Publisher: Avery Hill Publishing
Writer: Ricky Miller
Artist(s): Julia Scheele (‘Electric Dreams’ part one, Cover Art),
Rebecca Strickson (‘Sunday’),
Jazz Greenhill (‘Memories’)
Release Date: Available now!

In this collection we get an insight into the rise of an indie band against a Twin Peaks London with a bit of time travel. That’s a lot to cram in to one issue, so the narrative is split into 3 distinct sections, grounding us in the present and the lives of ‘Electric Dreams’, a short flashback of how the two main characters met, and a flash forward to the end of their lives also.

The first one presents us with a bare, washed out London. While I love the palette used, to make London empty seems all kinds of wrong. Sure, it could be a metaphor for the hollowness of the main character, Ricky Stardust, but that’s every kind of irritating. There’s a lot of contrived, overtly self-aware stylistics, and like the protagonist it all seems rather smug and self-satisfied (which could be the point, of course, but by that stage I’d lost interest). And this is a fundamental problem: the main character doesn’t engage the reader, and his Scott Pilgrim-like imaginings add to the irritation, rather than drawing us in.

It’s a great shame as the two other tales are more captivating. The art of ‘Sunday’ is quite stunning, and supports the flow of the narrative; and, I suspect, had it opened the volume as a whole, would have made me care a lot more. Likewise, the whimsical style of the final tale is matched by Greenhill’s quirky line drawings, and the slightly self indulgent storytelling seems more forgivable, somehow.

Perhaps I am being a little harsh, but it seems to me small press and indie comics somehow have to work harder for loyalty. I want to love them for their efforts, but in the case of Metroland, I’m just not feeling it.

You can grab yourself a copy of Metroland #1 and make up your own mind over at the Avery Hill Publishing website, priced just £5.

The writer of this piece was: Sam de Smith
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