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!
X No. 1A few weeks back I reviewed the Zero issue of this comic, X. Now we get the first issue in this run of the series, and it's more of the bloody, high-octane fun we saw in the intro issue. The X Killer is a masked vigilante who's going around brutally murdering the corrupt business tycoons in the nasty city of Arcadia. This issue, he's beginning to wrangle the help of a young punk reporter, but the bullets are flying!
Bag it or board it up? Is X the type of comic for you? If you like Batman but wish he'd just go ahead and shoot his arch-enemies in the face, then yes… this comic is for you. This is an exciting, violent, sordid revenge/justice tale that has a noir setting and enough sleaze and gore to satisfy even the most fanatical. Check it out (but wear a kevlar vest while doing so).
Creepy No. 12The classic horror comic anthology Creepy is back! The formula hasn't changed, but the stories and artwork are all new. Sometimes the issues splash in a classic, original, Creepy tale, but for the most part this is fresh, awesome material. And with artwork by Mike Mignola, Richard Corben and Richard P. Clark. There's something for everyone in this comic (so long as you're a little twisted, of course).
Bag it or board it up? My favorite thing about Creepy is its place in time. Even though the comic is being written currently, it still feels very old school. It's not filled with people texting and emailing. It almost feels removed from time. And it's filled with stories about so many classic, timeless tropes. A couple of hapless kids go fishing and end up being caught themselves, a woman falls asleep on her dead husband's grave and he comes back to pay her a visit. This is classic horror stuff.
Constantine No. 3John Constantine, now officially a DC Comics character, is hot on the trail of the third piece of a mythic artifact that can detect where all Earth's magical hot springs hide. This trek brings him to London, the city that's actively trying to kill him. A curse placed on John years ago now keeps him running. Car accidents, electrical fires, the flu… London pulls out all the stops to put an end to Constantine's life. Will he be able to find what he's looking for before he croaks?
Bag it or board it up? I like this comic; it's weird, fairly gory, and has a nice pace. I think Constantine's new send-up is good-but-strange. They really emphasize his accent, which is hard to do in comic book form. So he says a lot of sentences that end with "yeah?" It's a little bit off putting, but again, this is a fun enough comic. And better than you'd expect for this switch in focus for the character.
The Walking Dead No. 110Rick's gearing up for a war against Negan. Negan, the psychopathic antagonist of this arc, is the bastard who's been brutalizing Rick and his crew for a while now. Rick attempts to join up with The Kingdom, a group ruled by an enigmatic man who calls himself King Ezekial and has a pet tiger. Things are brewing, a storm is coming, who will survive what will definitely be a serious bloodbath in the upcoming issues?
Bag it or board it up? The zombie comic that's not at all about zombies continues on with its 110th issue. This is crazy. I still remember reading the first volume of comics, wincing every time a zombie stumbled into view. How things have changed! Not a single zombie in issue 110! Now the focus is on group dynamics, survival, new-world politics… the scope has truly evolved over the years.