Meta 4 #5

by Ted McKeever

As much as I love Ted McKeever's work (Metropol has long been a favourite comic of mine), I often don't understand it.  In fact, he's better than Grant Morrison at making me feel stupid or like I've missed the point, yet I always go back to his work for more.

Meta 4 is a perfect example of a Ted McKeever comic that is either too subtle for me to fully grasp, or is simply a pretentious piece of fluff that I can't recognize as such.  I'm pretty sure it's the former though, and not the later, as McKeever's built a good body of work that falls into that category.

What I do know is that even when I don't fully grasp it, his work is visually stunning and always interesting.  This issue has our unnamed astronaut recover his memory in ways that he at least understands (while exposing the entire moon landing program as a hoax), and more or less resolves the police story we've been eavesdropping on through bullets that have been transmitting radio signals.

The best part of this book is the art, and once again, McKeever doesn't disappoint with some tripped out, interesting images.  McKeever is a completely unique individual in the comics world, and it's nice to see him work on something that is so non-commercial and challenging.  I think I need to read this again in a single sitting to grasp it better.  I'm sure it will work better in trade format than as a mini-series plagued with delays.