The Lost Boys #1
Vertigo
Written By: Tim Seeley
Art By: Scott Godlewski
Cover By: Tony Harris
Variant Cover By: Joelle Jones
With Halloween approaching, I was immediately drawn to The Lost Boys #1 and my hopes were just as high as my expectations. The Lost Boys franchise hasn’t been able to capture the same magic since the 1987 release of the original iconic movie. For die hard fans like myself, it is getting harder to be excited when someone decides to revisit Santa Carla. I had many reservations and had to give myself a mental time out before defaulting this book into the ‘hate’ file in my brain. It was a losing battle because this book found its way there without any help from my predetermined doubt.
The story starts off with a brief and mundane recap of the events from the original movie. This part actually confused me and I honestly think the way in which it was worded was a poor choice. The introduction started as a recap and then trailed off as if the ending of the movie had never happened. In my opinion, the poor word choice completely spoiled the effect of the last page and left me waiting in limbo with unnecessary confusion. We cut to the comic book shop and it’s nice to be in familiar territory. This is the first scene were we see Sam and the Frog Brothers again and the first scene where I feel as if the Tim Seeley was relying on ‘Easter Eggs’ and nostalgia to make me care about this continuation. Sam, sweet and awkward Sam, is trying to chat up a girl that is looking at horror comics and he uses the line “Horror Comics are kind of my thing.” If you have seen the original movie then you know that Sam told the Frog Brothers that, “I’m not into Horror Comics.” It was a nice nod and I chalked it up to him trying to look macho in front of a pretty girl. He fumbles around and she makes a quick exit. There was a nice plug for The Dark Knight Returns in that scene as well and I didn’t mind the product placement.
This is the point where the story really loses most of my attention and half of my patience. We cut to Michael giving two nice ladies a foot rub at a retirement home. Hey, I’m not mad about that. He has bills to pay. The women start to ask him about Star. The dialog seemed choppy and didn’t add anything to the story or the tone of the comic. It then cuts to Michael getting off work and going out to meet Star. The cliche moment where Star is under the only street light with wind in her hair happens and they kiss. The scene felt awkward and didn’t live up to their chemistry in the film. Laddie pops out of the car and hisses breaking up the ‘tender’ moment. This also confuses me because in the film they are all cured after Max is killed so it poses the question: Is Laddie cured and just has the-two-little-girls-from-Mama-syndrome or what? I guess I don’t remember Laddie being so ‘Hills Have Eyes’, but that could just be me.
The story then jumps around to the Frog Brothers and Nanook before Grandpa enters for the first time. The grandfather was honestly one of the best characters in the film and he was delightfully weird, but his appearance in the book was lack luster. Just as soon as he arrives he is gone in a cloud of smoke. Literally. We learn that Grandpa is the leader of this rag-tag group of aging vampire hunters. This development actually made sense due to the last line of the movie and the admittance that he knew vampires were actually real. The headquarters for the Buffy squad are blown up and Sam & Michael’s grandfather makes it through the flame just in time to tell Sam and the Frog Brothers that they are the last ones left. The scene had negative amounts of emotional depth and the only thing we learned from the needless death of a character was that vampires were still at large.
The comic ends with a play on the last line of the movie and that grip at nostalgia left me feeling hollow. The big reveal is David standing with a group of Goth Spice Girls over looking the boardwalk. The classic line of, “The one thing I could never stomach about Santa Carla is all the damn vampires,” has now been reformatted to fit David’s agenda and replace ‘vampires’ with ‘vampire hunters.’ I was less than impressed and more than a little let down. So I’ll leave my review off with a revised line of my own: “The one thing I could never stomach about Santa Carla…was all the damn missed opportunities to revisit this world and make it not suck.”