New comic book Wednesday has come and gone. The dust at your local comic shop has settled. An eerie silence descends as you finish reading your last superhero book of the week. Now it's time for something a little more sinister. Welcome to Bagged and Boarded: comic reviews of the sick, spooky, twisted and terrifying!
TMNT Villains: Krang
That's right, we're covering a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book here. But be honest, if you had to name one villain from the comics/show that could hang alongside Freddy, Jason, and Michael… it would be Krang, right? What is he, a brain with tentacles? Is he just a nasty little inter-dimensional blob? This one-shot comic gives some background to the grumpy little plop, and we even get to see how he rose to power in his home dimension.
Bag it or board it up? This is a very inventive and fun comic. It's strange to see a Turtles comic branded with the Nickelodeon tag, but they're the owners now. Surprisingly, this comic was a little bit gory and even had some language in it. Krang's journey to become a badass villain was fun to read, and it reminded me of some of the classic TMNT comics. It was bold, brash, and not quite what I expected.
Evil Ernie No. 5
This is the penultimate issue of this new Evil Ernie reboot. Things are looking rough for the kid who's come back from the dead. With Buford now in full-on demon mode, the powers of good and evil struggle back and forth. Ernie, now no more than a chewed up husk of a corpse, screams against the face of his own mortality. But can vigor and hope save the day when, to be honest, shit looks pretty grim?
Bag it or board it up? This issue feels very different from previous ones. Things don't look so awesome for Ernie, and his troubles keep mounting. This has been a wild ride, and the ending next month should be pretty insane, but this issue still delivers. A lot of times the second-to-last issue is all huffing and puffing, but not so with Evil Ernie.
B.P.R.D. Hell On Earth: A Cold Day in Hell No. 2
The B.P.R.D. and the Russian Special Sciences Service are teaming up to fight giant bug-monsters that are coming out of the Earth. Meanwhile, a vastly powerful demon is recruiting lesser evil spirits to help him in a nefarious quest. When the leader of the R.S.S.S. goes missing, a hunt is called to find him. But the dead don't stay dead, demons come out to play, and chaos and insanity ensue.
Bag it or board it up? This is a strange issue. All of the action of the story has been resolved in issue 1 of 2. So this issue is all about, in a way, cleaning up the mess. It's fine, it has exciting moments, but I don't really feel that it's doing the job. It's not really moving this beautiful, expansive plot.
House of Gold And Bones No. 1
Corey Taylor, author and lead singer of Slipknot and Stone Sour, has finally come out with the first issue of his comic House of Gold and Bones. An unnamed Human finds himself on a strange world. He doesn't remember how he got there, or what he should do next. After a horrible sound presses him forward, he finds a small house where his doppleganger tells him that in order to escape he must find the House of Gold and Bones.
Bag it or board it up? Whoa, this is a very dreamlike comic. I really enjoy the way the first-person narrative is so flawed and suspect in this. What does our protagonist know? What has he forgotten? Why is he here? There are a lot of questions, but I'm having such a fun time with this comic so far. I hope they don't answer them all too quickly.