Broken Frontier

Lapham and Huddleston continue to bring the horror.

The latest issue adapting the novel trilogy from Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan brings the vampire threat into focus for the first real time during this mini-series, although it’s never mentioned that’s what the creatures are.

Dr. Ephraim Goodweather is harassed by an elderly man who seems to know just what the mystery is surrounding the contents of the stranded plane at JFK Airport from the debut issue. The elderly man rants about the importance of the missing soil-filled coffin and tells Goodweather to go over the corpses found on the plane with an ultraviolet light.

While the doctor and his biohazard team investigate the man’s wild claims, a rock star’s sexual evening in his new Manhattan apartment turns bloody, and similar incidents appear throughout the city.

As is usual in The Strain so far, Huddleston shows gore, and for the first time, nudity – of both genders. That’s something you don’t see in your comics every day.

This is one of the scariest comics on the stands, as genuine surprises await the reader at every turn of the page. Usually, such big reveals are left to the final moment, but with The Strain there’s almost a cliffhanger every few pages and that makes this series a truly surprising, and enjoyable, read.