The Lost Boys #1 Review and *SPOILERS*

Cry Little Sister

Written By: Tim Seeley
Art By: Scott Godlewski, Trish Mulvihill, Clem Robins
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: October 12, 2016

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

I want to start this off by telling all of you fine readers out there that I'm a huge Lost Boys fan.  I mean, I'm such a fan that I have strong opinions about how the third movie in the series, Lost Boys: The Thirst is better than the second one, Lost Boys: The Tribe.  Now this might not mean a lot to most of you, but I'd say you'd be pretty hard pressed to find anyone with strong opinions about the sequels to The Lost Boys series in general.  Anyway, with my so called credentials aside, I also want to tell you before this review that I've been excited as hell to read this book because I'm chomping at the bit for anything related to this franchise at this point because aside from some terrible remake that will probably happen in the future, (thankfully nothing has been announced as of yet) there isn't a lot to really sink my teeth into when it pertains to this series anymore and even if this comic is a straight sequel to the first movie and nothing else, at least I can take solace in the fact that there couldn't be anything too continuity damaging from this first issue.  That shit is important to me because I'm a lunatic.  Either way, all you need to know going into this comic series is the first Lost Boys movie and as far a homework goes........... Well, that's pretty awesome.  Let's jump into this issue and see the further adventures of Michael and Sam Emerson and of course, everyone's favorite vampire killing, brother duo, Edgar and Allan Frog.  Let's check it out.

Explain It!:

Our issue begins at an unspecified time after the events of the Lost Boys movie, but a decent amount of time seems to have passed because all the characters I thought I knew are acting kind of strange to me.  Yeah, I'm a terrible fan boy and because of that I have an unrealistic sense of how I think things are supposed to be, but we start this story off with Sam Emerson working at Fantasy World Comics on the boardwalk of Santa Carla.  Yeah, it's cool to see this shop because for one thing, I'm a comic book fan and I just love seeing comic shops whether they're real or fiction, but the real reason is because we start this story off with a familiar location.  The only problem is, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me for Sam to be working there.  This shop is owned by the parents of Edgar and Allan Frog and from the looks of them and the Frog Brothers themselves, it doesn't seem like this family has the ability to be hiring out, even if it's a close friend of their sons.............. who in my mind are forced to work there and don't get paid.  So yeah, no Frog Brothers and Sam is starting this story off by trying to sell a self published comic about the Frog Brother's exploits from the film, called Reign of The Frogs, which is kind of funny because Wildstorm put out a book with the same name acting as prequel to the second Lost Boys movie.  Eventually we leave this part of the book after Sam tries to act cool in front of a girl, who's looking for a vampire comic and Sam tells us that he's all about horror comics, but fumbles trying to find the issue and eventually the girl leaves.  This part is kind of funny because Sam made it well known in the movie that he doesn't do horror books, but Sam is willing to change his game if it could catch this hottie at the comic shop.  Really though, there's just a lot of callbacks to the movie that fans will be able to point out and laugh about........... or in some cases, call bullshit.  

The bullshit I'm talking about is in our next scene, where we see Michael Emerson working at an old folks home, where two of the residents ask Michael about his new girlfriend Star and Michael responds by saying that they haven't had a lot of time alone together since he started working at the nursing home and since their house is so full nowadays.  Plus, he believes she's keeping something from him.  Now this is all fine and good and acts as a way to setup whatever Star is keeping from Michael, but what the hell are these old bats talking about when they say "new girlfriend"?  Michael's been dating her since before the movie ended and maybe it's just me, but seeing Michael soak the feet of old ladies after the events of the film just feels off.  Now maybe this is just some nit picky bullshit, but this scene with Michael and the next scene where Grandpa is teaching the Frog Brothers how to be real vampire hunters so that they can join his super secret vampire hunting society is just out of left field to me and just doesn't ring true.  Especially when Alan Frog gets all sentimental with Grandpa after Edgar snubs his training exercises.  I know we need some kind of character progression from where we left off in the film, but just seeing these characters act differently out of nowhere really threw me off, especially since all we've really seen of Edgar or Alan Frog was just straight up bravado........ Not to mention Grandpa, who while seemed to know about vampires in Santa Carla, never came off as a vampire hunter type or even really interested in anything besides taxidermy and banging the widow Johnson............. and for some reason he has the last name Emerson here even though that's his daughter Lucy's married name......... unless she kept her name when she was married and demanded from her husband that her sons be named after her.

In the end, we see the Santa Carla Hunters Union or S.C.H.U. get together for a meeting and from the senile looking participants, this whole outfit just seems like a way for a couple of crazy, bored senior citizens to pass the time and while the biggest thing they do at this meeting is reject the application for someone named Niko Petropulous, they somehow are deemed threatening enough to be wiped out by a vampire attack.  That's right, here we are in the first issue and Grandpa goes and gets sucked dry by some nightcrawlers.  Before he goes quiet into that goodnight though, he lets Sam, Edgar and Allan in on the fact that it was a vampire attack and that it was not Max or David from the movie, which makes sense because we saw them die, but after Grandpa's final goodbye, we head off to the beach where we see the gang of vampires, one of which being the girl who Sam was interested in at the beginning of the book and it looks like the leader of the group is in fact David............ So why the fuck was Grandpa keeping this a secret?  Maybe it's not David, but from the look of the character........... well, it looks a helluva lot Kiefer Sutherland back in 1987.

That's it for our first issue of The Lost Boys and I have to tell you that I'm pretty disappointed with this book.  For as much as I've watched these characters over and over again in the flick, they felt like total strangers to me here because with the exception of Edgar Frog....... and Laddie, who's still growling like last I saw him, even if it was a joke, they seem to be completely new characters who are just given the background of Santa Carla to chew the scenery in, while expecting me to just go with the flow and be okay with it........... and maybe I should, but because I am a fan of this property I just find it hard to get into this book when everything feels wrong from the get go.  The art for the most part when it comes to Sam Emerson and Edgar Frog seems great and spot on and if our villain at the end of this issue is in fact a resurrected David....... well, he seems perfect as well, but the rest of the characters look off and feel off from their dialog to their general demeanor.  While I'm all for characters changing due to development and whatnot, with something that's so connected to such a beloved film I would have thought that we'd have eased in instead of being thrown head first into it.  Like I said a hundred times now though, I'm a fan and I still look forward to the rest of the series, I just hope that it starts feeling a little more familiar and takes us on a helluva ride.  

Bits and Pieces:

I was really looking forward to this first issue because I love The Lost Boys franchise, but ultimately I was really let down by what we were given because everything felt totally alien when it should have been like slipping back into a comfy pair of PJ's.  The characters just felt off from how they acting and what they were doing after the events of the movie.  With the exception of a few characters, the art in this first issue didn't impress either, but because I love this property so much I still look forward to what this series will bring us and hope that this first issue was just a hiccup in the grand scheme of things. 

5.5/10