Advance Review: Metro #1 (Chapter 1)

Cullen Dunn, Brian Quinn, and Walt Flanagan are poised to release their kickstarter-funded “urban fantasy”“ comic-series, Metro. For those readers who have a morbid obsession with death and mortality (present reviewer included), the series is promising to be a creative clinic on the macabre. The first chapter in the series opens in a morgue wrapped in a metaphor about sleep and death.

Or maybe it“s a set of visual analogies of sleep as death or death as sleep. It could quite possibly be all of these ”“ and more. Bunn“s writing in the opening sequences of Metro somehow takes a set of trite clichÃ©s: New York, sleep, death and the “city that never sleeps”“ and turns each one on its head ”“ in turn. Of course the city sleeps, and every one dies, but what if the equation of sleep and death is more literal than metaphorical?

Metro“s protagonist, Hunter Murphy awakes from death completely disoriented and bearing witness to an act of necrophilia ”“ the description of which is best left to the pages, words and images of this book“s creative team. And the story does not become any less strange from its opening panels to its closing cliffhanger. At some point readers will want to know more about Hunter“s resurrection, but most will be so subsumed within the story world of the Wide-Eyed Three and the violent interior of Hunter“s mind that some of those answers will just have to wait.

It“s hard to say (as a reviewer) that some of the artwork or that some of the scenes of a particular series or graphic novel are un-watchable, but some of the scenes/images/panels in Metro are very difficult to watch. This is not a call to/for censorship; it is simply an assessment of how carefully some of this issue“s most gruesome images are rendered on the page and in the panels. This is NOT a comic book for kids or for those with an aversion to gore. Metro“s creators refer to the series as very dark urban fantasy, but its opening issue feels more like horror than much of what passes for fantasy in comics these days.

Genre distinctions aside, the story helps the death, blood, and guts to cohere around what might be this series“ core questions ”“ what does it mean to be alive if you aren“t really awake OR what does it mean to be dead if you really are? All of the things in our world that mimic the sleeping deaths that Metro is exploring ”“ drug abuse, comas, even actual sleep ”“ suggest a certain disconnect from consciousness that mirrors the malaise so rampant in our real waking realities. The boundaries between being painfully aware of our realities and the desire to find ways to be painlessly disconnected from them don“t seem to exist in the world of Metro. But in blurring those distinctions maybe we can all become a little more awake about the world in which we live. 4/5.

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Brian QuinnÂ is one of the four Impractical Jokers.Â He was a firefighter with the FDNY in Ladder 86.Â He co-hosts the podcast Tell Em“ Steve-Dave on the Smodcast network.Â He“s also President of the world“s first comic book themed motorcycle club, the Four Color Demons.Â In 2016 he became a Kentucky Colonel, just Colonel Sanders, but without the chicken empire.

Cullen BunnÂ (Co-Writer and Creator) is the writer of comic books such as THE SIXTH GUN, HARROW COUNTY, UNCANNY X-MEN, and DEADPOOL KILLS THE MARVEL UNIVERSE.

Walt FlanaganÂ (Artist and Creator) is one of the stars of the AMC television series COMIC BOOK MEN and one of the hosts of the hit podcast TELL ”˜EM STEVE-DAVE. He is also the artist of series such as BATMAN: THE WIDENING GYRE.

Philip R. Williams Jr.Â (Inker) is also known as Phill Will. He got his love of comics and art from his father and grandfather. Working on many indie titles, Phill is excited for readers to see his work.

Wayne JansenÂ (Colorist)Â is a digital painter with a background in traditional materials and techniques.

Marie EngerÂ (Letterer) Marie Enger is a catch-all comic artist whose previous work can be seen in PISTOLWHIP, 2 SISTERS, ADVENTURE TIME, TABLE TITANS, and WE ARE IN A DARK PLACE. She colors comics, too, but she only wears black.

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