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!
B.P.R.D. Vampire No. 3 of 5B.P.R.D. Vampire continues to spin on its lovely little axis. Set in the B.P.R.D. timeline in the 1940's, the comic follows a guy who's just slightly possessed by two evil spirits. He's out on a hunt for an old vampire living in seclusion. Our hero (well, I guess he's really an anti-hero) recently fell into a big old crypt somewhere in the Eastern Block, and now he's face to face with his prey.
Bag it or board it up? This issue ended crazily! This could have been the end of the series right here, and everyone would have gone "oh damn!" But this is Mignola, he keeps it going and keeps ratcheting up the awesome.
Vitriol The Hunter No. 4Vitriol is the story of a man who, I don't know, I think he's raised from the dead to fight a vampire plague? Or, if he's not raised from the dead, then he spends a lot of time in a graveyard? It's all very The Crow to me. But it's set about 150 years in the future, where a bunch of nasty vampires are out to kill the populace. Also there are people with chest-containers holding a serum that will turn them into werewolves on command.
Bag it or board it up? In theory this is a cool comic. It's got vampires, guns, the future, and werewolves. I like all these things. But it's all done a bit ham-handedly. The characters speak in platitudes and blurt out their backstories. And the artwork is supposed to look cartoonish, but it ends up looking a little rushed.
The Last of Us: American Dreams No. 2 of 4This comic is a tie-in to the Naughty Dog produced game The Last of Us. Ellie and Riley are two girls in a military boarding school. A nasty fungal outbreak has turned the world as we know it into a fungal-zombie (my favorite kind) nightmare. But Riley doesn't want to spend her whole life in some military compound, and when she sneaks out, Ellie follows.
Bag it or board it up? This was a great issue. No monsters, no huge threats (until the end), just great character development and world-building. The artwork on this comic is wonderful, too, with somber colors and moody shading. Definitely check this series out!
Godzilla No. 12All the monsters! This comic gives you all the monsters you could ever want. It's amazingly vast in its scope and the breadth of its destruction. The Godzilla monster itself is kind of the hero (but not really). In this issue, a group of resistance fighters are caught in a sinking Mechagodzilla and they have to try and fire off a giant cannon before they drown.
Bag it or board it up? Oh man, Godzilla. I can't even hide my bias here. I grew up watching Godzilla movies, playing the SNES Ultraman video game, and staying up past midnight to watch bootleg Mystery Science Theater 3000 VHS tapes that I got off internet 1.0. You know, the ones where they riff on Gamera and the like? I'm a sucker for giant monsters, and this comic is a beautiful one. The art is definitely not what you'd expect, either. It kind of looks like an indie comic!