Annual Pine Ridge Zombie
Walk
Written By: J.T. Krul
Art By: V. Ken Marion, Sean
Parsons, Andrew Dalhouse & Sotocolor
Lettered By: Sal Cipriano
Cover Price: $2.99
On Sale Date: August 3, 2016
**NON
SPOILERS AND SCORE AT BOTTOM**
You know, the 80s
nostalgia revival seemed to last a couple of years, but this 1990s revival has
been going on forever. It’s like people can’t get enough of Zubaz pants and
wraparound mirrored sunglasses and feel good, peppy music about nothing in
particular. I wonder if that was the pinnacle of American civilization, since
it’s clearly all been downhill since. I guess it would be in poor taste to
review the turn of the century, like, “Remember when 9/11 happened and everyone
got really paranoid and xenophobic for a while? Let’s have a party where we
cover the walls in missing persons flyers!” But still, there was some good
stuff in there. Jay-Z released the Black
Album and retired from hip-hop for about a year. The Westboro Baptist
Church gave people of all skin colors something they could come together to
denounce and ridicule. And it was pretty much the last decade before the
Western Hemisphere became suffused with social media and real-time smart phone
culture, which is definitely the worst thing to happen to the human race since
cholera. When you read Bloodlines,
despite it taking place in the present day, it has a very retro feel: it’s like
an 80s horror movie in 90s comics dress and a dash of more recent times for
technology’s sake. I like visiting the town of Pine Ridge, won’t you join me in
my recap of this, the penultimate issue of the Bloodlines miniseries?
Explain It!
The Bloodlines Gang is
hiding out at Stu’s Auto Body Shop, considering their situation about which
they know practically nothing. Duncan threatens to kill Blake again, before he
turns into a soulless murder demon like Duncan’s wife and kid. Blake even
mentions that this is like the third time he’s been threatened by our saint of
bad-assery, then Eddie is like “Well, if Blake doesn’t want a bullet in his
brain…” Eddie is worried that he will lose control of his non-handicapped big,
blue Bloodlines self someday, and would rather take a gaffling now rather than
hurt someone later. Very altruistic, Eddie…but Duncan clearly has a hard-on to
blast Blake only. He puts away his gat. Out in the streets in broad daylight,
the team chats and goofs with one another as if most of them aren’t controlled
by an alien spine parasite, then Dana turns a corner to find the entire town of
Pine Ridge, shambling down (what I assume must be) Main Street, eyes glowing
red as a sure horror story indicator that their minds are being controlled! If
they glowed blue, then we’d know they’d just inhaled some Spice.
Haley tries to snap Stu
out of his reverie, and he slaps her upside the face. Now she knows something
strange is afoot, because he normally does that when he’s whiskey drunk! Then
the town preacher, presumably controlled by a Bloodlines brain bug, reveals
himself and instructs his flock to attack the Bloodlines Posse. They all
manifest their powers and there’s a big brawl where the Bloodfellas try not to
kill their antagonists. Blake starts spewing some kind of plasma energy from
his hands or something? I really want to understand this guy’s power. Albert is
able to turn invisible and get some pot shots on the evil priest, but then the
priest telekinetically opens a nearby fire hydrant, which makes Albert turn
visible for some reason. Eddie and Blake rush in to help Albert, and Blake
fires some energy bolt or whatever which makes the priest rise and…I dunno,
have some kind of green force explosion ball form around him? It’s unclear what
happens here, but it takes the Bloodlines Boyz (and Ladiez) off the board for a
minute so the the townspeople can continue their forced march.
The team regroups and
wonders where everyone’s gone off to. Eddie thinks he knows, and leads everyone
up the steep hillside on which the original Bloodlines meteor crashed in the
first issue. At the crater, the find a relatively intact meteor that looks like
a Norfin Troll’s hairpiece, and a hole at the center of the crater that
probably looks enticing if you are a moron. The morons jump into the hole
(Duncan leading the way, of course) and eventually come to like, the Bloodlines
Queen, or something? This gross, gigantic, pulsing monster with tendrils and/or
intestines strung around the room, humans hanging by their arms and feet
everywhere, and monsters and people sort of milling about on the floor like
it’s an awkward office party with no music or something. The conflict is
immediate, and the Bloodlines Six power up and go to work, but something is
wrong with Blake! He looks…like an
asshole!
This issue of Bloodlines
is just as awesome and bad ass as the previous four issues of Bloodlines. The
art team has been consistent right down to the lettering, so the look and feel
of the thing has never changed. The story is a fairly good send-up of
sci-fi/horror tropes, and I’m impressed that the characters have been
individualized as much as this in such a relatively short number of pages...though it helps when the characters themselves can be categorized as horror
movie tropes. Yet that doesn’t make them any less sympathetic (indeed, it may
make them more so,) and you know
Duncan is going to pull a completely kick-ass, cool as shit move in the final
issue, so if you jump off now you’re a grade-A chump.
Bits and Pieces:
If this miniseries has been working for you to this point, then there's no reason to stop the Bloodlines train, just keep on a-chugging along. For those that dropped this after the first issue, why are you even reading this blurb? Take a hike! Go read your Scouts manual or blow some bubbles or do whatever pleasant pursuit you think is more worthwhile than reading a messed-up comic book. I love this book, it's like every page is another shredding guitar solo and every panel is an obscene tongue-wagging or crotch-grabbing. Back in the 1990s, we'd say "this isn't your father's comic book!" But considering we're nearly thirty years out from the 90s, Bloodlines probably does resemble your father's comic book. So get outta here kid, scram. Leave us old folks our gore.
8/10
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