By Svetlana Fedotov
Ever since the dawn of comics, superheroes have blazed a trail across the four square world to the delight of post-war children everywhere. With their “go get ‘em” attitudes and barely there outfits, not even gritty re-makes can damper the belief that at the end of the day, the heroes are exactly who they aim to be: goddamn heroes. Unless you live in Megalopolis. Waaaay back in 2012, the two brilliant and twisted minds of Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore kickstarted a superhero horror title called Leaving Megalopolis. Not only did they meet their initial goal of $34,000, they beat it by a whopping $83,000 and some change! Thanks to the ever loving support of fans everywhere, they released a work that has been hailed as “taking grim and gritty superhero violence to an apocalyptic extreme.” Let’s just say, that sentiment is not far off.
The story swirls around a group of people in the post-survivalist city of Megalopolis. Once considered to be the safest city in the world due to the high concentration of superheroes, it had quickly turned into the most deadliest when a creature from deep with the Earth twisted the minds of every hero in town. And I’m not talking ‘it gave them bad dreams’ kind of crazy, I’m talking ‘kill everything in sight because it’s hilarious,’ type of crazy. As the survivors, led by the hot-tempered cop Mina, attempt to exit the city, they come face to face with heroes, villains, and the blurry line between the two. Will our protagonists escape the city in time or will their corpses litter the streets like so much rubble?
Alright, first things first, this comic is INSANE! Like, Garth Ennis “Crossed” insane. It’s incredibly gory, everyone is super grim, and there are more twists than a crazy straw! Honestly, you could say it was a Garth Ennis book and people would believe you. Leaving Megalopolis addresses the most obvious yet ignored question in all of super-dom, what’s keeping these superheroes in check? Apparently, the answer is nothing. When morals and ethics are tossed aside, the only thing left is a super killing machine and that’s what really makes this comic so scary. Be it the speedster character zooming around ripping off heads or the fire character charring everyone to a crisp, it is unstoppable pandemonium! How do you stop something that is faster, stronger, and more powerful than you? You don’t. You run.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a true horror comic if there wasn’t a human element to it and it’s not only the core group of survivors who have their share of issues. As Mina and her crew traverse across the city, they come across what is left of the once booming populace, now reduced to twisted and scared human remnants. They treat the superheroes as angry gods and quickly turn to human sacrifices as a way to appease their bloodlust. It’s a hell of price to pay for survival, reflecting the human tendency to kill everything before themselves. With our real life world reflecting this dog-eat-dog sentiment, it’s almost hard to blame them, which makes this comic just a tad bit bitter tasting. Speaking of dogs, there are a lot of dead dogs in this comic, so, be prepared to be a little sad.
If you’re interested, and you should be, Leaving Megalopolis got collected into a beautiful, hardcover graphic novel by Dark Horse in 2014. Unfortunately, it ends on a cliff-hanger, supposedly intended to continue at some unspecified point in the future, but as of recently, there have been no news of anymore coming out.