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 Other Dead No. 5
Okay, here's the plot to The Other Dead. Just stay with me on this one. I don't want to lose you right off the bat. All animals in the world have turned to zombies. Now, it's up to a rag-tag team of survivors, including President Obama, to get themselves out of danger. Yes, President Obama, in this issue, hacks at a zombie wolf with an axe. The group is stranded in a small cabin, and have to rush to choppers that come to evacuate them.
Bag it or board it up? This is a comic that knows how ridiculous it is. I think. It's all done very straight-faced. The heroes don't really crack jokes, and the character of Obama is a patient natural leader in this wild chaos. I think I really like this comic, and this issue in particular is full of fun action and tense moments. Check it out, it's weird… but I think it may be awesome.
City: The Mind in the Machine No. 1
Here's a little dark sci-fi for the technology obsessed. Taking place in San Francisco in the near future, City is the story of a man who's helped create a system that taps into the thousands of cameras that litter the town. The goal of the program, called Golden Shield, is to find a crime as it happens and automatically send police to the scene. But without intuition, it can't tell where crimes are. After a terrorist attack leaves one of the main designers of this system blind, he's hardwired with a new set of camera eyes and can tap into all the cameras in the city.
Bag it or board it up? This is the kind of gritty, near-truth sci-fi that I really believe horror fans will like. I think we're only just dipping out toes into the story, but if you follow along I bet you'll be rewarded. This story, and artwork, are done with care and consideration. Check this out if you like movies like A Scanner Darkly and The Matrix.
Dead Boy Detectives No. 2
"From the pages of 'The Sandman'" the cover of this comic proudly states. And it's true, this comic book spin-off does bare many similarities to the dreamy Sandman comics. But this comic is all about teens, in the here and now. A new girl admitted to a strange school is followed by two ghosts who hope to help her fit in. She doesn't know they're there, and coincidently tries to figure out how the two boys died.
Bag it or board it up? This is a weird one, and it's very fun to read if you're in it for the long haul. I think the artwork is great, and it's full of small details that leave you scouring the page. The pace seems a bit strange. At times the comic is moving at a full clip, while other times it seems to slog through, but I'm going to keep reading this one. At least for a while. The only problem is that if you're not really familiar with The Sandman you'll be pretty damn lost. So take heed!
Night of the Living Deadpool No. 2
The "Merc with the Mouth" is at it again in this undead series. Marvel comics brings the zombie apocalypse home to you, the reader, with Night of the Living Deadpool. In this issue, Deadpool has teamed up with some young kids, an army guy, and an old lady in an El Camino to escape the zombie apocalypse and survive another night. As the weeks go by, we see the group trying to find themselves a new home in many different classic zombie locales.
Bag it or board it up? This is one of the funniest zombie comics I've read in a long time. I was never a huge Deadpool fan, but he's great in this series. He's the narrator, the voice of reason, and he exists in a vacuum. He's the only superhero still alive. In that sense, he becomes the perfect outsider. Not afraid to die, able to vanquish any trouble his way, he merely perceives the trouble around him and comments on it - which is what he does in his normal comics, but I like it better here. This is my pick of the week, by far.