Rat City #6 // Review

There’s a guy who is panicking in his apartment. There are some pretty serious sounds coming-in from the nearby apartments.  A blast has come through the wall and he’s really concerned. There’s smoke coming through a bullet-sized puncture of the wall. Naturally he’s going to call the authorities. He calls Security Services. He’s going to have some difficulty getting any service, though. He doesn’t exactly live in a nice neighborhood and it’s about to get worse in Rat City #6. Writer Erica Schultz continues an interesting. little narrative in a cozy corner of the Spawn Universe with artist Ze Carlos.

There’s a monster coming through the door of the guy’s apartment. That’s the bad news. There’s more bad news, though...there’s another monster coming through the door to fight THAT monster. And no one’s coming, but it’s not like either of them are after HIM...they’re after each other. And maybe if he can stay out of their way he can survive, but there’s going to be a hell of a lot of damage to his apartment and it’s only going to get worse. All could get to be very serious in very short order, but there’s no telling what could happen.

And actually....the narrative above doesn’t even start until like...halfway into the issue. Most of the issue is background information on the New York neighborhood for which Rat City gets its name. Erica Schultz is SUCH an amazing writer, but Rat City #6 doesn’t exactly represent her best work. The focus on a minor character in the midst of a major conflict between heroic monster and antagonist is a lot of fun. It’s solidly good narrative instincts on the part of Schultz, but she’s not quite finessing it in a way that lives-up to its potential. 

Carlos is challenged to move around the narrative quite a bit through the history of Rat City. He does a solidly respectable job of keeping the overall narrative coherent even as the narrative rushes through various points in history. This is no easy task. The action that hits in some guy’s apartment at the end of the issue is really, really impressive as well. He does a remarkably good job of giving some guy in the apartment some kind of serious emotional connection to the narrative even though he’s little more than a minor supporting character. On an emotional level ,this is a hell of an accomplishment in addition to well-executed action. 

Schultz clearly has a long-range sort of a plan for the overall pacing of the series, but it’s ind of a weird way to start the sixth issue with a comprehensive history of the neighborhood in question. Schultz is writing with the full series in mind, but  the sixth issue feels a bit like an awkwardly lopsided sort of a feel. It’s going to be interesting to see where she’s going to take the story from here. There are a lot of different possibilities. 

Grade: B