Puppet Master #5 Review and *SPOILERS*

Okay, it's time to get back to the series of films that I love so much and to catch me up completely on this comic.  Hopefully, for now on I'll be doing these a couple of days after they come out for Just For The Hell of It Mondays and all of us can continue the fun that Shawn Gabborin has been creating for us.  This book has been so good in creating new stories for the fans while playing up the references to the films that brought us all here.  It's just been a wonderful experience and I can't wait to continue it.  Let's jump back into this world and see what's in store for us this time with Part 2 of Rebirth.



Written By: Shawn Gabborin 
Art By: Michela Da Sacco, Yann Perrelet
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: August 26, 2015
Publisher: Action Lab: Danger Zone

You Can't Escape Your Past

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Welcome back to another installment of Puppet Master........ you know, one of the greatest horror franchises that you've never watched.  It seems that I use this section of my review to constantly gush over this franchise and I guess you can at least call me consistent because I'm going to do it again here.  Ever since I originally sat down to watch Puppet Master 2 after my father rented it from Blockbuster in 1991.... who then proceeded to catch me up on what happened in the first Puppet Master film by getting names completely wrong... like him calling Pinhead "Strangler" and Tunneler "Pinhead", I've been obsessed with these films and am so happy that Action Labs has created a series so that I can continue the adventure that I started twenty four years ago.  In the previous issue, we started a new story arc where a psychic named Madam Adon uses her power to transfer the life force of people wanting to use her collection of puppets and dolls in any manner of way that they want to..... but from what we saw I guess it's mostly revenge stuff.  We go from there to our puppets finding out about this practice and wanting the psychic to finally end their torment and give them real bodies.  I guess it's kind of fucked up that Andre Toulon and his friends would have to actually steal people's lives away from them in order to become resurrected, but for some reason, maybe because I've seen what all these characters have gone through during their time as puppets, I didn't really care about the method, only the end result.  All the puppets have collected their new bodies so let's see if Madam Adon keeps her promise and what our puppets will do once they aren't shackled down in little wooden forms.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Right away I'd like to apologize because in the previous review to issue #4 I said that Torch had brought a young girl to Madam Adon as his vessel, but after reading this I realized I was wrong and he actually brought a young boy as his vessel instead.  So sorry for that, but at least we have an idea of who Torch was before he was a little flame throwing puppet...... but we'll get to that.  So the puppets get transferred into their new vessels and for all the shit that has happened to them and for all the shit that they've done in their very long lives as animated puppets........ once they're flesh again, it becomes a very sweet and emotional scene, where old friends embrace and forgiveness is given.  All except for Torch who runs out of the place and Andre insists that everyone let him go because when he was created, Andre wasn't in his right mind....... you know, since he was a corpse with a rotten brain, a la Puppet Master 2.  Like I stated in the last review, there has been much contention about who Torch originally was and we have an explanation here that I hope becomes canon among Charles Band and the fans.  You see, it seems that after the Puppet Master 3 took place when Toulon and his puppets escaped Nazi Germany, that he was accosted by a young boy emulating Nazis and planned on killing Andre with a flame thrower....... he just didn't count on Andre having deadly friends.  The boy was killed and I guess before our heroes of that time moved on, Andre Toulon took a sample of the boys brain in order to revive him at some later date.  Too bad that the Nazis got on his trail and the young disturbed boy wouldn't be reanimated again until the 90's.  This is very interesting to me because after all the niceties between our characters, they decide to move on, but hoped to see one another again.  On Andre and Elsa's walk towards their new lives in the personas of the people they've taken over we see that Torch's name was Erich and that he might not be ready to live again because it looks like he already committed a murder and I'm guessing he still has a grudge against Andre Toulon.

The people that the puppets collected to achieve their new lives actually had lives and jobs that were very reminiscent of the lives they once had....... like Jester being a librarian, Pinhead being a truck driver, etc, etc and while some of our characters go on to continue with the lives that they're vessels had, others like Six-Shooter and Tunneler go out to have a little fun.  Which is great as well because like Torch, we never really had a lot of background on Six-Shooter other than the Puppet Master 3 trading card set that described him as an American Cowboy...... which I hope is accurate because it's been twenty years since I've looked at those cards, but it's what I remember and I'll go with it.  Anyway, we see that Six-Shooter's body is that of a Texan with a mustache who goes by the name Shooter and I dig it and the fact that he just wants to get the young Tunneler, who's name is Joseph laid.  This is where shit begins to go bad for our characters.  Throughout his time in the nightclub that Shooter and him went to, Tunneler keeps seeing the puppet that he once was, until finally grabbing the puppet and running out to see what this could mean........ which was a terrible idea because the puppet did what it does best and tunneled through Joseph's head..... that's some surreal shit right there.

In the end, we see that along with Joseph's misfortune that everyone else isn't having a great time either because Pinhead goes to deliver a load that his vessel was supposed to deliver and he's pulled over and arrested for hauling illegal weapons.  If that wasn't bad enough, Andre Toulon after a night of love making that has been on hold for the last seventy six years, goes downstairs to work on Jester, who Madam Adon gave Hans, the man who once embodied the puppet because he had grown so attached to it, who then gave it to  Andre so he could refurbish his former body, only to find that the puppet is missing.  Shit just isn't going right for these people and really, even with their tragic deaths that resulted in them becoming living puppets, after all the terrible things that they've done, it would be silly to think that they could have a happy ending.

That's it for this issue of Puppet Master and this is the finest issue that I've read so far and it's such a love letter to fans of this film series.  I never imagined when I originally picked this comic series up that it would delve into stories about things that have been a mystery to fans since 1991 and finally give us the answers that we've been debating about for years.  I have no idea how a non-fan of this film series will take to this story or even this ongoing series, but personally it is a master stroke in writing and I found the whole experience to be emotional and fulfilling.  It's just amazing and having such wonderful art and colors to accompany it was icing on top of this nostalgic dessert and I can't wait to see where this creative team goes from here because they've got my full attention.

Bits and Pieces:

Puppet Master continues to "wow" me as we traverse through uncharted waters from what we've accepted as the overall continuity of this film series and it's beyond enjoyable for anyone who has watched the films and loved them as much as I have.  I really hope that all of what Shawn Gabborin has done here becomes canon because it's one of the finest things that I've seen from Puppet Master in a long time.  I just can't get over the writing and the art and I hope that every issue continues to be as much of a love letter to fans that this issue was.  

9.5/10