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!
The Strain: The Fall No. 1The Strain: The Fall offers up a vampire story with an amazing new take on vampires. These guys don't skulk and stalk, they're vicious killing machines. Think 30 Days of Night and not Nosferatu. They also have huge, pointed tongues that they use to gouge their enemies and drink their blood. A resistance is beginning in the now-ruined New York, but "The Master" is gaining strength in his crypt. Trouble in the big city, for sure.
Bag it or board it up? There aren't many vampire stories that I'm still interested in, but The Strain is definitely one of them. First of all, the character design and artwork is amazing. This comic has ruined fangs for me. Forget fangs, I never want to see another set again. These huge spike-like tongues that the vampires in this book are sporting are amazing. They're stuff of nightmares (and the design of my dreams). The story of this comic continues to up the ante with every issue and every mini-series run.
B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth No. 109Follow the gaseous form of Johann Krauss and his fellow B.P.R.D. officers as they're on the ground floor of the apocalypse. Giant monsters tear apart the landscape in this end-all-be-all run of B.P.R.D. comics. Johann and his crew are looking to make their way across the landscape, but they've got to stop to find a small child they taking along with them. But the monsters are rampaging, the people who got turned into monsters are rampaging, and an old squad mate wakes up from a coma and goes berserk.
Bag it or board it up? The action in this series is ramping up, and I've never seen a comic deal with devastation of this level so humanely. This is an amazing issue with a ton of action. And as always, I really don't feel this is too far into the storyline for new readers to jump in. So jump in already, we're waiting for you!
Night of the 80's UndeadWhat happens when you mix 1986 Hollywood, cocaine, the soviets, pop culture references, and zombies? Night of the 80's Undead, that's what! This comic follows two young ladies as they crash a crazy, coke-filled Beverly Hills house party. Unfortunately for them, all of the coke that's made it's way to the U.S. has been tainted with a zombie-plague by the USSR, and now all of Hollywood is going bloodthirsty and crazy!
Bag it or board it up? This could be an amazing comic. It's a pretty humorous premise, and the setting is rife with possibilities, but man oh man, this is not to my taste. The character design is lazy (heads up, comic creators: giving your female leads unnaturally large breasts doesn't make your comic better), the characterization is tissue-paper thin, and the jokes are all in bad taste. This type of comic prides itself in “crude humor,” but you can’t just say that and then get away with whatever you want, right? This is a sort-of-racist, very sexist, non-interesting comic. Read it if the premise interests you... but really, we can do better than this.
Superior Carnage No. 1Following in the Superior Spider-Man world, where Spider-Man is actually the spirit of Dr. Octavius in Spidey's body, we finally get a new series about everyone's favorite drooling psychopathic villain. Easily the most terrifying villain Spider-Man has ever faced, this issue sees Carnage in a maximum security jail. Spoiler Alert: guess who breaks out?
Bag it or board it up? Sure, we've kind of seen this story before. Carnage is in jail, Carnage breaks out of jail, some one is trying to control Carnage, etc. But... who cares! New Carnage! Woo hoo! I'll admit, I'm a Carnage fan/apologist, but who can say no to that blood-red demon that shreds his enemies apart?