This article reports on two experiments aimed at investigating the activation and suppression process of meaning in metaphor comprehension. Participants in the experiments were 40 undergraduate and graduate university students. The first experiment examined the metaphor-relevant meaning of topic and vehicle in metaphor comprehension whereas the second experiment examined the metaphor-irrelevant meaning. In the first experiment, the effect of vehicle conventionality and metaphor interactivity were also studied. In both experiments a meaningfulness decision task was employed. Forty metaphors of four different types (ten of each type) were used: low interactive metaphors with low conventional vehicles, highly interactive metaphors with low conventional vehicles, low interactive metaphors with highly conventional vehicles and highly interactive metaphors with highly conventional vehicles. It was predicted that (i) the activation of metaphor-relevant meaning in the vehicle depends on conventionality or interactivity, whereas this is not the case for the suppression of metaphor-irrelevant meaning and (ii) the metaphor-relevant meaning in the topic is activated no matter the type of metaphor, whereas metaphor-irrelevant meaning is activated only when a metaphor requires comparison to take place. The results show that highly interactive metaphors with highly conventional vehicles are the only ones to activate the metaphor-relevant meaning in the vehicle, whereas all types of metaphors suppress the metaphor-irrelevant meaning. Further, the topic is activated both as metaphor-relevant and metaphor-irrelevant meaning.