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 Massive No. 19
The world has crashed. Everything is beyond repair and most places live in chaos and anarchy. There are no monsters, no zombies, just a ruined world. Our heroes, Israel Callum and his crew, sail along in a ship called The Kapital looking for their lost sister ship, The Massive. Now they find themselves in post-crash Europe, getting pulled deeper into a world they tried to leave behind.
Bag it or board it up? When the world falls apart… get a boat. I really love this series. It's a gritty, realistic kind of horror. More horrifying than horror, more monstrous than full of monsters, this is a serious, intelligent comic about the collapse of global society. If you're not reading this you should be! Check it out!
The X-Files Conspiracy: Ghostbusters
The lone gunmen, a group of three hoax hunters looking for proof of alien existence, set their sights on the Ghostbusters. They go to snoop around and look for proof that the 'busters are either fakes or working with aliens. Once they get there, however, they find out the hard way that the Ghostbusters deal with real, honest-to-Gozer ghosts. What happens after they find out is a fun romp and more of the 'busters doing what they do best.
Bag it or board it up? IDW loves to jam its properties together into different series. They've done it before, they'll do it again. But this time around it feels like it all makes sense, sort of. I like the use of Lone Gunmen as traveling snoops, always getting themselves into trouble. But it's hard to buy the Ghostbusters as people, at this point in their storyline, who could be fakes. Hasn't the whole world accepted and celebrated their story at this point?
Judge Dredd: Mega-City Two No. 1
Judge Dredd is on assignment abroad. There's something going on in Mega-City Two, and its up to Dredd to find out who's involved. But Mega-City Two isn't like Mega-City One… at all. Where one is all chaos, gang warfare, bloody shootouts and daring chasing, Mega-City Two is like a giant Los Angeles. Full of celebrities and jam packed with traffic, Mega-City Two is a friendlier place where Dredd has to use rubber bullets. He is, clearly, not at home.
Bag it or board it up? Yes! This issue rules. I've become a big fan of Judge Dredd lately, and IDW is doing great things with the big lug. This is another awesome issue, where Dredd is taken so far out of his comfort zone he might as well be in outer space. This is a fun read, and the artwork by Ulises Farinas is stunning, crammed full of stuff, and wonderfully intricate.
Arcane Secrets No. 1
Finally let's take a look at a little indie comic (by publisher Amigo and featured on the Comixology Submit program) called Arcane Secrets: The Curse of the Mottled Tentacle. This pulpy, kid-friendly detective story is full of monsters, weird villains, tentacles, and "the unknown zone." It's the story of a pair of arcane detectives who get set up and tricked by some nasty, tentacled mobsters.
Bag it or board it up? While this comic isn't for everyone, it is, in my opinion, a boat-load of fun. Playing out like a modern day cartoon, our heroes bumble through their troubles. They joke with each other, they run into situations they can't handle, they haplessly succeed. This is great, cartoony stuff, and if you've got little critters of your own… they'll love it too!