Reviewed By Torin Chambers. “Plunder” #1 holds a lot of promise but this initial issue falls short. While you may not care for any of its characters the sense of mystery and dread however are palpable, giving it an eerie and unsettling feel. When the horror ramps up it’s a good read, damn good, but too much of it this issue contains exposition upon exposition of why the pirates we’re following are bad guys.

WRITTEN BY: Swifty Lang
ART BY: Skuds McKinkey
PUBLISHER: BOOM!
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: February 18, 2015

The book opens on them attacking another ship so they can steal from them, this alone shows that they’re bad. The problem isn’t that they’re all built up to be really bad, it’s that they are at the expense of the protagonist’s development. It just feels like a waste of space on the page for what are essentially cannon fodder for whatever horror they’re facing, space that the protagonist could be growing in.

Once everything’s set up our pirate party reach a ship that’s dead in the water. This is when the real fun begins and Plunder get’s increasingly more interesting with each passing page. As they descend deeper and deeper into the lifeless ship it becomes incredibly apparent something is not right here. An interesting dynamic early in their decent is how they mostly write off what they’re seeing as the work of another pirate group. It’s not all necessarily shocking to them, which is a cool perspective for a group to have in a horror story such as this.

When the monsters hiding below deck make their appearance they do not disappoint. Unsettling to the nines and creepy as hell, I can’t wait to see more. To see all the different forms they’ll take, there’s a lot of creative potential for monstrosities here.

Visually Plunder is a bit inconsistent at time but nothing earth shattering. The awesome moments definitely outshine the discrepancies overall. The major visual issue I had was that both of the pirates with glasses also both have yellow scarf’s and short sleeved grayish shirts. There’re a few pages where they’re in different parts of the ship and as it cuts between the two scenes I was initially confused as to how this guy was in two places at once. Also on only the first page our lead clearly has a striped shirt for two panels when for the rest of the book he’s wearing a solid white shirt. Those instances aside when it comes to gore and carnage Plunder looks rad.

A slow and clunky start gives way to an original and intriguing horror premise. Plunder is worth a look for any horror fan who’s tired of the same old routine.

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Torin Chambers is a rad dude from the nineties who does film stuff or something. Thomas the Tank Engine is his favorite transformer. Find him on Twitter @TorinsChambers