Murder Falcon #1 Review

Writer: Daniel Warren Johnson
Artist: Daniel Warren Johnson
Colorist: Mike Spicer
Letterers: Daniel Warren Johnson and Rus Wooton
Publisher: Image Comics

Sometimes I need to stop my brain from stressing me out and slow down to enjoy some easy and fun media. There are plenty of things that don’t work for me in those moments like comic books that are too complicated to follow, movies that are too depressing, or books that are just too heavy to enjoy at the time. Well, Murder Falcon is now the answer to my struggles in those moments by being simple, amazingly fun, and absolutely delightful.

Daniel Warren Johnson, the comic’s creator, writer, and artist, writes at the end of the issue that Murder Falcon has everything that he loves in it. He says those things are “heavy metal, old vans, beer, whammy bars.” Well I will steal this simple phrase and tell you this: Murder Falcon has everything that I, Nathan, like in it including heavy metal, old vans, beer, and whammy bars.

Murder Falcon is about Jake, a talented guitar player who has given up music after a traumatic event happened in his life. He refuses to pick up his guitar until one of the monsters that have been invading his city crashes through his apartment wall. Murder Falcon, a giant badass falcon-man with a robot arm, arrives to defeat the monster but is powered by Jake’s guitar playing which forces him to embrace this talent of his again.

Okay, so we have seen different versions of this before, but Murder Falcon has something really special about it. Instead of just being a story of metal vs. evil, this issue has character and heart. Johnson is responsible for this by not just writing the boring story we’ve seen before. Instead, he writes the story so that we really find out who Jake is before he begins shredding. Before any action happened, I knew and loved Jake and that made the rest of the action-packed issue more enjoyable.

This first issue of this series really shows us that Johnson is an absolutely talented and creative guy. His artwork of Murder Falcon and these bizarre monsters perfectly fit the story and the world it is set in. Every panel looks intense and I could have sworn that I was hearing metal coming from the pages.

Murder Falcon will be a series I will look forward to enjoying every month from now on. The story will pull you into it’s exciting and entertaining world and you’ll enjoy every minute of it. This is the story that we need in the world right now.