The review at The Pickytarian's Subway Reading (scroll down a bit to see it) is painful -- not because it is negative, but because the reviewer so sadly misses the point, writing, "OK, so Jesse is homeless, and it's sad and difficult. This could have been communicated in less pages, and then there would have been room for some ninja ass-kicking." (Not to descend to picking at grammar but -- oh, hell, let's descend away-- that's fewer pages. Fewer.)

But other reviewers seem to have embraced this issue. Iain Burnside at ComicsNexus, who calls Street Angel "the coolest comic book of the past fifteen years," writes of the "strange, beautiful heart and charm of Street Angel." Ray Tate at Silver Bullet Comics catches the humor that is still present in this issue and comments that Jim and Brian "eschew symbolism to ground the story in reality." Jog the Blog (scroll down a bit) notes the "majestic" quality of the opening pages, in which Street Angel's heroic introduction is "broken up into small captions, impotently dotting several full-page splashes of finely-detailed ruin, of total powerlessness." At ComiX-Fan, Ryan Day succinctly tells us just what this issue is all about: "This is a story about a girl who’s on her own and doesn’t have anything to eat, and it’s amazingly humanizing in its simplicity."

Oooh, oooh -- now me! This issue is understated and nuanced in its storytelling, and absolutely gorgeous in its artwork. I know I'm supposed to say stuff like that, but I really, really mean it. It is an issue that Jim and Brian have been working toward: You get glimpses of the part of Jesse's life that isn't spent in heroics in other issues, such as her friend's comment that Jesse hasn't been in school in some time in issue one, Jesse reading Charlotte's Web and bumming a smoke in issue two, and a glimpse at her vulnerabily in issue three; but in issue four, you truly get to meet not just the nigh-invicible, wise-cracking Street Angel, but the girl herself -- Jesse Sanchez.

-Jennifer "Weepy" de Guzman
e-i-c

EDIT: Also, check out the sculpture of Jesse Sanchez that Jesse Farrell is working on -- there are links to it here.