Supernatural Murder Mystery On Boston’s Orange Line – Last Stop On The Red Line #1
by Brendan M. Allen
Detective Migdalia Torres investigates a vicious strangling on a Boston subway car with no feasible leads. As potential evidence produces dead ends, Migdalia inadvertently takes in a vagrant named Yusef who may have a supernatural connection to the crime at hand.
Writer Paul Maybury and illustrator Sam Lotfi bring a horrific murder mystery to Dark Horse!
I get what Paul Maybury is trying to do here, but there are a couple things in the script that are really hard to overlook. Right in that first sequence, a girl tries to punch her friends for offering to walk her home from the subway station, preferring to stay behind alone, on a nearly abandoned subway car, with a stranger, in the middle of the night. I don’t know any humans that act like that. Not saying they don’t exist, but it’s hard for me to relate. Without getting too far into spoiler territory, there are a couple other situations with adult, human interaction that don’t really add up.
Art by Sam Lotfi and John Rauch is a little cartoony for my taste. The character designs are just a touch too caricatured, and the colors are just a touch too bright for this type of supernatural horror. Lettering by Adam Pruett threw me in a couple places, too. The dialogue looks fine, but none of the narration has boxes around it and it’s really hard to distinguish light blue lettering against a grey background.
This one’s hard for me. I really, really wanted to like it. I do like the general concept, and the story isn’t bad. There just isn’t a lot of ‘mystery’ in this first installment. The monster is shown almost immediately, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination, and no doubt whatsoever that we’re dealing with supernatural elements. It’s a four piece mini. I get it. Things have to clip right along in order to fit everything in. As much as I wanted to buy in, I’m just not feeling it.
Last Stop on the Red Line #1 (of 4), Dark Horse Comics, released 15 May 2019. Story by Paul Maybury, art by Sam Lotfi, color by John Rauch, letters by Adam Pruett.
