Motro #1 (re-post)

Motro #1

Written by Ulises Farinas with Erick Freitas

Artwork by Ulises Farinas

Colors by Ryan Hill

Letters by Ulises Farinas

                A young boy dreams of his family being taken from him while his father lays dying from a mortal knife wound. He lives in a cavern outside of a village and has a reddish M mark covering much of his face with long strawberry blond hair. While preparing to go into town for supplies, he runs into a band of brutish, violent raiders with sentient tanks. Remembering a promise that he made to his dying father, the young man sets forth to “save them all” and defeat the raiders.

                “Be a man. Stand up straight. Eat this, it’ll put hair on your chest. Men don’t cry.” A lot of young boys hear that from the time they are children into and even during adulthood. It’s a common conceit that men are strong, aggressive, macho, take-no-bullshit asskickers and to be anything less is to be a wimp; a “beta” weakling that deserves to be trampled and bullied by the “real men” of the world. It’s, in my opinion, a poisonous ideology that has long since outlived whatever usefulness it duped society into thinking it possessed and should’ve gone the way of the Dodo.

Motro, as writer Ulises Farinas stated, is “a meditation on what’s like to become a man. Not in the ‘get tough’ false machismo that most people think of first.” The lead character, whom I assume is named Motro because the character’s name isn’t given in-story, takes it upon himself to face down the gun-toting, violent vagabonds due to a promise he made his father. The responsibility of protecting others and the failure in doing so, visibly weigh on this young man’s heart and it shows him not being a rough and gritty punter of posteriors, but a kid who just wants to live his life, draw and misses his father.

The tone in this issue is a very strange, eclectic mix of character drama, cartoonish madcap zaniness, and post-apocalyptic action. Vehicles speak in emojis, communicate with their owners, eat from troughs and behave in an almost pet-like manner. Motro seemingly has incredibly superhuman strength and durability. But the marauders show to have no compunction to murder entire villages wholesale. Overall if I had to sum up the writing in the story itself, I’d liken it to a Conan The Barbarian story as told by the creative team of Adventure Time.

The artwork, by co-writer Ulises Farinas gives the issue something of a child-like fantasy feel to everything; From the way blood and tears pour down people’s faces in sheets instead of drops to the crazy cartoon-like way the vehicles behave and the up-close grotesquery of the raiders, particularly the leader as well as a man whose head is almost perfectly square-shaped. Each character design is unique and distinguishable. The tanks and mini motorcycle eating food like people do seems cute and endearing, even if they eat something that’s supposedly bad for them.

Perhaps the only issue I have is with the abilities of Motro himself. In one panel, he seems to be able to punch men high into the air and survive mortar fire, but then he is knocked out with a cudgel. He’s also being throttled in another fight by a single huge man and is saved when said man has a heart attack. Perhaps it may be expanded on in later issues, and my interest is assured, I just found it somewhat inconsistent.

                Motro is an interesting, if not always consistent, tale of the meaning of manhood, responsibility and the high cost these take on a young boy’s soul.