Writing:  I was fortunate enough to have the back issues of this series to read through before hitting issue 5.  Honestly, it probably would have been absolutely impossible for me to evaluate this issue outside of its context in the series, the stories being that dense in each issue. 

I thought it was an interesting choice to scale back the issue's scope from five stories down to three, but it did give each of those three a lot more breathing room.  So far, I'd have to say that "Frail" is my favorite of the bunch, offering a pretty off-beat story with some odd twists.  The vibe of that one alone is worth the price of admission.

Overall: 4 stars.  While a compilation series like this runs the risk of being too artistically and creatively varied to mesh well, I think this title performs admirably, even if there is a range in accessibility and quality between the titles to my mind.  If nothing else, it could be viewed as offering something for each type of reader.

Alex Haas

Writing: This is an anthology, so I want to talk about the individual stories a bit.

Chi Sai - As this story approaches its conclusion, we are treated to a few of the scorned female action hero genre's cliches.  This episode ends with a little bit of a cliffhanger, but the inclusion of the third and second-to-last panels gives a bit of a hint as to how things get resolved.

Discount Stories - I think this is my favorite story arc in this anthology.  This issue explores the manager of all the previous characters we've seen as he is doing performance reviews for his employees.  We're given a little bit of insight into his tortured soul, and how he came to be there.  As is common in this story, the humor is definitely a little dark and twisted.

Frail - I don't know if it was too long since I read Myriad #4, but this episode of Frail left me a little confused.  I remember the priest, but I can't figure out why Father Carmichael is despondent about Richard Hanson meeting Nessane.

Overall: 4 stars. I think that this is one of the stronger anthologies we've seen.  Discount Stories alone is worth the price of admission for this book in my opinion.

Robert Weiman

Writing: I think this might have been my favorite issue of Myriad to date, each of the stories were strong with Frail being my favorite.  Of the three, I think that Discount Stories wasn't as good as some of the earlier stories but still was entertaining. 

Chi Sai was basically just an action issue but I thought the artwork in this one really kept you into what was going on.  This was easily the best artwork of the three.

Overall: 4 stars. As I said earlier, this might have been my favorite issue of this series. I hope they can keep all three stories going strong in the next issue.

Ron Miller