Reviewed by Torin Chambers. By fully embracing its horror aspects, “Plunder” #2 becomes a much more solid and consistent read than its predecessor. It delivers equal parts suspense and action all wrapped up in some terrific character development. With all of the boring set up from last issue out of the way the book has real room to breathe now. This allows it to flex its horror muscles and begin digging deeper. Everything improves as the books drops its exposition shackles and generates true forward motion from start to finish.
WRITTEN BY: Swifty Lang
ART BY: Skuds McKinley
PUBLISHER: BOOM!
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: March 18, 2015
Wasting no time this issue picks up immediately where the last ended. Bahdoon crouches over the infected cook who just destroyed one of his fellow pirates (Disco) and almost Bahdoon himself. There he contemplates the strange consistency of the cook’s blood, it’s thick and sticky, almost like a syrup. While preoccupied with this new discovery he doesn’t notice the sinister looking worm that is birthed from the cook’s gaping face wound. It ominously crawls away, living to fight another day, or maybe even later this issue…
When he regroups with his fellow pirates they’re obviously ticked off about Disco’s death and Bahdoon’s true but fantastical tale does nothing to help his situation. The rest are ready to throw him to the dogs, so to speak, but luckily Stain stands up for him. He takes Bahdoon under his wing and together they split off (always a good idea in a terrible scenario) to continue searching the ship.
There’s some tangible character development delivered from this team-up, something the first issue was lacking. Bahdoon’s arc is excellent here. He really come into his own and turns into someone you want to root for instead of inspiring indifference.
Later in the issue there’s a decently large action set piece that I’m unsure about. It’s something that’s hard to judge because there are still two issues left but it feels like it’s too soon. We’ve barely had any encounters with normal infected people and after this monstrosity they’ll only pale in comparison from now on. I hope Plunder sticks with it and keeps going bigger and bigger, instead of taking us back to lowly peons again.
Plunder #2 improves upon issue #1 in every way, giving an all-around stronger story that body horror fans should definitely check out.
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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