Cover to Cover: get ready for HORROR!

I got some other comics this week, but I'd like to focus on the horror comics this week.

Two managed to fly into my review radar this week - Marvel's Dead of Night and Digital Webbing's Bloodrayne: Prime Cuts.


Dead of Night, featuring: Man-Thing #2
by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Brian Denham

A few observations about this comic:

1) I really, really like Digger, the person who's telling us the tale. He works so well on commentary and getting you excited about the story. (Also, he looks really cute in mittens and a scarf-->).

2) This issue was bare plot-wise. The only developments we get here are a) a new character, Jennifer Kale, who's b) a stripper and c) a low-level psychic.

Really, then we meet some homicidal jerks who swear every single panel, who are just killed off. These people aren't characterized at all beyond swear words and profanity!

This issue could've seen some more fleshing out of everyone, but when you have two protaganists (Jennifer and her brother), four antagonists (the four foul-mouthed jerks), and a mysterious monster (Man-Thing), you're not gonna get that much.

3) Especially when you have twenty-two pages to do it in! Why exactly is this book four bucks, when it's only a standard number of pages? That really makes me angry.

4) And then you have Brian Denham on art, which honestly isn't bad, but his style feels more appropriate for "superhero" than "horror," y'know?

Hopefully, next issue will be better, and with this panel, we'll start seeing some continuation between installments:
Tell you the truth, I'm a little apprehensive about it. Why create friendships if all you're going to do is say how bad and dangerous they are?

Hopefully (Probably) I'm just pointlessly speculating. Hopefully next issue will make me feel like the first issue did. Hopefully next issue will improve, but for now, you shouldn't pick up this issue, even if you're into the horror genre. Two out of five witch-stripper psycho-extraordinaires.



Bloodrayne: Prime Cuts #1
by Chad Lambert et al.

RECAP: Rayne is a dhampir: half-human, half-vampire (aren't they all?), and she fights monsters with a great sense of humor. Really big monsters.

Prime Cuts is designed to bridge the gap between the first game and the second, and it's a two-issue mini, I believe.

Don't let that cover fool you, Rayne is more than a T&A superheroine. There are, of course, those two bouncingly humongous. . .


. . . ribbons on her hair! Which I absolutely adore - how cute!

Anyways, Rayne goes to "the shoreline" (that's as specific as they get D=), to discover that a colleague has been abducted and turned into a giant monster.

<-- You can't make this stuff up.

So the two short stories here chronicle Rayne defeating this monster. It goes from the sewers of. . . wherever they are. . . to a grocery store! It's awesome.Click here for the next panel.

Ultimately, I really liked this issue. Rayne is a woman who's clever, cute and competent: you don't get much better than that.

You could question if it's really worth a dollar extra (for 20 pages?!?!), but there are only house ads, which are always cool, and a cardstock cover.

But yeah, horror + strong female lead + gratuitous monster-killing + fun = four disemboweled geggengeist gruppen (GGG) members out of five.