X-O MANOWAR #5 – Review

In X-O Manowar #5, available from Valiant Entertainment on August 18th, 2021, Shanhara sustains critical damage in a battle against the nanite swarm at the bottom of the sea. Meanwhile, Whittaker develops a theory about the swarm’s origin.

Wait! Don’t Forget To Sign Up For The Comical Opinions Newsletter.

The Details

• Written By: Dennis Hopeless
• Art By: Emilio Laiso, Raffaele Forte
• Colors By: Ruth Redmond
• Letters By: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
• Cover Art By: Rahzzah
• Cover Price: $3.99
• Release Date: August 18, 2021

Was It Good?

It’s not bad but the story is starting to lose focus and clarity.

When last we left Aric, the villain of the first arc had been defeated. However, a mysterious threat that popped up at random in the first arc has now taken over as the main villain. And that’s the main down point with this soft transition into the next arc, the villain is a seemingly random force.

The nanite swarm popped up so randomly in the first part of the arc, it was pointed out in our prior reviews for its jarring pointlessness. Imagine having a cop show with a very long car chase, and for no particular reason, somebody throws a stick of dynamite to explode near the hero’s car. There’s no rhyme or reason for the dynamite’s appearance. It just happens and everyone simply moves on to deal with it later.

If those random nanite swarm appearances were meant to be a prelude, it wasn’t a very good one, primarily for how inorganically they were placed in the story. Now that Yakiov is no more, the swarm is the central threat. ‘Jarring’ is not a strong enough word to describe this transition.

The transition from one villain to the next is one of two down points of the story. The second is Whittaker’s theory about the origin of the nanite swarm. It’s a half-baked, existential concept about A.I. reaching a singularity point ala SkyNet in the Terminator franchise. In theory, an A.I. tasked with protecting the Earth could conclude the best way to protect it is to wipe out humanity. However, Whittaker’s explanation is not nearly that coherent, and he winds up defining the threat as an idea, which makes for a frustratingly nonsensical plot device.

The down points of the story are sizable, but the rest of the story and the art is well done. Nobody wants to lead with the negatives, especially when there are so few, but the ones we do have are so glaring, it’s hard to avoid.

On the positive side, the art in this issue is fantastic. Laiso and Forte churned out quality pages in this issue. Every figure is drawn with style and substance, and Redmond’s coloring work in this issue really pops.

Placed on a balancing scale to see which is better, the art outshines the story in this issue. However, all is not lost. The ending gives readers a very different look into Shanhara that could pave the way for the story to go to some surprising places. We shall see.

What’s It About?

[SPOILERS AHEAD – Click here if you just want the score without spoilers]

Before you read another word, check out our X-O MANOWAR #4 review to get caught up.

When last we left Aric and Shanhara, they were getting crushed on the ocean floor by the terrific sea pressure and the nanite swarm that attacked Whittaker’s yacht. Shanhara takes more damage than it can handle, but with the last bit of awareness, Shanhara blasts a nearby, sunken, much-too-conveniently placed Russian sub to create an explosion that frees Aric.

Whittaker picks Aric up in his flying sphere, but the nanite swarm surfaces soon after to attack them both. Without enough power or weaponry to do much good. Whittaker abandons the sphere after setting some sort of self-destruct to buy them time to escape. It’s not clear how or why the self-destruct was able to either destroy the swarm or scare it off, or where Whittaker escaped to, but they escape somehow.

Days later, Aric and Whittaker are caretaking Shanhara’s recovery as it slowly heals in a sort of “coma”. During the recovery period, Whittaker explains how he first came up with the A.I. singularity idea years ago, and how he believes the singularity is the source of the swarm. As noted above, the theory describes why a swarm could exist but not the how or the where. Regardless, Whittaker deduces someone or something is behind the swarm attacks, and he creates a model with satellite monitoring to try and discover the base of control.

We conclude the issue with a new perspective of Shanhara.

Final Thoughts

X-O Manowar #5 jarringly transitions from one main villain to another that operates without a clear rhyme or reason. The art looks great, but the story’s attempt at complexity tips too far into convoluted, and it winds up sounding like word soup nonsense. There’s still a lot of potential for the future of this series, but it needs more clarity in the storytelling going forward.

Score: 6.5/10