Plunder #1

By Swifty Lang, Skuds McKinley and Jason Wordie

The horror comic genre has started to pick up a little bit in the past year or so. Books like Valiant’s Shadowman and George Romero’s Empire of the Dead have been taking up space on comic shelves and have been pretty good. This month we are treated to a mini-series from Boom called Plunder, and it has some interesting elements for any horror fan.

This issue could be a risky buy for many if you are not familiar with Swifty Lang or any of the others involved in the making of this book. From the first page we are thrown into a shootout, which makes the beginning a bit confusing. We are unfamiliar with the characters and the narrator is spouting out odd-ball names like Internet and Disco. The real fun starts when the crew on the ship, who are all thugs and scumbags, board a mysterious ship. Swifty Lang does a nice job of setting the mood from here on out. As we start to familiarize ourselves with the characters, we begin to like them a little. Lang allows us to sense that there is absolutely something not right about this ship, but many of the characters are dumb criminals and don’t seem to care. That’s one of the charming things about the issue. Lang allows many of his characters to be dumb robbers who are blinded by greed. It would make sense for them to stay on a boat that has a severed arm hanging off a door, not that they could leave if they tried. Lang has some decent scares in this issue, which sets the tone and pace nicely for the rest of the mini.

The art duties are handled by Skuds McKinley with colors by Jason Wordie. Sometimes the pencils in this issue can be a bit underwhelming. Skuds has some panels that lack detail or it seems like he took a page off, but when there is a good scare to be had, McKinley is awesome. His panels showing corpses with intestines hanging out or dead people are excellent and well done. Nothing says creepy like a man cooking his own fingers, and McKinley draws it nicely. The colors are very fitting to the tone of the book. They don’t pop out at you, but they blend very well. Jason Wordie is the man for the job on this book as he is clearly on the same page (lame pun intended) as McKinley.

Plunder #1 was a surprisingly good read. It had a few flaws and some glitches in the art, but overall it was enjoyable. If you’re a fan of horror comics this is definitely worth a look and even if you’re not and it’s a slow week for you, give it a shot.