- Kill Train
- Mad Cave Studios
- Written by Olivia Cuartero-Briggs
- Illustrated by Martina Niosi
- Colors by Simone D’Angelo
- Letters by Becca Carey
- Cover Artwork by Skylar Patridge
- Available August 5th, 2025
To control the population explosion that nearly crippled the city, New York has instituted Kill Train, a randomized, extermination program where designated subway trains are picked at random, and all the passengers are slaughtered by the end of the line. In this not-so-distant future, we meet Vanessa, a struggling single mom in the midst of a nervous breakdown, who discovers that she, herself, is on a Kill Train. Now, for once in her life and with everything to prove, Vanessa decides she’s not going down without a fight.
On the surface, Kill Train is a deeply disturbed & cynical tale of dystopian horror. At its core, once you wade through the buckets of blood and piles of steaming viscera, it’s a deeply disturbed dystopian horror with a surprisingly creamy layer of emotion and personal growth. Consider the mindset of the stereotypical New Yorker, jaded beyond belief and determined to get where they’re going as fast as possible despite the sea of humanity swirling around them every day. Then think about how much worse things would have to be for the Kill Train concept to take root and reach total herd-mind acceptance in society.
Vanessa has to get to Point B, but she doesn’t have the funds to hail a cab. Her only other option is mass public transit… the subway. She’s in a hurry, and there was just a Kill Train yesterday, soooo… what’re the odds, right? For the sake of the story, I guess the odds were pretty damn good because once she’s on the train it becomes apparent that her portion of the herd is singled out for a cull.
It occurs to me that I cover a lot of Mad Cave titles for review. It also occurs to me that the beauty of reviewing comics for free is that I get to pick and choose the comics I take the time to write up. That is by no means an indictment of the comics I receive every week. It’s just a matter of the maths. I love you all, but I only have so much time to work with, so it comes down to the comics that truly stand out. Kill Train did that.
The mind behind this twisted breakaway story is writer Olivia Cuartero-Briggs. There may be varying trains (ha!) of thought regarding the emotional issues it takes to come up with this kind of bloody mess, but I subscribe to the idea of exorcising your demons. Whatever Cuartero-Briggs may have going on, if she was able to vent any of that onto the page for Kill Train, she may be the most emotionally stable human being on the planet. The spins come every issue, the horrors leavened by the dark (so very dark) humor she invests in her characters and their very screwed-up situation.
Bringing that gloriously horrific vision to life is the village of Martina Niosi, & Simone D’Angelo. Niosi has rendered the fast-paced lifestyle of mass transit and coupled it with the mayhem of mass murder. Some of what she’s put to paper for this comic is, in a word, disturbing… but I refer back to the previous statement about the venting of demons. Her panels are dense, packed with a sea of humanity that leaves no room for wasted space. Everyone on the page is a person who needs to get to work an hour ago, each with a life lived. Although, for most of them, there isn’t much of that left. Simone D’Angelo takes Niosi’s lines and gives them depth, brings them to life, and then condemns them to a bloody, tortured death.
Are you getting the theme here? Seriously, I’m not trying to be subtle.
The final member of Team Train is letterer Becca Carey. For the mopes who think “lettering” is just plopping a script onto a page… get out. It’s being able to work with the artwork in a panel, letting the script flow in a way that makes the reader forget they’re reading words on a page. I read that Jack Kirby thought the greatest mark of talent as a letterer was the ability to make your work effectively invisible. Patridge’s work on Kill Train applies.
This is an often disturbing, yet soulfully introspective story. Kill Train’s protagonist, “Vanessa the Great”, is forced to fight through obstacles, physical and emotional, as she navigates from car to car. The metaphors and allegories are packed more densely than a Manhattan subway at noon, but nothing takes away from the entertainment value of these pages. With five issues done and the story finished, here’s your chance to jump aboard for the collected trade.
Final Score: 11/13
