Kris Hathaway, Peter Stanchek, Faith Herbert, and John Torkelson thought they could go underground. They thought they could get their old lives back. They were wrong. As four psionically powered “psiots” that can defy the laws of physics with a thought alone, this extraordinarily dangerous team of renegades won’t be able to escape the fight that society has brought to their door. As a violent, new superpower movement spreads across the suburbs, America’s only hope will be the teenagers it wished it could forget.

Here’s the thing about Harbinger Renegade; it’s the third chapter in a longer story featuring the same characters (depending on how your reckoning is – I’m thinking of Harbinger and Imperium as the first two chapters), and while starting at the beginning is always ideal, it isn’t always financially feasible for every reader. It is therefore, fortunate that Renegade can be picked up without having read either of the previous chapters in the larger story.

Harbinger Renegade #2 lets us get a glimpse into what drove Peter Stanchek to meditate in Saturn’s rings, as seen last issue, and it’s a well-written part of the comic. Rafer Roberts utilizes a familiar, but no less effective, method of showing Peter’s struggle with his immense power; credit should also be given to letterer Dave Lanphear for placing so much text above Darick Robertson‘s artwork without losing any of the detail. It’s a nice throwback to the first issue’s cover that will remind long time readers of that iconic cover, and convey to new readers the amount of psychic noise that Stanchek has to deal with, and does help in explaining why he ends up meditating on Saturn.

Despite not having read Imperium the final actions of the Renegades in that series are playing a large part of the story here as certain members continue to deal with the repercussions of their actions. As such there’s a lot more story development here than action, and I’m very happy with that, but that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing interesting to look at. Lanphear is joined on art duties by Richard Clark (inks) and Diego Rodriguez (colours), and they deliver some utterly superb space scenes and layouts.

You may think that nothing much happens in this issue, I did the first time I read it, but there’s a lot of character exploration here, which allow us to get into the minds of Kris, Tamara, and to a certain extent Peter. We also get a glimpse at the man who will more than likely be the “villain” in the story as the series progresses. I use quotation marks, because even Toyo Harada wasn’t as evil as you’d think, so I’m curious how Roberts will set the new guy up.

If you’re a Harbinger fan this is pretty much essential.

Story: Rafer Roberts Pencils: Darick Robertson
Inks: Richard Clark Colours: Diego Rodriguez Letterer: Dave Lanphear
Story: 8.75 Art: 9 Overall: 9 Recommendation: Buy

Valiant provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review