Comics
Review: “Drumhellar” #7
“Drumhellar” # 7 brings us a relatively subdued and to be honest, a bit dull issue this month. Now with this being the out there, trippy comic we’ve come to know it’s hard to get a good idea of what’s actually happening.
WRITTEN BY: Riley Rossmo & Alex Link
ART BY: Riley Rossmo
PUBLISHER: Image
PRICE: $3.50
RELEASE: March 5, 2014
Reviewed By Torbin Chimners
So maybe I just missed all the cool things that make this issue great, but that’s just a maybe. I can only say that for me this issue was a big letdown. There’s a multitude of wild and crazy things at work in your average issue of Drumhellar, that’s one of its greatest strengths that has brought me back month after month. So when an issue almost completely forgoes the special something that made it stand out in the first place it’s a little concerning and rather boring.
Drum and Harold contemplate how their world and friends work. This genuinely interesting conversation continues as they make their way to the house Drum saw in his vision last issue and then things get dull. At the home they spend all of a page looking around before determining there is nothing of value there and leave.
Drum precedes to get high on shrooms for the rest of the issue which would normally mean an awesome psychedelic landscape to feast our eyes upon but alas, nothing. Instead we are transported to a very unhappy family camping. They berate their son, who isn’t even 13, about drinking, hunting and fucking. The Mother and Father are so overwhelmingly cruel and just plain shit parents that it’s almost comical.
Eventually the demon children who Drum saw in his vision come across the camping family, it’s still very unclear what the deal is with these demon kids. They seem to have some form of mild mind control or something because the parents react very strangely. The Mother just kind of talks with them and the Father reaches for his gun at one point only to have one of the demon kids take it from him. Then he just sits there and watches the demon child give it to his own son with no reaction out of him. I understand they’re both drunk but even so this whole interaction feels incredibly awkward and stilted.
This issue was not garbage, let me make that clear. It was just too mundane in comparison to the fantastical magic of every issue that has come before it. There are good things in here, the opening pages had me engaged with their almost meta contemplations and the last two pages are so goddamn amazing that they could almost make up for the rest of this lackluster issue. I know that personally I’m along for this ride till the very end but it’s getting harder and harder to recommend this to anyone else.
Torbin Chimners AKA 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@Vulgar_Rhombus
IDW Dark and Paramount recently joined forces to launch limited comic book tales set in the worlds of Smile and A Quiet Place, and we’ve learned today that they’ll continue hanging around in those franchise universes with two brand new limited series tales.
Entertainment Weekly has exclusively revealed this afternoon that IDW Dark’s Any Given Smile debuts in September, while A Quiet Place: Rising Tides arrives in November.
First up, from writer Stephanie Williams and artist Pablo Collar, Any Given Smile puts a football-themed twist on Parker Finn’s successful Smile movie franchise.
The five-part limited series is “set in January 1995, during the American Arena League football championship game in St. Augustine, Florida. The rising superstar of the Sharks, backup quarterback Dupree, is feeling the pressure from his teammates, the fans, and also the city’s gambling underworld, to whom he owes a considerable debt. Meanwhile, a sports journalist investigates a string of suicides that may be connected to the big game. At the very least, they are connected to a sinister entity that preys on the minds of its victims.”
From writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow, A Quiet Place: Rising Tides will also be a five-issue limited story. The comic book tale “brings the creatures to the Florida Keys, where a father-daughter duo attempt to survive on water in a houseboat.”
EW further details, “This tense family reunion coincides with the arrival of the vicious creatures that hunt through sound. Grace and her dad find safety on the open ocean, but she’ll have to make landfall sooner or later; the father’s oxygen tank and their supplies are running low, while a hurricane swiftly approaches.”
Learn more about both comic books over on Entertainment Weekly.
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