My Brain Hurts

Bolt Action 1 and 2
Fiends 4

Written by Simon Garth
Art by Tim Tyler, David Zuzelo, and others

(Follow them on their Kickstarters for future issues)

Lots of swag!

I must report that after reading these three comics there was no shortage of titillating imagery: Gore aplenty, lots of boobs, full nudity, carnage, gun play...

... also a very dull throbbing pain in my head. Like I was assaulted. Not from the risqué imagery, no. More like trying to follow the stories and make sense of them. Be better if I give you a run-down on each magazine and the themes/stories therein:

Bolt Action 1 and 2
The theme is that the 'bolt' theatre burned down in 1935, taking all the movie goers with it. It turns up as a 'ghost' building that can pop up anywhere from the Bronx to a Louisiana swamp, the later part foiling the plans of two escaped convicts.

Fiends 4
A send-off of a Horror comic, with your story introduction by a creepy monster guy. Stories include a swamp, lost adventure, a rare comic book in a garage, finishing up with notable actors and effects artists in the horror movie industry. Plus two extra stories: a dungeons and dragons type cat-man and Capt. Tom...

My eyes hurt. My head hurts.

Like Tarantino's Dusk to Dawn movie, the Bolt theatre is only open from sundown to sun up, and you have to have your ticket (one of which was supplied in the comic, thanx!).

There's a lot of martial arts fighting, some outer space adventures, terrific send-ups of the classic 'blaxploitation' genre in the form of a bad-ass black martial artist named Kain.

My eyes hurt. My head hurts. Not from the endless gratuitous sex/gore ethically questionable story lines. It was in trying to follow each story's thread. They're framed like they're trailers to up coming movies, so the short-and-sweet approach is used. Once I sort of got what each vignette was about I was tossed out of the tale and into the movie theater once again.

One exception was a pretty good action/thriller at the end of Bolt 1 with a big breasted action heroine and a black werewolf over a head in a sack. That one had a decent plot.

Worth the ticket... to some.

I get the feeling their fans (and they did reach a huge funding goal on Kickstarter this year) don't really buy these comics for the story but to look at the art. And there's a lot of pretty good art from a composition and lighting perspective. Each page is very enthusiastically laid out. Nothing is held back. Usually that makes for some awkward visuals or overly wrought prose but I'm happy to say Simon Garth and his artists got it 'bolted' down pretty tight here. These comics were well worth the money for the art and style alone. I only wish there could've been more care and attention paid to giving me less of the head-throbbing nonstop T/A, bloodshed and more of just simple A to B to D narratives to follow the protagonists along.