The big fight with the Cthulian monster rising from the depths of the crater in the middle of the city.

Overman is genuinely horrifying all on his own. The concept is great.

Love the Overman reawakening...and refalling.

The battle on the bridge is well done.

This writing and artist tam needs to do the JLA, the Avengers, and or the Fantastic Four.

Love the art and the dialogue. ( )

Leaving Megalopolis is a graphic novel by Gail Simone and J. Calafiore that was funded via Kickstarter. I was one of the backers and have a lovely hardcover with a bookplate signed by Simone and Calafiore to show for it. There is now an ongoing comic (I don't know if it's a limited series or not) from Dark Horse Comics, called Surviving Megalopolis, that continues the story.

The premise has the city of Megalopolis cut off from the outside world, under quarantine, after an "incident" in which something came out of a crater that formed in the city, a something that caused the superpowered heroes to turn evil. Now, those former heroes are preying on the city's citizens. The graphic novel told the story of a small group of people and their attempt to escape the city.

The comic sets up as a rescue mission, with a small team entering Megalopolis to find two people and bring them out to safety. But, as we learn in the most recent issue, #3), two members of the team have their own agenda, because isn't that always the case? Sure, it is. And in this case, it just adds to the intrigue. The comic is filling in some of the gaps left by the graphic novel while posing new questions about what happened in the city.

This is a great, gritty tale of survival, a different type of disaster story where the heroes people normally turn to for help are now the things to be feared. The people of the city who we meet are all individuals, capable of heroism, and Simone makes us care about them. Calafiore's art is wonderfully detailed. His people look real, full of emotion, and the backgrounds show a city in chaos.

I'll admit I don't love everything Simone writes. I adored her take on Birds of Prey, and I thought her Secret Six series to be amazingly good, but I was less enamored of her writing on the pre-New52 Wonder Woman, and I never could get into that short-lived DC comic with original super-powered characters she wrote (the title of which escapes me). Here, she's at the top of her game, giving us a story that seems so real, a story of fear and what it can cause people to do to survive, good things and bad. But it's also a story of hope, and I hope it's around for a while because I'm enjoying (if "enjoy" can be the right word for such a dystopia) my visits to Megalopolis.
Scripted by Shelly S at 11:54 AM ( )