Like Father, Like Daughter #5, available now from Comic Uno is the start of a new arc about a family bonding experience written by Katharyn Calamia, with art by Wayne A. Brown, David Aravena worked on colors, and you will read Matt Bowers letters. After a few issues of building the characters up, it’s finally time for the plot to move forward.
Recap
Like Father, Like Daughter revolves around Casey Ryder and her superhero father, Invulnerable. Casey inherits his powers and tries to get a handle on them while trying to figure out where they come from.
Like Father, Like Daughter #5 Plots
Like Father, Like Daughter #5 is all about revelations that make an impact. The best comes from how Casey reacts to how her father actually lives. Given how camera friendly Invulnerable is, it’s easy to assume superheroes live a high life. But when Casey sees how modest Jim actually is, she can’t help but feel a little bad about everything. Especially when it turns out that what Casey and Invulnerable have got going can be taken away by the origin of Jim’s powers. It turns out Casey and Invulnerable’s powers are in relation to the KGB, and they’re on the move to reclaim Invulnerable. Calamia brings home how much of a threat they are by showing how deep their grasp is. Any further comments would be spoilers.
Art
Like Father, Like Daughter #5 uses Brown’s artistic developments in issue 4 as the default state. The details on the characters from wrinkles to hairstyles look authentic, allowing for extremely expressive features. The few mental situations from Casey’s visions/nightmares look positively surreal; they perfectly encase a dizzy spell that transitions to horror. The same can’t be said for the architecture, which more or less looks very simple with a lot of rectangular buildings. Some of the panels don’t even have backgrounds and just use coloring from Aravena.
Aravena’s colors likewise look rather simple with backgrounds of gradients. This is in stark contrast to the character models whose shading and layering of colors present a fine amount of detail. The fight scene in the dark in particular displays this detail with the little highlights with the action taking place.
If there is one thing to improve upon for future issues, it’s paying attention to small details. In the opening scenes of Like Father, Like Daughter #5, characters speak in Russian, yet the reader could only tell from a black caption box that might be hard to miss for its placement at the bottom left. It would be a lot easier if the word balloons had hyphens or an asterisk to notify a different language. Bowers otherwise does a decent job with word balloons that occasionally embolden with a very broad outline for emotional moments. As well as wordmarks that can fit in the situations that take place, like a stylized font for a broken window.
Like Father, Like Daughter #5 Gets Everybody Ready
If there’s anything to take away from Like Father, Like Daughter #5, it’s that this series isn’t over yet. There is still more to come and hurdles for the characters and creators to leap over. As the plot thickens, the series finds its identity with more room to grow. Now all everyone has to do is prepare themselves for further developments.
