I knew that missing an issue would be detrimental. So when the comic book hit the racks and a copy didn't arrive in the mail, I picked it up before my luck waned.
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